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Roberta Baird
http://www.robertabaird.com/
A Mouse in the House

http://www.robertabaird.com

http://art-words-life.blogspot.com/2008/01/picture-is-worth-thousand-words-or.html

The Library of Congress is putting a million public domain images on Flickr, and they need your help:

The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to show how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer. You're invited to help describe photographs in the Library of Congress' collection on Flickr, by adding tags or leaving comments. (Via Drawn!)

Here's a link to the Library's Prints & Photographs Online Catalog-- they're not all in the public domain, but would be great for sparking story ideas or as photo-reference for illustrations, no?

Recently, Michel Le Querrec friended me on Flickr. I’m not sure why, maybe to extend the reach of the project he’s working on using the site, Photos Normandie. Apparently the National Archives of Canada (and the U.S.?) are uploading pictures from the Battle of Normandy, more than 2700 of them to date.

I found the photographs fascinating, even though the captions and descriptions are in French, so I friended the site back, and now every day I see a few of these amazing pictures mixed into my photostream. It’s very strange to see thumbnails of dogs, nature, friends, children, libraries, and then the Battle of Normandy, but I find it an interesting use of Flickr and the images usually force me to reflect on how lucky I am in this day and age. For some, it would be interesting to add in streams from Iraq, Kenya, and other places that would bring home the reality of the rest of the world, especially in a classroom setting.

All of which was broiling in the back of my mind when I saw this incredible announcement from the Library of Congress, an institution I have to say I never thought would take this step.

My Friend Flickr: A Match Made in Photo Heaven

“If all goes according to plan, the project will help address at least two major challenges: how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity. In many senses, we are looking to enhance our metadata (one of those Web 2.0 buzzwords that 90 percent of our readers could probably explain better than me).

The project is beginning somewhat modestly, but we hope to learn a lot from it. Out of some 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials at the Library of Congress, more than 3,000 photos from two of our most popular collections are being made available on our new Flickr page, to include only images for which no copyright restrictions are known to exist.

The real magic comes when the power of the Flickr community takes over. We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves. For instance, many photos are missing key caption information such as where the photo was taken and who is pictured. If such information is collected via Flickr members, it can potentially enhance the quality of the bibliographic records for the images.

We’re also very excited that, as part of this pilot, Flickr has created a new publication model for publicly held photographic collections called “The Commons.” Flickr hopes—as do we—that the project will eventually capture the imagination and involvement of other public institutions, as well.

From the Library’s perspective, this pilot project is a statement about the power of the Web and user communities to help people better acquire information, knowledge and—most importantly—wisdom. One of our goals, frankly, is to learn as much as we can about that power simply through the process of making constructive use of it.” [Library of Congress Blog]

More info is available here, here, and here. Major kudos to LOC for seeing the opportunity and seizing it. Hopefully the community will respond and help tag the images for retrieval, but it will be an interesting experiment either way. I am very impressed with this effort and can’t wait to watch it grow.

The United States Library of Congress hosted its first National Book Festival in 2001. Thirty thousand people attended. On September 29, 2007, the date of the seventh edition of the festival, attendance exceeded one hundred twenty thousand.

In addition to the use of online tools and digital media, including podcasts, the National Book Festival is just one of many of the Library of Congress’ initiatives to promote literacy and a love of reading and writing.

On this edition of Just One More Book, Mark is joined by Matt Raymond, Director of Communications for the Library of Congress, to talk about the National Book Festival, the online Young Readers’ Toolkit, and the use of new media to promote literacy.

Links:

• National Book Festival
• National Book Festival Podcasts
• Young Readers’ Toolkit
• Library of Congress Blog
• Library of Congress Podcasts

National Book Festival poster image from the Library of Congress website.

Here's a great contest that gets kids to read and write while connecting them to their favorite authors:

"The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress, in partnership with Target Stores and in cooperation with affiliate state centers for the book, invites readers in grades 4 through 12 to enter Letters About Literature, a national reading-writing contest. To enter, readers write a personal letter to an author, living or dead, from any genre-- fiction or nonfiction, contemporary or classic, explaining how that author's work changed the student's way of thinking about the world or themselves."

Info here: http://www.loc.gov/loc/cfbook/letters.html

It made me think about the books I read as a child and wondered who I would have written. As an elementary student, I read Nancy Drew, Trixie Belden, and books of similar ilk. But then I also read every book on World War II and being  a Catholic school girl, I read a lot of books about the saints. Then in high school, I read a lot of political fiction (Allen Drury, Fletcher Knebel), and then Arthur Hailey books plus sci-fi writers like Isaac Asimov. I also read a lot of scripts from Broadway plays, checking out the Best of Broadway book from the library each year. 

But I'm pretty sure the person I would have written would have been Gwendolyn Brooks. Her poetry really resonated with me, and as a student in the 1950s and 1960s, she was one of the few African American female writers I knew. Literature today is so much more diverse and I hope students will take advantage of this opportunity to tell the writers who speak to them how much they matter.

The Library of Congress announced yesterday that, through its Center for the Book, it will create the post of National Ambassador for Young People's Literature.

Appointed for a two-year term by the Librarian of Congress, the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature will speak to the importance of fiction and non-fiction books in children's lives. Selected for extraordinary contributions to the world of books for young people, the National Ambassador will encourage the appreciation of young people's literature throughout the United States through both personal and media appearances.

“"The Ambassador will be an award-winning author or illustrator whose position will acknowledge ­at the national level ­the importance of exceptional authors and illustrators in creating the readers of tomorrow,"” said James H. Billington, the Librarian of Congress.

The National Ambassador program is a joint initiative of the Center for the Book in the Library of Congress and the Children's Book Council (CBC). The appointment of the first National Ambassador for Young People's Literature will be announced in January 2008.

"We are thrilled. The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature will honor and promote the essential role young people's literature plays in every aspect of our society,"” said Simon Boughton, Chair of the CBC Board of Directors and Executive Vice President & Publisher of Roaring Brook Press.

The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature will travel and speak extensively during the two-year term, participating in book and reading promotion events throughout the United States. While each term will bring new events in different areas of the country, the National Ambassador will speak in Washington, DC each fall at the National Book Festival and in New York City each spring during Children's Book Week.

The National Ambassador will choose a platform on which the two-year term will focus. This platform will emphasize literacy, education, and related issues concerning books and young people. In addition to regular speaking engagements, the National Ambassador will work with national media outlets to promote this platform to an even wider audience.

The National Ambassador for Young People's Literature position is patterned after the Children's Laureate in the United Kingdom. The Center for the Book and the Children's Book Council will administer the project jointly, including naming the Selection Committee, overseeing the selection process, and organizing the National Ambassador's travel schedule.

The Selection Committee will consider all nationally-prominent creators of fiction and non-fiction books for children and young adults in the United States. Selection criteria will include, but will not be limited to, level of national prominence and popularity with young people, as well as the candidate's known enthusiasm for specific issues in children's and/or young adult literature.

Financial support for the National Ambassador program is provided by Cheerios(r) cereal, which has been getting books into children's hands and encouraging families to read together through its Spoonfuls of Stories(r) program. Over the past 5 years, Cheerios Spoonfuls of Stories has distributed more than 25 million books free inside boxes of Cheerios cereal, and donated more than $2 million to First Book(r), an international children's literacy organization. Additional financial support for this program is provided by HarperCollins Children's Books, Penguin Young Readers Group, Random House Children's Books, Holiday House, Inc., National Geographic Children's Books, Houghton Mifflin Company, Harcourt Children's Books and Candlewick Press. The CBC, through its associated 501(c)(3) entity, the CBC Foundation, is seeking additional financial support for the National Ambassador program from the private sector and encourages those interested in supporting this exciting program to contact CBC and CBC Foundation Executive Director, Robin Adelson at 212-966-1990 or [email protected] .

The Children's Book Council, established in 1945, is the non-profit trade association of publishers and packagers of trade books and related materials for children and young adults in the United States. The goals of the Children's Book Council are to make the reading and enjoyment of children's books an essential part of America's educational and social goals; to enhance public perception of the importance of reading by disseminating information about books and related materials for young people and information about children's book publishing; to create materials to support literacy and reading encouragement programs; and to encourage the annual observance of Children's Book Week.

The Center for the Book in the Library of Congress was established in 1977 by Public Law 95-129 to use the resources of the Library of Congress to stimulate public interest in books and reading. Its entire program is supported by private funds. To carry out its mission, the center has created two national networks: affiliates in all 50 states and the District of Columbia and national reading promotion partners, mostly non-profit organizations, such as the Children's Book Council, that promote books, reading, literacy, and libraries. The Center for the Book plays a key role in the development of the National Book Festival, held each year on the National Mall in Washington, DC.

The bar has been raised. You LoC groupies better get on board, and fast! Says Director of Communications Matt Raymond about the blog's purpose:

It’s probably a bit early to come up with some sort of grand “mission statement” for this blog, but it will be in keeping with the spirit of the Library’s mission as a whole: “to make its resources available and useful to the Congress and the American people and to sustain and preserve a universal collection of knowledge and creativity for future generations.”