Elizabeth B. Thomsen

I did a presentation on this topic at the Massachusetts Library Association conference in Falmouth this morning, and posted the PowerPoint on Slideshare:

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Links don’t work very well in Slideshare, so here is a list of all the links from this presentation:

Migrant Mother

• [page 3] Migrant Mother — Photograph by Dorothea Lange
• [page 4] The Other Migrant Mother — Article by Michael Stones, Open Photography Forums Initiative
• [page 5] Migrant Mother, “The story as told by her grandson” — Roger Sprague is the grandson of Florence Thompson, the subject of Migrant Mother
• [page 6] Excerpted from No Caption Needed : Iconic Photographs, Public Culture, and Liberal Democracy — by Robert Hariman and John Louis Lucaites

Spinning Room Boys

• “Spinning Room Boys, Salem, Mass.” — Photograph by Lewis Hine, 1911, National Archives. The title is mine — in the National Archives site, this is identified as “The very smallest boy is Henry Fournier, has worked 2 months in spinning room. The next in size is Adelard Gagnon, works in spinning room. Adelard Dion, works in spinning room. Smallest in back row is Albert Valbert. Salem, Mass., 10/25/1911″
• Lewis Hine Project — Joe Manning of Florence, Massachusetts, has been tracking down the stories and the descendants of some of the children photographed by Lewis Hine

Ubiquitous Photography

• Thanksgiving — by Scott Shatto
• Kids at the Otino Waa Children’s Village in Lira, Uganda — by Jonathan Assink
• Jose Taking Picture — by Dan Cipolla
• “I Love this Toy — by Spitzgogo Chen

Photography Now

• Camera Madness — by Deepwarren
• Book Pinhole — by Matt Callow
• On the Streets of Killarney — by Buck Lewis
• Camerapedia — “This site is a free-content encyclopedia of camera information, a repository of information about all still camera brands and models.”
• Picnik — Easy, powerful, free online image editing
• Photoshop Express — The new, online edition of the best-known image-editing program
• Big Huge Labs — “Home of fd’s Flickr Toys,” a great collection of tools that make it easy to add frames and special effects to your digital photographs
• Dumpr — Another collection to tools and toys to enhance and transform your photographs

Library Pictures on Flickr

• Homework Destination — Motivational Poster by OWHL, Phillips Academy, Andover
• HP Puppets — Photo by the Beverly Public Library
• Chandelier, Boston Public Library — Photo by Monceau
• The Reader, Melrose Public Library — Photo by Elizabeth B. Thomsen
• Materials in Processing — Photo by the Newton Free Library
• Cinderella Puppet Show — Photo by the Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield
• Springtime at the Peabody Institute Library, Danvers, Massachusetts — Photo by Elizabeth B. Thomsen
• The SWAT TEAM is looking for volunteers — Photo by the Newton Free Library
• The Lincoln School — Old postcard scanned by the Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield
• The Lincoln School, 2007 — Photo by the Lucius Beebe Memorial Library, Wakefield
  “The building is now used as senior housing. People who once attended the school as children are now residents”
• Virtual Community Garden — The Melrose Public Library created this set of photographs by members of the community as part of their town-wide read of “Seedfolks” by Paul Fleischman

Photo Contests

• Hamilton-Wenham Public Library Children’s Photography Contest — Photo slideshow on the Salem News website
• Sawyer Free Library (Gloucester) Teen Photo Winners — Annoucement and photo slideshow from the Gloucester Daily Times website

Photo Fun Ideas

Jumping

• Ten Lads a Leaping — Photo by DragonDrop
• Not Something You See Every Day! — Photo by Today is a Good Day

Sleevefacing

• Ringo Starr — Photo by Asleep on a Sunbeam
• ludronrussinstein — Photo by Aaron Russin

Historic Images

• Digital Commonwealth — Portal to digital collections from libraries and cultural institutions across the state
• Lynn Boy Scouts Present Sweaters for Soldiers — Scanned photography from the Lynn Public Library
• Reading Town Baseball Team, 1909 — Scanned photography from the Reading Public Library

And More…

• Diners of Massachusetts — A Google map with images
• Animoto Videos — An easy, free way to turn your photos into a short music video and upload it to YouTube

More and more newspapers and magazines are making deep archives freely available on the web, dropping requirements for print subscriptions and registration, making it easy to find the full-text of many well-known and respected publications available online. Richard Pérez-Peña wrote an interesting article called Dusting Off the Archives for the Web for the New York Times, saying:

“As magazines and newspapers hunt for the new thing they need to be to thrive in the Internet era, some find that part of the answer lies in the old thing they used to be…For magazines and newspapers with long histories, especially, old material can be reborn on the Web as an inexpensive way to attract readers, advertisers and money.”

Read more…

Yesterday’s Brainiac column in the Boston Globe, “Everyone’s a historian now,” is about the Library of Congress images on Flickr. Columnist Joshua Glenn admits that asking the crowd to provide identification and information about these pictures makes him nervous, but notes that “so far, so good” and he gives examples of information already provided by Flickr members. “Crowdsourced history — maybe there’s something to it, after all.”
Read more…

The Library of Congress collections on Flickr have gotten a lot of attention and activity since its launch on January 16. Flickr reported on their blog that in the first twenty-four hours after the launch, users added about 19,000 tags and just over 500 comments. The Library of Congress reported on their blog that all 3,100 + photographs had been viewed, with over 650,000 photo views in total as of the evening of January 17.
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The Library of Congress and Flickr have a new pilot project called The Commons. Photographs from two of the American Memory collections, 1930s-40s in Color and News in the 1910s, a total of over 3,000 images.

The first set consists of photographs taken for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) and later the Office of War Information (OWI) between 1939 and 1944 and focus on rural areas and farm labor, and World War II mobilization, including factories, railroads, aviation training, and women working, and these records have some descriptive and subject information that’s been carried over to Flickr. The other collection, New in the 1910s, are news photographs from the Bain News Service, taken in about 1910-1912, and there’s minimal information for these.
Read more…