Curator’s Choice

Sharing Photographs

MUSEUM FÜR KUNST UND GEWERBE (MKG) - Antje Schmidt, Head of Digital Cataloguing and MKG Collection Online, and Esther Ruelfs, Head of MKG's Photography and New Media Department, on the functions of sharing images, both historically and in the present. more

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Sharing Photographs

The Quirky, the Artful, and the Unexpected: Historic Photographs of Life in Australia

MUSEUM VICTORIA - Dr Elycia J Wallis, Manager of Online Collections, presents a few fascinating glimpses of late-19th- and early-20th-century Australia, and the photographers who documented its inhabitants. more

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The Quirky, the Artful, and the Unexpected: Historic Photographs of Life in Australia

The Legend of the Divine Farmer

WELLCOME LIBRARY - Gillian Daniels, Graduate Trainee at the Wellcome Trust, explores the story of Shen Nong, born of a princess and heavenly dragon, and teacher to the ancient Chinese of agriculture and herbal medicine. more

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The Legend of the Divine Farmer

Historic Oregon Newspapers: Preserving History While Shaping the Future

UNIVERSITY OF OREGON LIBRARIES - Sheila Rabun, Digital Project Manager at the Digital Scholarship Center, gives a tour of the rich and varied history of news media in Oregon. more

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Historic Oregon Newspapers: Preserving History While Shaping the Future

Jacob Sarnoff and the Strange World of Anatomical Filmmaking

US NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE - Miriam Posner on what led a 1920s Brooklyn surgeon to remove the veins from a day-old infant, mount them on a board, and film them being pumped with air. more

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Jacob Sarnoff and the Strange World of Anatomical Filmmaking

Tempest Anderson: Pioneer of Volcano Photography

THE YORKSHIRE MUSEUM - Pat Hadley, Sarah King and Stuart Ogilvy present a fascinating selection of photographs from the collection of Tempest Anderson, the pioneering Victorian volcanologist. more

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Tempest Anderson: Pioneer of Volcano Photography

Daniel Nyblin’s Glass Negatives of Artworks

FINNISH NATIONAL GALLERY - Hanna-Leena Paloposki presents a selection from the gallery's collection of Daniel Nyblin glass negatives, a collection comprised of the photographer's lesser known images of artworks. more

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Daniel Nyblin’s Glass Negatives of Artworks

The Forth Bridge: Building an Icon

NATIONAL LIBRARY OF SCOTLAND - Alison Metcalfe, curator in the Manuscript and Archive Collections department, presents the library's collection of photographs recording the construction of the Forth Bridge, the first major structure in Britain to be made of steel and a milestone in civil engineering. more

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The Forth Bridge: Building an Icon

Gallipoli: Through the Soldier’s Lens

AUSTRALIAN WAR MEMORIAL - To mark the 100 years since Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) fought the Gallipoli campaign of WW1, Alison Wishart explores the remarkable photographic record left by the soldiers. Made possible by the birth of Kodak's portable camera, the photographs give a rare and intimate portrait of the soldier's day-to-day life away from the heat of battle. more

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Gallipoli: Through the Soldier’s Lens

Strange Contests in the Netherlands

OPEN IMAGES - Harry van Biessum gives a little tour through some of the collection's stranger films, in particular those Dutch newsreels from the 1930s which centred on reporting a wide-variety of bizarre competitions. more

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Strange Contests in the Netherlands

A Mongolian Manual of Astrology and Divination

US NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE - Michael J. North, Head of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts, takes a look at one the highlights of the Library's Turning the Pages project, a Mongolian manuscript concerned with interpreting the heavens. more

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A Mongolian Manual of Astrology and Divination

Autochromes from the Te Papa Collection

MUSEUM OF NEW ZEALAND TE PAPA TONGAREWA - Lissa Mitchell, Curator of Historical Documentary Photography, explores the work of three photographers creating autochromes in early 20th-century New Zealand. more

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Autochromes from the Te Papa Collection

Boys will be Boys: Playing Around in a 17th-Century Friendship Book

WALTERS ART MUSEUM - Dr. Lynley Anne Herbert investigates a mysterious image and accompanying rebus found within the pages of a liber amicorum or "friendship book", an album for recording friendships and social connections that amounted to a kind of 17th-century version of Facebook. more

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Boys will be Boys: Playing Around in a 17th-Century Friendship Book

Armenians and Armenian Photographers in the Ottoman Empire

GETTY RESEARCH INSTITUTE - Julia Grimes introduces a fascinating selection of images from the Pierre de Gigord Collection detailing Armenian life in the 19th-century Ottoman Empire, many from the studio of Armenian photographers Pascal Sebah and the Abdullah Frères. more

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Armenians and Armenian Photographers in the Ottoman Empire

William Blake and Paul Mellon: The Life of the Mind

YALE CENTER FOR BRITISH ART - Matthew Hargraves looks at Paul Mellon as a collector of William Blake and the impact of his lifelong fascination with psychology and psychiatry on his collecting. more

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William Blake and Paul Mellon: The Life of the Mind

The Other Lives of Adam and Eve

BIBLIOTHÈQUE DE RENNES MÉTROPOLE - Sarah Toulouse explores the mystery behind a couple of strange and unexpected images found in a 15th-century book of hours. more

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The Other Lives of Adam and Eve

Cabinet Card Photographs from the Harvard Theatre Collection

HOUGHTON LIBRARY, HARVARD UNIVERISTY - John Overholt shines a spotlight on a few examples from the eclectic lot of cabinet card photographs found in the Harvard Theatre Collection, a series of images which are currently making their way onto Wikimedia Commons courtesy of the Wikipedian in Residence scheme. more

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Cabinet Card Photographs from the Harvard Theatre Collection

Markham’s Masterpiece

U.S. NATIONAL LIBRARY OF MEDICINE - Michael J. North, Head of Rare Books and Early Manuscripts in NLM's History of Medicine Division, takes a look at one of the most important books in the history of veterinary medicine - a seminal 17th-century work on the care of horses. more

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Markham’s Masterpiece

The Wellcome Library’s Top 10 Open Images

THE WELLCOME LIBRARY - Catherine Draycott, head of Wellcome Images, gives a run down of the Top 10 most downloaded images from the collection of more than 100,000 that the Wellcome Library made available free from restrictions earlier this year. more

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The Wellcome Library’s Top 10 Open Images

Cuttings from a Medieval Italian Choirbook

THE BRITISH LIBRARY - James Freeman explores cuttings from a huge 14th century Italian choirbook and how digital technology is now helping scholars build a picture of the once intact original through virtually reuniting the "diaspora" of fragments. more

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Cuttings from a Medieval Italian Choirbook

The Writings of J.F. Martinet (1729-1795)

KONINKLIJKE BIBLIOTHEEK - Marieke van Delft discusses some works by the prolific writer Johannes Florentius Martinet (1729-1795), digitized in the Early Dutch Books Online (EDBO) Project. more

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The Writings of J.F. Martinet (1729-1795)

Ambassadors, Milkmaids, and Hot Air Balloons

ZENTRALBIBLIOTHEK SOLOTHURN - Patrick Borer picks out some highlights from their collection of 18th-century prints and looks at what they tell us about life in a Swiss city state. more

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Ambassadors, Milkmaids, and Hot Air Balloons

The History of the Ordinary

VILLANOVA UNIVERSITY - Laura Bang and Ruth Martin explore an early 20th-century scrapbook put together by Company 62 of the New York City Fire Department. more

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The History of the Ordinary

Music Manuscripts from the 17th and 18th Centuries in the British Library

THE BRITISH LIBRARY - Sandra Tuppen explores some highlights from their digitised collection of music manuscripts, including those penned by the hand of Haydn, Handel, Purcell, and a very messy Beethoven. more

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Music Manuscripts from the 17th and 18th Centuries in the British Library

The Manuscripts of Emily Dickinson

AMHERST COLLEGE - Mike Kelly explores highlights from their Emily Dickinson collection, a huge variety of manuscript forms - from concert programmes to chocolate wrappers - which give us a fascinating insight into how the poet worked. more

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The Manuscripts of Emily Dickinson

The World According to Pitt

UK NATIONAL ARCHIVES - Jo Pugh explores the newly digitised letters of former British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger and his sister Hester, and how their contents shed an intimate light on one of the most politically influential families in British history. more

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The World According to Pitt

Visual Nation Making and Forgetting

NATIONAL GALLERY OF DENMARK - Henrik Holm looks at the making of the Danish painting canon and its relation to the construction of a national identity. more

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Visual Nation Making and Forgetting

Carel and Abraham Allard in the Court of Momus

RIJKSMUSEUM - Daniel Horst explores the controversial collection of satirical etchings published by Abraham Allard in Amsterdam ca. 1708 under the title 't Lusthof van Momus. more

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Carel and Abraham Allard in the Court of Momus

Canada Through a Lens: the British Library Colonial Copyright Collection

THE BRITISH LIBRARY — Phil Hatfield and Andrew Gray kick off our brand new Curator’s Choice series by taking a look at the fascinating array of photographs in the British Library’s Canadian Colonial Copyright Collection. more

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Canada Through a Lens: the British Library Colonial Copyright Collection

Our Curator’s Choice series came to an end in February 2016. Each month we featured a special guest post from a gallery, library, archive or museum curator reflecting upon a group of works in one of their open digital collections – that is, public domain material which has had no restrictions placed on it as it’s been digitised and made available online.

This series aimed to be a celebratory spotlight on both the institutions making the exciting steps of openly licensing their digital collections and also the curators that work every day with such collections – as well, of course, as being a celebration of the content itself.

The series was undertaken in partnership with OpenGLAM and made possible through funding from the European Union’s DM2E project.

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Contributing Institutions