Photographic Collections: Definitions, Descriptions, Access

Thank goodness for social networking sites.  Today I found a link to Ryerson University's Ryerson Image Center and their hosting of a Toronto Photographic Convention about photographic collections.  The title:  Photographic Collections: Definitions, Descriptions, Access.  Wow.  Here's the link to it's description:

http://ryersongallery.ca/events-archive-2/

To top this off, the Image Center is providing video of each of the 3 days events.  Here's day two's link:

https://ryecast.ryerson.ca/48/watch/1658.aspx

And yes I tried to download a copy of the 8 hour video but it's protected.  Speakers include photoconservators Paul Messier and Anne Cartier-Bresson.  Wow again.

I can't wait to sit back and watch it.  The highlight--at least in my eyes--discussions on a vocabulary that would precisely describe photographic objects.  I'll keep you posted.

A video capture of Paul Messier and his discussion "Black & White".

Paul Messier for instance discusses the moment of his realization that he didn't have the criteria or knowledge to tell if a silver gelatin photograph was made before or after 1940 and the resulting obsessive collecting of B&W papers and their classification, vocabulary and descriptions that make their sorting meaningful.

HDR and the 2012 Rose Parade

I'm late to the scene with high dynamic range photography but here is my entry for yesterday's Rose Parade:

With thanks to Mauricio for the view from the Colorado Street business showroom!

The Old Neighborhood Branch

The NY Times yesterday had a very interesting article on the breadth of the Queens Library's offerings to its patrons.  Queens being one big gigantic melting pot, the 62 branches found that they needed to expand their books, DVD's and CD's to include the languages being spoken and used in their branches.  So now the languages available total 59!  The article states that that is double what was offered a decade ago.  Here is a link to the article: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/03/nyregion/queens-libraries-serve-59-languages.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=queens%20public%20library&st=cse.

I also visited the Queens Library website to look up the branch I used as a kid.  It was the Broadway branch of the Queensborough Public Library on Steinway and Broadway in Astoria, Queens.  Here's pics of the outside and children's room:

Except for the sign, looks exactly the same.

Children's room has different tables.

And here is the nifty new check out desk:

Customer Service!

Look at the sign, it says "Customer Service"!  It was never as cool as this when I was a kid.  But the website says that this particular branch has 17 International language collections.  Wow!  Here they are: 

Arabic

Bengali

Chinese

Croatian

French

Greek

Gujarati

Hindi

Italian

Korean

Portuguese

Punjabi

Russian

Serbian

Spanish

Tagalog

Urdu

Maybe Italian and Greek were around when I was a kid.  I'm so glad that the old neighborhood library is keeping up with the times.