Historypinner in Residence: The End

Posted on July 4, 2012 by Miles

This week marks the end of my time spent working with English Heritage. These past 6 months have flown by, but over that time I have been able to browse through the largest photographic archive in the country, containing work from hundreds of photographers taken from Land’s End to John O’ Groats.

When we started the project we intended for there to be a nice spread of images across the country, and this is something I feel we have achieved. The English Heritage team had a number of photographers’ work they were keen to upload to their channel so I took the names and began search through their archives. I began with John Maltby, who’s work covers the boom of the Odeon cinema during the 30s and 40s, moved on to some larger collections from Eric De Mare and John Gay. I also selected work from smaller collections by photographers such as Rupert Potter, father of Beatrix, and S W Newbery as well loooking at some of the amazing images from the Early Photographic Print Collection.

Looking at images from the Early Photographic Print Collection

As this is my final blog I decide I would pick my all time favourite images that I took from English Heritage’s Archives, so without further ado:

I love the contrast between old and new in this photo, with the church in the foreground, and the power station cooling towers dominating the rest of the image. De Mare has a knack of bringing buildings to life in his images and this image is no exception. The dark, greystone gothic church is a stark opposite to the sleek modern concrete of the cooling towers, which creates a tension.

This image epitomises for me the art deco cinema trend that began in the 30s. Art deco was a movement that I really enjoy seeing work from, it is a shame to see most buildings from that period have been demolished or fallen in to disrepair. Luckily some are still kept in their original condition, such as the Hoover Building in West London. Whilst working on the Maltby images I found that many of the Odeon theatres were gone, but some were still in use as cinemas and bingo halls, though none held the same elegance and beauty as when originally opened. Seen in daylight this building would be covered glistening white tiles reflecting the sunlight, a shining beacon of cinematic entertainment! The night shot shows the glamourous side of the theatre with its flowing lines and bright lights, offering a piece of hollywood to the everyman.

Portscatho is in Cornwall, where John Gay and his wife took many of their holidays. This photo is very representative of Gay’s work that I looked at. He focused on everyday British country life, building up an extensive archive of images ranging from Country Fairs to fisherman, and beachside tourists. The sleepy side of England, which makes me think of time spent with my grandparents in Somerset.

To see my blogs from the past click here, and to see English Heritage’s great channel, click here.

Nick talks Historypin at Columbia University

Posted on June 29, 2012 by Miles

Last week Nick was in the US doing a series of talks. Here you can see him at Columbia University talking about ciitizen historians, the future of digital mapping and grannies drinking tea.

Help us improve Historypin for cultural heritage organisations

Posted on June 11, 2012 by Rebekkah

Are you a library, archive, museum or historical organisation sharing your collections on Historypin?

We are inviting institutions sharing content on Historypin to complete a short survey to help us understand how you are using Historypin and what we can do to improve our tools for you. It is anonymous and will take about 10 minutes.

This survey has been created by a student enrolled in the Archives and Records Management MA at University College London and will also inform her research thesis on how and why cultural heritage organisations are using content sharing sites.

Please click here to access the survey. If you have any questions about the survey or would like to be interviewed about your involvement with Historypin, please contact Els Boonen at elisabeth.boonen.10@ucl.ac.uk. The survey will be available to complete until Thursday 21st June.

John Gay, Rupert Potter, English Heritage’s own

Posted on April 23, 2012 by Miles

The end of March saw us launch Historypin Channels, where profiles changed in to a completely different beast. Users now have a personalised Historypin map on their Channel page which displays only their content. Historypin Repeats are viewable as well as stories that people have added to your photos. The work that I have been doing with English Heritage Archives has been gearing towards this launch, so seeing the photos I have chosen up on the site and in this new format has been very rewarding.

That is not to say that now we have launched Channels that my time with English Heritage is up. I will be spending the next 3 months working with their cataloguing team, finding more great images to put up on the site.

I am currently working my way through the extensive collection of images from photographer John Gay. Gay was born in Germany in 1909, but moved to London in 1933 as Hitler rose to power, beginning his career as a photographer. He primarily made pictures of people, but covered a wide range of subjects from animals for pet food adverts to architecture and country fairs. Gay is perhaps most famous for his series on Blackpool holiday makers, which typifies the traditional British seaside holiday. Look out for images from the John Gay Collection, we’ll be uploading them soon.

In the meantime there are already hundreds of images on the English Heritage Channel, from a number of different photographers such as Eric De Mare, one of the foremost architectural photographers of the 20th century. There is also the smaller Maltby collection of Odeon cinemas, which I mentioned in my last blog, as well as a set by Rupert Potter, father of children’s author Beatrix Potter. His images are all of Edwardian London, depicting London Zoo and various street scenes within the square mile. As well as all this work from some amazing photographers there are Tours and Collections to be viewed. My favourite being the cataloguing team’s own selection of images from the Early Photographic Print Collection, a body of work containing some of Britain’s earliest known photographic works, going back as far as 1840, you can view that Tour here.

Look out for more images from John Gay on the English Heritage Channel on Historypin, also find all these images and more on English Heritage Viewfinder. If you’d like to find out more about what I do you can see my first Historypinner in Residence blog here.

Winthrop Rockefeller Centennial

Posted on April 4, 2012 by Rebekkah

This year is the centennial of the birth of Winthrop Rockefeller, Governor of Arkansas 1967-1971 and institutions across Arkansas are collaborating to host a series of arts conferences, art exhibits, and digital exhibits to celebrate the Governor’s contributions to Arkansas.

As part of the anniversary celebrations, the Centre for Arkansas History and Culture at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock have been using Historypin to map their photographic and audio collections.

There is some fantastic stuff in their collection, including Rockefeller’s service in the Pacific during World War Two, a recording of his oath when he was sworn in as Governor in 1967 and a recording of his Inaugural speech in 1969.

And there is material from 1968 capturing the memorial service for Martin Luther King - Winthrop Rockefeller was the only American Governor known to hold a public memorial service for Martin Luther King. Click the image below to see the photo on the map and listen to the speech he gave on the steps of Arkansas State Capitol.

To see more material and the Tours and Collections they have curated, visit UALR’s Channel.

And check out their website where you can find out lots more about who is involved, what other centennial events are planned (including a virtual Rockefeller exhibit due to open on May 1st) and explore their collection on their Historypin Embed.

Historypin Joins US National Digital Stewardship Alliance

Posted on March 20, 2012 by Jon Voss

Historypin has joined the National Digital Stewardship Alliance, an initiative of the United States Library of Congress with the mission to “establish, maintain, and advance the capacity to preserve our nation’s digital resources for the benefit of present and future generations.”

I am going to represent Historypin in NDSA working groups and was reported saying, “The NDSA provides an incredible opportunity to work with colleagues across the US on important issues of digital preservation and access. As an organization that works specifically with individual and institutional collections of cultural heritage, we take our responsibilities in this arena seriously. We’re excited to be a part of the NDSA to learn about, collaborate on, and advance best practices.”

About the National Digital Stewardship Alliance

The mission of the National Digital Stewardship Alliance is to establish, maintain, and advance the capacity to preserve our nation’s digital resources for the benefit of present and future generations.

Members collaborate to preserve access to our national digital heritage. The NDSA accomplishes its goals through working groups with strategic direction from the Coordinating Committee and support from the Secretariat.

NDSA organizations have proven themselves committed to long term preservation of digital information. Our members include universities, consortia, professional societies, commercial businesses, professional associations, and government agencies at the federal, state, and local level. Learn more about the NDSA.

Miles Dell: Historypinner in Residence at English Heritage

Posted on March 6, 2012 by Miles

Hi, I’m Miles and I’m a Historypin Assistant. I spend my days looking at new content, researching institutional partners and manning our social media streams. At the beginning of the year I started as a Historypinner with the English Heritage Archives. This involves me working directly with EH at their archives in Swindon, where I get to search through their collection and curate content for Historypin. Every so often I will be posting updates on my progress and giving you a sneak peak at some of the great photography that English Heritage has to offer.

My first few weeks involved me getting to grips with the cataloguing and archive systems they have in place here and, of course, getting a tour of the archive itself.

12 million photos is rather a lot to be getting through on my own so the cataloguing team, led by Helen Shalders, gave the names of a number of photographers’ work they’d like to see on the site. One of those, and the first collection that I chose to look at for the site, was John Maltby.

In the 1930s Maltby was commissioned to take photographs of Odeon cinemas across the country by Oscar Deutsch, the founder of the chain. The collection reflects the architectural and social trends of the period. The boom of the movie theatre meant that every large town boasted its own art-deco behemoth, where patrons could enjoy visual news as well as light entertainment. Sadly many of these theatres are now no longer in use, many have been demolished, while others have been reincarnated as bingo halls, or in one case a furniture showroom. Here is one of my highlights from the collection:

Look out for images from the John Maltby collection and more when we upload later this month. If you just can’t wait to see this collection then you can view it on English Heritage’s site here.

Look out for more posts from myself over the coming months for more English Heritage related photographyness.

Historypin goes to Manchester

Posted on March 5, 2012 by Rebekkah

On Saturday Miles and I were at the awesome Manchester Histories Festival held in the impressive neo-gothic Manchester Town Hall.

We were invited by Manchester Archives Plus who have been pinning photos from the Greater Manchester County Records and films from the North West Film Archive.

We really enjoyed introducing people to Historypin and showing off the Tours and Collections put together by Alison from Manchester Archives (who you may remember interned with us last year).

But the best bit was seeing and hearing about all the different project’s going on to find, capture and explore Manchester’s histories. A few of our favourites:

52 Manchesters – Did you know that there are 52 Manchesters around the world?! Towns, dams, mines, from Nova Scotia to Boliviar to Australia. And Chris and Liz are going to visit them all to create a photographic record of them. We’re really inspired by their feat and hope they will do some pinning along the way too. Find out more about their plans here.

Histonauts – A digital treasure hunt game that sent participants (Histonauts) running round the city with their smartphones on missions to discover Manchester’s secret histories through online clues. Brilliant way to take the Manchester Histories Festival onto the streets and into online cultural collections. Created by the Institute for Cultural Practices and the UniverCityCulture at Manchester University. Find out more and see the leaderboard and read more here.

Streets Museum - A fascinating project working with locals to collect photos, objects, films and oral histories from lost streets in Salford which have been demolished over the past 50years. They are working to create an online Streets Museum were Salfordians can search for and commemorate their districts and streets.

Thanks to Alison and Dave for inviting us and involving Historypin in all sorts of games and Tours during the week.

PS. A modern replica of the room we were in:

San Francisco Street Museums

Posted on February 22, 2012 by Jon Voss

Light shines through one of 14 semi-transparent "Treasures from the Muni Archive" displays in San Francisco

San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee officially launched a special exhibit of photos from the San Francisco Transit Authority Archive in their unique setting February 21st. Early San Francisco street scenes can now be seen in the exhibit at the Market Street Railway Museum (MSR) and 14 bus shelters along Market Street near the Ferry Building. QR codes on the posters take you to a mobile-optimized Historypin splash page where pedestrians can see all of the posters and download the Historypin app for iPhone or Android phones.

“With nearly 30,000 photos in the SFMTA archive, we are pleased to have such a unique way to share them with residents and visitors,” said SFMTA Director of Transportation Edward D. Reiskin. “We are grateful to our long-standing partner, MSR, and one of our newest partners, Historypin, for making this exciting exhibit possible.”

And we’re honored to be a part of it! You can view the SFMTA collection on Historypin, where they’ve already posted over 100 photos.

North Central College Celebrates its 150th anniversary

Posted on February 1, 2012 by Rebekkah

11th November 2011 marked the 150th anniversary of North Central College, Naperville, Illinois. As part of the celebrations for their sesquicentennial (which means 150th – what a great word!), they have been pinning photos from College’s rich archive.

Their collection goes all the way back to 1870, with this photo of the original Old Main Building:

And you can see the limestone quarry where the stone came from – now Quarry Lake:

The photos from North Central College archive have been pinned by Raymond Treonis, a senior Social Science/ History major at North Central minoring in Interactive Media Studies. He has been working with Kimberly Butler and Dr. Ann Keating to identify photos and find out about the history of the campus campus. Nearly 150 photos have been added, from studious students in the 1920s, through the fire in the 1941 to 2003 when the Cardinal Stadium was home to the Chicago Fire soccer team.

This was my favourite – how and why is the girl in the background so high? It appears to be some sort of three-tiered chair, or a step ladder. Though why you would take a step ladder to a picnic I have no idea …

North Central College (@northcentralcol) are celebrating all year, so dig out your photos and add them to the map. Are if you’re a current student, download the free Historypin app and snap some modern replicas of the historical photos pinned so far.

UPDATE: You can read an interview with Ray Treonis and find out more about North Central College Archive here.

Category Archives: Archives