The two events are not, I suspect, causally related, but today is my mother’s birthday (Yay, Mom!) — a sufficient reason for joy and celebration by itself. Candles and song, if not a parade and marching bands, will no doubt ensue on Nantucket Island today.
Yet while I was browsing around the Web this morning, I noticed that a few days ago, the Nantucket Historical Association has opened a Flickr account and licensed their images under “no known restrictions” licenses. The NHA is relatively small (209 images today) compared with, for instance, the Library of Congress (5,621 images) or the Smithsonian (1,490 images, including a photo of Nantucket summer resident Lillian Gilbreth — see, it’s all intertwingled, which concept connects this digression to Nantucket visitor David Weinberger too) — but its very smallness makes the point that the cultural commons doesn’t exist solely from and for the Massive Institutions, but especially from and for the more modest archives that couldn’t afford the information architecture and infrastructure that would make public access so convenient. Three cheers for my Mom, three cheers for the NHA, and three cheers for a shareable cultural heritage! Hip, hip, hooray!
Thank you! I didn’t see your blog until today. No parade but lots of acknowledgment which was very nice. Hip hip to you too!