I was recently introduced to the awesome Shorpy: The 100-Year-Old Photo Blog. This morning’s image is “The Old Corner Bookstore, 1900.” Check out those cool guys just loitering by the post! I love their juxtaposition against the people moving quickly down the sidewalk. My secret desire is to be a man and dress in high collars and newsboy caps everyday.
And looking through the Shorpy archives I found an older post, even more appropriate for this week.
Recently I’ve been happy to note that some of my favorite institutions are getting involved in Web 2.0 communities. I was looking at the British Library’s website yesterday and noticed they have a new exhibition, The Ramayana: Love and Valour in India’s Great Epic. You can see it in person if you’re lucky enough to be near the Library between May 16 and September 14 this year, or view the online exhibition here. (I haven’t looked at it yet because they’re now requiring a software download, and I didn’t feel like doing that last night.)
But I was most excited to find that the British Library now has an official Flickr presence. You can check out their photostream for behind-the-scenes shots and participate directly by joining the Library’s Ramayana group (and I hopefully assume that more groups will follow in the coming months and years). While checking out their contact list I found a number of other institutions, including the Library of Congress, the National Libraries of Scotland, Australia and New Zealand, the Aluka Digital Library and the Tate Gallery. Doing more digging I found New Zealand’s Te Papa (which has some awesome photos,) and a few others, as well as some institutional pages on Facebook (again, the British Library’s is very good). The picture below is from the British Library’s photostream – check it out.
So one of my photos is doing really well in the Wired Water contest. Click on “top-rated” and you can see it in the number 3 spot. There are some really incredible shots in the contest, and I especially like Miroir d’eau, Faucets, Spray, Inside Out (amazing!) and Myedrop.
Google Reader totally exploded with good links today. Then I had to help catch a lizard that got into my mom’s office. So it’s been an interesting morning.
— Via BookNinja, the Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, at Cambridge University, has finished making the majority of its documents available to the public. The site “contains Darwin’s complete publications, thousands of handwritten manuscripts and the largest Darwin bibliography and manuscript catalogue ever published; also hundreds of supplementary works: biographies, obituaries, reviews, reference works and more.” They even have 60 years worth of Emma Darwin’s diaries, which sound fascinating. I’m definitely going to spend some time on this site over the weekend.
— From the New York Times, an article on the current showcasing of Gaston Phoebus’s Le Livre de la Chasse at the Morgan Library in New York. I love dogs, so this is a favorite of mine among illuminated manuscripts. What’s annoying is that the NY Times does not provide a link to the exhibition webpage. So here you go!
— Also from the NY Times, an article on what may be one of the oldest photographic prints in existence, possibly from the late 18t century. Fascinating!
— Ann Giles at the Guardian discusses the color pink and its use on book covers. She links to another Guardian piece by Polly Toynbee on the gender gap and its relationship to early “girlification” of children by marketers. You may remember my slightly ranting post on this subject. I agree completely with the Toynbee article and many of the excellent comments in the book piece, especially the one below, by MsPiggy.
Being trained to be pink and feminine has a far wider impact than the books you read. The pink concept is synonymous with the idea that if you are born female your purpose is to provide viewing pleasure for other people. It eats away at women’s ambition to claim positions of power by placing so much importance on looks and ‘correct’ feminine behaviour. Businesses know that if they start early and sell the idea of pink to girls, they will go on to consume vast amounts from the beauty, fashion and slimming industries.
— Finally, in the fun category, a great pin from Etsy seller Lupin, via Indie Fixx. I love Lupin’s other designs as well, like “science geek” and “tea addict.” She also makes gorgeous flower pins.
