Author Archives: Jon Voss

About Jon Voss

Jon Voss is the Historypin Strategic Partnerships Director. Together with global collaborators and the Historypin team, he’s helping to build an open ecosystem of historical data across libraries, archives, and museums worldwide. His innovative work at the intersection of technology and cultural memory is also getting him closer to his childhood dream of perfecting time travel.

Investing in the Creative Reuse of Cultural Heritage

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Historypin is proud to join with 26 other partners from across the European cultural heritage, technology, creative, media, and academic sectors for an exciting 30 month project designed to demonstrate and instigate the creative reuse and remixing of digital cultural heritage. 

eCreative kickoff at the Austrian National Library. (Thx to Max Kaiser for group photo and Erwin Verbruggen for the mashup!)

The online portal Europeana provides access to more than 25 million digitized objects of cultural heritage from European libraries, archives and museums. The Europeana Creative project will actively encourage and promote the creative reuse of digital cultural heritage and associated metadata made available through Europeana. As part of the project, a number of test applications will be developed as proof of concepts and which are being designed together with a number of events to spur innovation and further development by entrepreneurs from the creative industries.

The project was officially launched in February at the Austrian National Library in Vienna meeting where representatives of all of the partner organizations were assembled. There were presentations on the various work packages and workshops were used for the further development of the specific plans and tasks.

GOAL

The Europeana Creative project will demonstrate that Europeana can facilitate the creative re-use of cultural heritage metadata and content. The project will establish an Open Laboratory Network, create a legal and business framework for content re-use and implement all needed technical infrastructure.

WHY NOW?

In the last few years we’ve seen a growing global convergence of communities working toward usability and discovery of openly licensed cultural heritage assets and data. Increasingly, the cherished institutions that have for so long provided stewardship of these materials and their accompanying data are embracing and investing in new ways of providing access to this information, opening a new world of possibilities for how we celebrate our shared global history. We’ve seen this trend illustrated across Europe.

The reuse of open data is an important part of the Digital Agenda for Europe.  There’s been several major activities recently throughout Europe to celebrate and stimulate the reuse of cultural heritage, such as the Open Knowledge Festival in Helsinki last fall, and GLAM-WIKI 2013 held in London earlier this month to name a few.  Last year, the Hack4Europe! competition was organized to develop applications to demonstrate the social and economic value of open cultural data.

In September 2012, Europeana encouraged the development of innovative applications by publishing the metadata for 25 million cultural heritage objects under the terms of the Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication 0 (CC0) license, and have also provided free and open access to the metadata through Application Programming Interfaces and Linked Open Data. Europeana Creative will not only use this metadata, but also many of the digital objects themselves, which are available for re-use together with the necessary licenses.

5 TEST APPLICATIONS

The project will create five pilot applications in the thematic areas of History Education, Natural History Education, Tourism, Social Networks, and Design, then conduct open innovation challenges to identify, incubate and spin-off viable projects into the commercial sector.

Pilot → Challenge → Spin-off: the workflow for pilot development. This is further illustrated in the Work Package 4 presentation on Slideshare.

The project will also undertake an extensive stakeholder engagement campaign promoting the benefits of cultural heritage content re-use to creative industries and to memory institutions.

HISTORYPIN’S ROLE

Historypin will be focusing on increased data integration with Europeana as well as creative reuse of geolocated sound archives as part of the Social Networks pilot.  We’re excited to feature a number of sound recordings and themes on Historypin from Europeana partners, including the British Library Sound Archive, and work package leader Netherlands Institute of Sound and Vision. We’ll also be getting  support in this work package from Ontotext AD.

PROJECT PARTNERS

The project brings together 26 partners from 14 different countries and is a strong alliance between:

  • the Europeana Foundation, with access to 2,200 + cultural institutions
  • Creative hubs and organizations that have access to the creative industries and professionals in the tourism and educational sectors in Europe
  • Living Labs in four countries (Spain, France, Finland and Belgium)
  • Technical and multimedia experts
  • Business planning experts
  • Partners who provide material from their cultural heritage institution or museum.

The full list of participants and more information about the project can be found on the Europeana Creative website.  Many thanks to Lizzy Komen for her original post which I borrowed heavily from!

Europeana Creative is a project co-funded by the European Commission under the CIP program 2007-2013.

Interview with Historypin MLIS Intern, Andrew Crawford

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S. Andrew Crawford joined us for an internship over the fall of 2012, and served as both our first MLIS intern and first virtual intern. Andrew did a fantastic job outlining various metadata standards across libraries, archives, and museums to our team, and researched potential tools and insights for metadata crosswalks.

How did you find out about Historypin?

I actually heard about Historypin through my faculty mentor/advisor Dr. Margaret E. I. Kipp. In order to finish up my masters I had to do a few credits worth of fieldwork, and when I approached Margaret about opportunities, Historypin was the first thing she showed me. After looking over the site I knew that it was just the sort of organization that I’d been hoping to work with. From there I got in touch with Jon and the rest is history.

What’s your primary interest of study, and what kinds of innovations do you think are on the horizon in your field? 

My primary areas of study are UX design, metadata, and linked data / the Semantic Web. As someone who has spent a lot of time looking into the ways people interact with information technology, I’m a bit biased towards the notion that the next big wave of innovation is going to come out of a desire to develop technologies around the basic cognitive processes that define the way people understand the world around them. As I see it, the Semantic Web is the ultimate expression of that intention. By restructuring Web content in a way that allows machines to approximate our ability to make inferences we’re laying the foundation to make the process of using the Web much more intuitive. I’m a big fan of Marshall McLuhan, and when you view the Semantic Web through the lens of his theories on media it becomes clear just how much of an extension of our own cognitive faculties it is. I genuinely feel that the innovations that are going to matter in the coming years are going to be those that are rooted in an understanding of the narrowing gap between human thought and digital processing. And not just because Ray Kurzweil’s working for Google.

Since you’ve been working on a lot of back-end and database issues, have you had much of a chance to poke around the content? Have you found any favorites?

Honestly most of my poking around has had more to do with academic articles and resources, but during the times I’ve got to play around with the map I’ve found that the content that interested me most is that which came from my hometown, Lexington, Kentucky. My personal favorite is this picture taken inside the Kentucky Theater, an historic movie theater where I worked for a year when I was an undergraduate at the University of Kentucky. I actually spent many Saturday afternoons taking matinee tickets near the exact spot the band in the picture are standing.

Kentucky Theater, Bird of Paradise Promo, from University of Kentucky Special Collections.

What kind of challenges and opportunities do you see for LAMs in collaborative projects like Historypin?

Collaborative information environments offer an incredible platform for LAMs to share their digital content to the widest possible audience, and in an incredibly efficient fashion. The chance to further develop and refine information resources like Historypin and Europeana is an incredible opportunity for these institutions and one that I’m sure will become increasingly exploited as time goes on. The major challenge that I foresee for the development of collaborative knowledge domains is a lack of interoperability between different systems and their content.

You’ve really been our first “virtual” intern.  How has that experience been for you? Are there things you liked about it or things you would suggest for other people doing virtual internships?

It’s been a great experience that’s really given me the chance to hone my skills and apply many of the lessons I’ve learned as a grad student. What really made it worthwhile was that it allowed me the opportunity to explore a topic I’m passionate about in a way that really worked for me. I’d say that’s ultimately the key to a successful virtual internship, feeling sufficiently invested in the work your doing that you won’t need anyone else to motivate you to do it.

What’s next for you?

Well, now that I’ve “mastered” information science the next logical step is to begin what I hope will be a long and prosperous career as a UX designer and/or a linked data specialist. If anyone out there’s hiring you can find my information at sandrewcrawford.com.

Can You Help us Evaluate Historypin Social Impact?

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If you’re using Historypin as part of a group, library, archive, museum, school, or any kind of institution, it would be amazing if you could take 10-15 minutes to help us with a quick survey.

A life story tour by r3nator3is.

As you know, Historypin was created to inspire conversation and collaboration around local history across generations, cultures and communities and help unlock the social value embedded within cultural heritage collections.

It’s been one year since we launched Historypin Channels and we are keen to hear how cultural heritage organisations, schools and community groups have been using our tools with their communities. This will help us evaluate our social impact and inform how we develop Historypin over the coming year.

It would be fantastic if you could complete our 15 question survey (approximately 15 min) by Friday 5th April. Please note that we may include cited quotes in our evaluation.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JRF7HR7

Historypin, Narratively, and Hidden Histories

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We’re excited to team up with Narratively this week for their series on Hidden History.  Narratively is a new take on in-depth reporting, journalism, and storytelling; and we love how they’re pulling together archival content, interviews, and research into compelling narratives around the Hidden History theme.

For us, Narratively represents the kind of creativity that’s empowered by the sharing and discovery of all kinds of historical content, and the kind of innovation enabled by openly licensed historical assets.  It also speaks to the power of asking a few more questions about what was here before, or what’s the story behind this photo, or what was it like for you then.  What mysteries wait to be revealed in that box of photos in your grandma’s closet, or on your neighbor’s wall?

So check out these fascinating stories on Narratively, and share your own hidden histories at Historypin–you never know where that may lead!

University of Wisconsin Scrapbooks and More

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In this edition of Better Know an Archivist (thanks Stephen Colbert), we talk to Vicki Tobias at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives.

Historypin: What do you do, exactly?

Vicki Tobias: Since 2010 I’ve served as the Images and Media Archivist for the University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives.

I’ve always loved history. I’m a fanatical genealogist and love nothing more that tackling a good history mystery, whether my own or someone else’s. I feel quite lucky/blessed to have landed a career that perfectly marries my love of history and enthusiasm for sharing it!

How and when did you come across Historypin and what made you decide it was worth pursuing for UW and your work?

A friend and colleague who works for the Wisconsin Historical Society initially introduced me to Historypin – maybe two years ago? I was immediately impressed with the organization’s mission statement which talked about bringing together generations through shared history. This idea is at the core of our work in the UW Archives. Historypin is a great tool for showing change over time and is the type of tool/project that inspires a user to further explore their own place in history. Any tool that prompts a user to ask “I wonder what was here 100 years ago?” or “I wonder what’s there now?” is a success in my book.

In the UW Archives, we host a bevy of volunteer, intern, practicum and paid student staff. They all want to work on projects that include a “technology element.” Building a collection in Historypin from start to finish (e.g. scanning, researching metadata, uploading, outreach, etc.) provides our students an opportunity to apply technology skills in an archives environment and results in a great end-product they can then link to on a resume or application. We’ve had great success with students creating Collections in Historypin.

You’ve got a great variety of photos across campus, and we’ve noticed these amazing scrapbook collections you’ve been sharing lately. What can you tell us about the scrapbooks, and do you have a strategy in sharing these?

Why, thank you! We’ve had great fun selecting content to add to our Historypin collection. I wanted our campus history collection (on Historypin) to include more than a bunch of photos of historic buildings. I thought it would be interesting to try to tell a student’s story using Historypin and items from historic student scrapbooks. The UW Archives has a great (and growing) collection of scrapbooks dating from the late 1880s through the 1960s. They include all sorts of memorabilia, photos, clippings and other “bits and pieces” that wonderfully illuminate the college student experience. Selecting and pinning location-based items provides a different and more nuanced interpretation of each scrapbook – allowing a user to better understand the places and spaces inhabited by a student during a particular period in our campus and town history. For example, an invitation to a dance held at the Stock Pavilion on campus (still in existence), a monthly bill for items purchased from a “sweet shop” on Capitol Square (no longer there), a photo taken during summer vacation “up north” in Wisconsin. When viewed on a Historypin map, these items prompt a user to ponder questions of mobility and transportation (How did one traverse the distance from campus to the aforementioned sweet shop – walking? trolley car? Were there sidewalks? Horses?), use of space on campus (Dances held in the Stock Pavillion? Really?) and other questions that might not be apparent when simply flipping through a scrapbook. Seeing items on a map presents an entirely different view of the story being told by the scrapbook creator.

What excites you most about Historypin, and how do you envision it being utilized at UW and other college campuses?

I love the idea of user-generated content. It would be fabulous if other campus units with an interest in building community around shared campus history could collaboratively build collections in Historypin. Likewise, I think Historypin might be an interesting tool for uniting alumni to build collections that illuminate their shared experiences.

What is your favourite piece of content that you have pinned?

Last year, we built a new collection – Lawrence Monthey: 1959 Tour of the Soviet Union which documents this UW faculty person’s trip to that region. The slides are beautiful (and in color!) and include images of many iconic locations in the former Soviet Union. I love the following photo of St. Basil’s Cathedral (Sept. 1959) and the juxtaposition of the historic and current street views.

It’s one of my favorite UW Archives collections and a perfect fit for Historypin.

Historypin Visits in Australia & New Zealand

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I know it’s a little last minute, but if you’re in Brisbane, Sydney, Perth or Auckland, we’d love to see you!

Brisbane, ALIA Information Online conference.  Wednesday 13 Feb, Jon Voss joins Roy Tennant and Ingrid Mason in keynote.  Friday 15 Feb, State Library of Queensland hosts Historypin walk in Brisbane CBD.

Sydney. Tuesday 19 Feb, Powerhouse Museum hosts Historypin user group and talk with Jon Voss. 10am-noon.  More details and free registration here.

Auckland. 21 Feb. Jon Voss giving a talk and meetup, details tbd.

Perth, early March. Rebekkah Abraham available for workshops and meetings, tbd.

Please contact Jon or Rebekkah directly if you’re interested in meeting up or hosting something at your institution.

 

Mr. Voss Goes to Washington

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I went to Washington DC on inauguration day, January 21, 2013. I arrived late in the evening, but had seen some of President Obama’s speech on tv earlier in the day. Of course, it was Martin Luther King, Jr. day as well, and I took to heart the call to national service, and indeed was honored to have the opportunity to spend the next day together with staff at our National Archives and Records Administration, and proud to be of service to my country in some small way. Update: the public talk I gave is available here, and slides here.

Seriously. Maybe it sounds stupid, but there are a lot of ways to serve your country. To me, figuring out ways to make our national cultural heritage relevant and accessible and inspiring and collaborative for the country and for the world is pretty damn patriotic. And the men and women within our nation’s institutions that are fighting to do this are heroes in my mind. They’re fighting against hundreds of years of bureaucratic layers of red tape, and trying to do monumental things with very limited budget, with more cuts on the way.

There are many at NARA, the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the National Park Service, NEH, NEA, IMLS and many other agencies, that are so passionate about our cultural memory and heritage that they’re willing to stick it out to help bring these institutions into a new era. One in which the data and assets so long in the stewardship and care of government agencies will begin to see new light, inspire new uses, enable new inventions, and create economic opportunities that we can only just begin to imagine. I’ve had the great privilege to work with and spend time with many of these people, and to learn about the behind-the-scenes work going into these efforts.

             

The ever-expanding holdings of our federal libraries, archives, and museums are in good hands, being preserved and maintained against the ravages of time by experts. These holdings, or some digital representation of them, and the metadata about them, are beginning to be made available en masse for new uses already. But it needs to continue in order to allow for research and business to grow around it; and to become a more participatory endeavor for social good, as Nick and Nick have discussed in the UK; and how Carl Malamud so eloquently and powerfully put it in his remarks at a memorial for Aaron Swartz last week.

Maybe a part of our service to our country is just to help connect the dots of the global groundswell. To fan the flames and continue to build and share use cases that show what people can do with cultural heritage data, how it can be used to help us understand our past, and understand each other. Maybe it’s part of our service to join with the many others that continue the work of the dreamers that dared to stand up to make us all a little bit better.  To those who are fighting the good fight in DC: we thank you.  Please know that you’re not alone.

Historypin and American Experience on the upcoming Abolitionists Series

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For history geeks and historical documentary lovers like us, American Experience is the big leagues. So you can imagine how thrilled we were to be approached by the producers of “tv’s most-watched history series” to discuss working together.  Having logged countless couch hours watching their documentaries, we jumped at the chance of working with their fabled team to kickstart a campaign around “Mapping History.”

We’re excited to be playing a part in their new three-part series, The Abolitionists, airing beginning January 8 on PBS.  As part of the extensive online interactive components of the series, you’ll find The Abolitionist Map of America, and an exclusive iPhone App, which highlights photographs, audio and video from the film, as well as content from the many cultural heritage partners that contributed source material, and even individual users.

Watch Map History With Us! on PBS. See more from American Experience.

It’s the first time the Historypin framework has been utilized to support a film, and offers a new and unique way of highlighting the source materials featured throughout.  The embedded map and gallery browsers give viewers the ability to spatially explore the content and see how the story fits into local history, while at the same time digging deeper into the source collections, and even adding their own comments and stories to each individual piece of content.  From the producers perspective, it adds a participatory element that gives content providers and viewers a voice within the narrative, and a new lens for the filmmakers to highlight the curatorial aspect of their work.  Finally, cultural heritage partners have been enthusiastic about the Historypin integration because it gives them a chance to bring viewers deeper into their collections without leaving the environment of the film.

You can expect to see more exciting projects like this in the coming year, and we’ll be creating greater integration of other documentary content into the main Historypin site.

Read More about the Abolitionists and the Abolitionist Map of America:
–Official press release from the PBS Pressroom
–Post about the project from Inside American Experience
–Post about the project from Out of the Box, the Library of Virginia’s blog.
–Post about the project from This Morning Is History, a blog by the Delaware Historical Society
–Cincinnati Herald story about the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County involvement in the project.

Research from Libraries, Archives & Museums on Historypin

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Medical records staff, 1933, shared by State Library of New South Wales

We’re fortunate to work with many cultural heritage partners who are putting a lot of thought and research into the ways they can share their collections with the world, from physical exhibitions to digital engagement strategies, and everything in between. Many have documented and published their experience of working with Historypin, which not only helps colleagues understand what goes into creating a Channel on Historypin or an embed, but also the logistical considerations of issues such as policy decisions, allocating staff time, and engaging with the public on metadata refinement.

I’d like to highlight just a few articles and posts that might be helpful for you if you are considering getting started on Historypin at your institution. I’m sure I’ve missed some–please feel free to add others in the comments.

For Libraries:
State Library of New South Wales blog post: The social life of photographs: where, when and what happened? by Mylee Josephs. Accessed December 6, 2012.

Journal article in Partnership: the Canadian Journal of Library and Information Practice and Research, Vol 7, No 2 (2012). Historypin for Library Image Collections: New Modes of Access for Unique Materials at the University of Saskatchewan Library. By Craig Harkema and Catherin Nygren, University of Saskatchewan. Accessed December 6, 2012.

For Archives:
Journal article in Archival Outlook, published by the Society of American Archivists. Using Historypin to Illustrate the Past and Engage the Public. Pp 4-5, 26. By Shannon Lausch and Chad Garrett, UALR Center for Arkansas History and Culture. (Caution: the link takes you to the full issue pdf, which can take some time). July/August, 2012. Accessed December 6, 2012.

For Museums:
Smithsonian.com: Q and A with Nick Stanhope, Creator of Historypin. By Megan Gambino. Published August 31, 2011. Accessed December 6, 2012.

Blog post on Collections Link, published by Collections Trust: The Participatory Museum. By Nick Poole and Nick Stanhope. Posted July 20, 2012. Accessed December 6, 2012.

Phillips Museum of Art blog post: Fostering 21st Century Skills at The Phillips Museum. Posted November 28, 2012. Accessed December 6, 2012.  And here is their Curating the City Channel showcasing a number of tours and collections using very different approaches to curation on Historypin.

RSVP for Year of the Bay Event

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Alma on San Francisco Bay, ca. 1900, San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park

You are cordially invited to join with friends to celebrate San Francisco Bay, launch Year of the Bay, and welcome Alma back to her birthplace at Hunters Point

On November 1, Alma will sail back to her birthplace at Hunters Point, bringing this historic scow schooner from San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park back to one of the Bay Area’s most dramatically changed historic waterfronts and communities, and closing a circle of history. We hope you will join us to welcome Alma and open the Year of the Bay — a year which brings the America’s Cup and the opening of a new span of the Bay Bridge — to all of the diverse communities of the Bay through voyages of the Alma, exhibitions, and an innovative humanities crowdsourcing project that will go live online November 1 at www.YearOfTheBay.org.

The Year of the Bay crowdsourcing project is sponsored by Stanford University’s Center for Spatial and Textual Analysis with a grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The project is directed by Jon Christensen, former director of the Bill Lane Center for the American West at Stanford, in collaboration with Historypin.

Here is a quick run down of the day’s events:

10:30 AM:  Welcome the Alma and celebrate the opening of a new segment of the Bay Trail at the

EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park in San Francisco.

Noon:  Lunch at the EcoCenter.

1-2 PM: Demonstration of the Year of the Bay crowdsourcing website to collect stories, photographs, and recollections about San Francisco Bay.

2-4:30 PM:  Natural history walks at Heron’s Head Park and along the surrounding bayshore.

4:30-6:00 PM:  Reception and toast to Year of the Bay at the EcoCenter at Heron’s Heads Park.

Please RSVP:  alma@beautifulcommunities.org or 415-822-8410 as space is limited.

Your humble crew from the San Francisco Maritime National Historical Park, Stanford University, Historypin, the California Historical Society, Heyday Books, Literacy for Environmental Justice, and the EcoCenter at Heron’s Head Park eagerly await your reply.