Internet Archive Book Images via Flickr

Flickr is hosting nearly 3 million images extracted from digitized books at the Internet Archive through programming developed by an academic researcher. The Internet Archive Book Images is an amazing resource and it's all in the public domain.

Source: "Millions of historical images posted to Flickr" by Leo Kelion, BBC News: Technology, http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-28976849

"Searching for the Stars" (the real ones in the heavens) through Searcher magazine

My most recent article for Searcher magazine, "Searching for the Stars: Cosmic Views and Databases", made the cover of the September 2011 issue as you can see below and is available online (just select the hyperlinked article title in this sentence).

Searcher magazine cover, September 2011

Gigapixel art, the Google Art Project

The Google Art Project was started by Google employee Amit Sood. Launched on February 1, 02011 at London's Tate Britain gallery, the Art Project contains content from 17 major galleries and collections around the world and allow a virtual visitor to explore these museums and one art art using "gigapixel" technology. The virtual tours use the same technology as the Street View you experience through Google Maps.

The Way We Were: Nova Scotia in Film, 1917-1957

The Nova Scotia Archives and Records Management has released a new digital collection called The Way We Were: Nova Scotia in Film, 1917-1957. An alternate URL is via its YouTube channel http://youtube.com/user/nsarchives/http://youtube.com/user/nsarchives/ According to an announcement on the ARCAN-L mailing list (02010 09 21), the collection consists of "96 'movies' that showcase the early years of amateur and professional filmmaking in Nova Scotia."

TinEye Reverse Image Search

I have not tried a search with TinEye, "a reverse image search engine. It finds out where an image came from, how it is being used, if modified versions of the image exist, or if there is a higher resolution version. TinEye is the first image search engine on the web to use image identification technology rather than keywords, metadata or watermarks. It is free to use for non-commercial searching. TinEye regularly crawls the web for new images, and we also accept contributions of complete online image collections. To date, TinEye has indexed 1,630,532,499 images from the web to help you find what you're looking for." (http://www.tineye.com/about)

ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards blog

Quoting from the announcement on IMAGELIB (02010 07 15):

The ACRL/IRIG Visual Literacy Standards Task Force is working on Visual Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education. We have started a blog as a forum for discussion about visual literacy, and as a communication tool to provide information about the standards development process and progress. Please visit the blog here: http://acrlvislitstandards.wordpress.com/.

We would like to encourage broad community engagement in the Visual Literacy Standards development process, and invite you to participate in the blog discussions. Please feel welcome to comment on the blog, and invite others to do so as well. We appreciate all input.

According to a post on the blog on 02010 07 15, "We are defining visual literacy in the context of an interdisciplinary, information-literacy-based, higher education environment."

Digitized fire insurance plans of Canadian cities at Library and Archives Canada

The Library and Archives Canada has digitized much of its Canadian fire insurance plans originating with the Charles E. Goad Company fonds. The short form of the URL that will take you to the series-level description of the plans through which you can view lower-level descriptions and the item-level description with the digitized representations of the plans is http://bit.ly/9rcqLb. The JPG images are of sufficient resolution that when downloaded can be used for research purposes. Higher resolution TIFF images can also be ordered.

Fire insurance plans are an extremely valuable archival research tool for environmental and urban studies. Congratulations to LAC on this accomplishment.

Historypin to see the past through Google Maps

In partnership with Google, We Are What We Do, a social action movement based in London, England, created Historypin:

a digital time machine that provides a new way for the world to see and share history.

The site allows users to share images from their personal photo albums, as well as the stories behind them. To date, pictures have been provided from various national archives, as well as diverse contributors including Selfridges, Marks & Spencer, the Royal Albert Hall and Arsenal FC.

Developed in partnership with Google, the site finds a unique use for Google Maps and Street View, meaning pictures can be dated as well as geo-tagged and then 'pinned' into place on top of modern Street View photography.

The result is a fascinating snapshot of the changing face of local streets and well known landmarks and provides a new perspective on historic moments.

The site has ambitions to become the World's largest user-generated archive of historic images and stories, providing easy access to digitised history stretching from the invention of the camera to yesterday.

Source: An historic launch for We Are What We Do and Google, June 7, 02010 and thanks to Peter Kurilecz for his notice on a photohistory mailing list, June 5, 02010

Let's get visual with metadata standards

Jenn Riley, Indiana University, has a free, terrific PDF poster called Seeing Standards: A Visualization of the Metadata Universe, supplemented with a metadata standard glossary, also available as a free PDF in poster or brochure formats.

4th International Conference on Preservation and Conservation Issues in Digital Printing and Digital Photography, May 0210, London, England, UK

Registration is open for the 4th International Conference on Preservation and Conservation Issues in Digital Printing and Digital Photography being held in London, England, UK, on May 27 and 28, 02010. The conference is designed for conservators, digital photographers and printers. The previous conference was held in April 02006. The conference was co-organized by the Institute of Physics (IOP) Printing and Graphics Science Group and Materials and the Arts Research Centre, University of Arts, London, UK.

The Bigger Picture, Visual Archives and the Smithsonian blog

Thanks to Peter Kurilecz on the Yahoo! PhotoHistory group, here's the Smithsonian Institution's photography and artwork blog, The Bigger Picture, Visual Archives and the Smithsonian.

Into the Pixel, ongoing juried exhibit of video game artwork

Curious about what some of the upcoming video games will look like or how some existing games differ from their original concept art? Check out Into the Pixel, an ongoing, juried exhibit of video game artwork sponsored and hosted by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences. The exhibits date back to 2004.

Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada fades to black, advocacy continues through Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television

Another casualty of the federal Conservative government's culture wars, the Audio-Visual Preservation Trust of Canada has dissolved effective March 31, 02010. Its important advocacy work for the preservation of Canada's audio-visual recorded heritage is being carried on through an agreement with the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television to whom it transferred its charter on November 30, 02009. You can read about the work of the AV Trust in the final issue of its newsletter, PreserVision, no.16, Winter 02010. The AV Trust worked very closely with the Library and Archives Canada.

Digital Antiquity: Transforming Archaeological Data into Knowledge

From the front page of an international initiative to create a digital archaeological record standard (tDAR) and digital repository:

Digital Antiquity is a collaborative organization devoted to enhancing preservation and access to digital records of archaeological investigations in order:

• to permit scholars to more effectively create and communicate knowledge of the long-term human past;



• to enhance the management of archaeological resources; and



• to provide for the long-term preservation of irreplaceable records of archaeological investigations.

Digital Antiquity will establish a financially and socially sustainable, national/international, on-line digital repository that is able to provide preservation, discovery, and access for data and documents produced by archaeological projects. The repository, known as tDAR (for "the Digital Archaeological Record") is set up to encompass digital documents and data derived from ongoing research (more than 50,000 field projects are conducted in the US each year) as well as legacy data collected through more than a century of archaeological research in the Americas. With the active participation of the discipline, this initiative has the potential to transform the practice of archaeology and to revolutionize our knowledge of the past by enabling synthetic and comparative research on a scale that has heretofore been impossible.

With generous funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funding, Digital Antiquity staffing will include a full-time Executive Director, two software engineers, a data curator, and clerical staff. In mid-November, Francis P. McManamon began working as the Executive Director. A search for the software lead engineer is underway. The remaining staff will be hired subsequently. Management of Digital Antiquity is overseen by a 12 member Board of Directors and informed by a distinguished external Science Board of professionals in archaeology and computer and information science. Digital Antiquity currently is housed at Arizona State University, as a collaborative effort with the University of Arkansas, the Pennsylvania State University, the SRI Foundation, Washington State University, and the University of York.

Royal British Columbia Museum joins the sociable world of Facebook

The Royal British Columbia Museum has launched itself into the sociable world of Facebook. A YouTube channel was started in September 2008. Could a blog be next?

Wikipedia Saves Public Art (WSPA): New Project to Document Public Art on a Global Scale

The ResourceShelf reported on an interesting new Wikipedia project to document public art on a global scale initiated by faculty and students at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis. The IUPUI Public Art Collection on Wikipedia is worth a look.

Smashing Magazine and the sound of design success

I'd come across Smashing Magazine before. It was launched in September 2006 and features lots of content about Web site design and development. Consider it essential reading if you're in this field.

Google Maps Labs introduced

Google Maps Labs is an opt-in feature that introduces several new nifty functions and fun into Google Maps. The Google Maps Labs icon is a small green beaker in the upper right corner with the word "New!" to the right of it. Although you do not have to have a Google Account to add these features and fun things like a geography guessing game to Google Maps, in order to save the changes between browsing sessions, you have to log in to your Google Account.

British Columbia 1885 photo mystery: O.C. Hastings & G.M. Dawson photos

Posted the following on the Yahoo! Groups PhotoHistory this morning (January 19, 2010), as well as to my David Mattison blog and this blog:

I was sent two scans from a UK individual that are most intriguing and currently pose a photo mystery. Here's what I know so far based on the photos themselves, archival descriptions and digitized, published content freely accessible to me.

In 1885 the Geological Survey of Canada (GSC) geologist Dr. George Mercer Dawson visited northern Vancouver Island and environs, including Alert Bay on Cormorant Island. He took a few photos at Alert Bay in early August 1885 that are described on the Library and Archives Canada Web site as part of the GSC records it preserves. The Royal BC Museum has copy prints of at least three of the Dawson photos, including the two images I was sent.

The mystery is that the scans I was sent show both the Dawson photos on a cabinet card mount with the markings, front and back, of Victoria commercial photographer O.C. Hastings. My supposition is that Hastings processed Dawson's negatives as Dawson, according to his GSC report, once he returned to Victoria remained there for about three weeks working on preparations for the Colonial and Indian Exhibition that was held in London, England, in 1886.

I've uploaded one of the Dawson / Hastings photos to Camera Workers at http://cameraworkers.davidmattison.com/showmedia.php?mediaID=234&mediali\nkID=368

What I'm hoping to find is evidence in a diary or correspondence of Dawson that he purposefully allowed Hastings to market his photos. Some of Dawson's personal records are at McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, and his GSC field notebooks and correspondence are at the Library and Archives Canada.

If anyone on this group can research this on my behalf  I'd be happy to reciprocate with research in archival records here in Victoria, BC.

As a followup, I wrote that I'd discovered that Dawson's fieldbooks are available on microfilm at the Library and Archives and that I'd arrange to borrow the reel (C-4845) that covered his 1885 work.

Here is the photo in question:

Digitized British Admiralty Charts of Canadian Waters at Library and Archives Canada

The Library and Archives Canada announced the release of a tremendous new resource, digitized British Admiralty charts of Canadian waters: "The 3,400 documents, which cover a 150-year period ending in the mid-20th century, represent the largest historical description of Canada's three major oceans and the inland waters of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence River. Many of the charts were prepared from surveys undertaken by the elite of the British navy: Admiral Henry Bayfield, Captain James Cook, Lieutenant George Vancouver, Sir John Franklin and Admiral William Parry."

Access is via the series level description, all lower level descriptions or via a list of the digitized documents themselves.