Using Media Sharing Sources Like Flickr and Picasa (and Preliminary Bibliography for Spokane House)

This week’s assignment asked us to obtain a few digital media site accounts and then to play around within those digital media sites to understand how and why these are useful sources for digital media. The first of the sites we were asked to look into was Flickr. I started out by looking into what exactly Flickr was—basically, Flickr is a photo sharing website that allows individuals to showcase and share their pictures with others, online. We were asked to explore the Flickr Commons and the Creative Commons and to understand what exactly they are.

The Flickr Commons was launched on January 16, 2008 with two main objectives: 1) to increase access to publically-held photography collections, and 2) to provide a way for the general public to contribute information and knowledge. (Then watch what happens when they do!) Basically it is a combination of organizations that are willing to share their public photography collections within a specified area so people can easily search for photos.

What is their copyright policty? Flickr Commons Copyright Policy- under “The Commons,” cultural institutions that have reasonably concluded that a photograph is free of copyright restrictions are invited to share such photograph under their new usage guideline called “no known copyright restrictions.” Participating institutions may have various reasons for determining that “no known copyright restrictions” exist, such as: (1) the copyright is in the public domain because it has expired; (2) the copyright was injected into the public domain for other reasons, such as failure to adhere to required formalities or conditions; (3) the institution owns the copyright but is not interested in exercising control; or (4) the institution has legal rights sufficient to authorize others to use the work without restrictions. “By asserting ‘no known copyright restrictions,’ participating institutions are sharing the benefit of their research without providing an expressed or implied warranty to others who would like to use or reproduce the photograph. If you make use of a photo from the commons, you are reminded to conduct an independent analysis of applicable law before proceeding with a particular new use.”

The Creative Commons is a non-profit that offers an alternative to full copyright (http://www.creativecommons.org) Free, easy-to-use copyright licenses provide a simple, standardized way to give public permission to share and use your creative work—on conditions of your choice. CC licenses let you easily change your copyright terms from the default of “all rights reserved” to “some rights reserved.” CC licenses are not an alternative to copyright. They work alongside copyright and enable you to modify your copyright terms to best suit your needs. The Creative Commons provides information that gives alternatives to the standard full copyright with options of allowing others to use and reproduce the information, but not as their own. I also checked out some of the Flickr Commons institutions, like the Library of Congress and saw that they had some cool, really old pictures that could turn out to be very useful to students doing research projects, among others.

I was also asked to read the articles, “Five Ways Museums are Using Flickr” and “Curate the Commons.” Both articles are talking about Flickr and digital media sharing and how they are being utilized by different organizations. Flickr offers organizations a cheap, easy to use, digital medium, with a large community of users to view and interact with their projects. Museums can share their photographic archives through Flickr and ask the public to help out by providing any information they already know about the specific photographs. Museums can also use images from Flickr to fill space in their cases while artifacts are on loan to other organizations, and to help create campaigns for their association by providing photographs of the Museum from real people’s real authentic experiences. At the National Maritime Museum in London, members of their active Flickr community were invited to curate a display of historical photographs that were significant to them from the museum’s collection. The final 8 images were selected to be on display within the museum. This is just one of many active research projects that were developed around how Flickr Commons supports community engagement and making sense of the photographic collections.

For this week’s reading assignment, we were also asked to research into Picasa how it can benefit us. I noticed that I was required to download this Picasa 3.9 application to my desktop, rather than creating an online account. Once downloaded, it automatically uploaded all the photographs from my computer into the program and the automatically started sorting my photographs into different categories for my personal and business/ school photograph collections, and it has facial recognition capabilities that will sort my personal photos. This program was increasingly useful when I realized that I can sync my photos with my desktop through the use of Google+. This will become a very useful database when I am going through the process of downloading photographs for my digital storytelling project on Spokane House.

Wikipedia Commons- "Chief Spokane Garry"

>>>PRELIMINARY BIBLIOGRAPHY- Spokane House:

Primary Sources:

Elliot, T. C. “Spokane House.” The Washington Historical Quarterly. 21:1 (3-7). January 1930. (Accessed 10 October 2013) <http://www.jstor.org/stable/407344317>.

Kingston, S. C. “Spokane House State Park in Retrospect.” The Pacific Northwest Quarterly. 39:3 (181-199). July 1948. (Accessed 10 October 2013) <http://www.jstor.org/stable/407344317>.

Secondary Sources:

Bond, Rowland. The Original Northwester David Thompson and the Native Tribes of North America. 1970-71. Spokane House Enterprises (Box 4)- Nine Mile Falls, Washington.

Cochran, Barbara F. Exploring Spokane’s Past: Tours to Historical Sites. 1979. YE Galleon Press- Fairfield, Washington.

Drury, Clifford M. A Tepee in His Front Yard. 1949. Metropolitan Press- Portland, Oregon.

Kirk, Ruth. Exploring Washington’s Past: a Road Guide to History. 1995. University of Washington Press- Seattle, Washington. <http://www.books.google.com/books?id=BANYPXb22sYC&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&g&f=false>.

Oldham, Kit. “The North West Company establishes Spokane House in 1810.” History Link: the Free Online Encyclopedia of Washington State History. 23 January 2003. (Accessed 10 October 2013) <http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5099>.

Robertson, Roland G. Competitive Struggle: America’s Western Fur Trading Posts, 1764-1865. 2012. Caxton Press- Caldwell, ID. <http://www.books.google.com/books?id=EaqU5RY-W8GC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false>.

“1830- Spokan Garry and Spokan Tribe.” Spokane History Timeline. Discovery School. May 2003. (Accessed 10 October 2013) <http://www.discovery-school.org/spogarry.html>.

**I currently do not have any media sources for my project on Spokane House, other than Wikipedia Commons images of Chief Spokane Garry and David Thompson.

What is Digital Storytelling?

What is Digital Storytelling?

While exploring the readings assigned for this week, I got started by exploring the Wikipedia webpage for what exactly “digital storytelling” means. The first sentence of that webpage said “Digital storytelling refers to a short form of digital media production that allows everyday people to share aspects of their life story.” Reading further into it, the webpage stated that ordinary people are the subjects of digital storytelling and they use a variety of digital tools to tell their story, often presented in compelling and emotionally engaging formats simply by narrating the person’s story and putting it online in the digital world. The webpage also mentioned the aspect of having the option of an interactive piece to the practice of digital storytelling.

While moving forward in the week’s readings, I read the article about the value of using digital storytelling in a small museum. I found it to be an inspiring article about coming to the realization that there is so much more to this digital world that can be utilized for museums. “Less need to write and print book s or pamphlets in order to share information. Less need to store those books and pamphlets for years until they sell or reprint them when they sell out. Less need for exhibit panels. Less need for consultants.” The author of the article states that the digital medium will create remarkable financial savings at the same time as allowing the museum to be so much more flexibility and freedom. These new digital aspects to the museum will hopefully encourage more participants to come and take part of the growing digital and interactive elements to the museum.

The Stonybrook University’s Digital Storytelling webpage was interesting. It had quite a few resources that will become very helpful while developing my own digital stories. There is an invaluable tab on their webpage titled “Copyright, Creative Commons and Fair Use” that provides resources about using copyrighted information and what is and is not copyrighted information. One of the “Spotlight Digital Story” videos on the Stonybrook University page was either titled “Breathe” or “Hold Fast to Dreams” was a video we watched and critiqued in class. It was a narrative of a woman’s life story from growing up as an undocumented immigrant to making her way into college. There were many sound aspects to her video that kept the audience interested in what was to come (her voice and a variety of musical segments to fit the mood) and she included various intriguing photographs. Although, as we discussed in class, her photos were not credited and most likely had many copyright issues, and we mentioned that her story seemed too long and drug out, she could have easily taken out some of her meditating moments to create a shorter, more captivating story.

As I dug into some of the projects on the Curatescape platform, I decided to look at the Mount Pleasant Historical (sponsored by the town of Mount Pleasant, www.mountpleasanthistorical.org). I was asked to pick out a story that I really enjoyed and one that I did not like very much. The story I chose as the one I enjoyed was titled “Shell Rings and Shell Middens.” I really appreciated this story because my background is in anthropology/ archaeology and these shell rings and middens were created by Native American peoples 3000-4000 years ago, long before modern settlers came to the Americas. These shell middens were found along the SC coast, several have been found in the East Cooper area. They are composed of shell, animal bone, and pottery, suggesting habitation sites. These sites also suggest that the inhabitants successfully harvested natural resources, allowing nomadic bands to eventually settle at more ‘permanent’ locations.

"Shell midden could affirm tribe's stories of Hood Canal" Kitsap Sun (Nov. 4, 2012). This photograph is of one of the shell middnes discovered at Naval Base Kitsap-Bangor along the Hood Canal, WA, potentially from the Skokomish, S'Klallam and Suquamish tribes.

The article I decided I did not like very much was titled “Silas N. Pearman Bridge.” This story was very scarce on information about the history associated with the bridge. The story stated that the Grace Bridge was replaced by the Silas N. Pearman Bridge in 1966, named for the chief commissioner of the state highway department. The Silas N. Pearman Bridge was itself eventually replaced by the Arthur Ravenel, Jr Bridge in 2005, constructed next to the previous bridge. I felt this story could use more background about who these bridges were named for.

“Bear 71” was part of the homework that was assigned to look at. “Bear 71” was an excellent story about the trapping and tagging of a female grizzly bear in the Banff National Park, Canada. The story starts out with a very suspenseful mood, having no sounds except for those of a bear struggling as its paw is trapped in a wire, showing the reality of the situation. Then the narrator starts speaking in a female voice, that of the bear, guiding us through the story of being drugged and tagged with a number and having a transceiver collar placed on. The story seems to be contrasting wild with human emotions in an almost sarcastic manner. Once the bear is released back into the wild the story transforms to an interactive segment that is very unclear on what exactly we are supposed to do and how to do so. I eventually determined the interactive medium was too confusing and not worth my time and energy.

Monday's Class

Hello all,

This is just me playing and testing this blog to make sure every is up and running correctly. Thanks!

Lindsey