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20-foot dinosaur made from balloons

Cory Doctorow — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 22:38:17 +0000

This 20-foot-tall acrocanthosaurus is made out of twisted-together balloons. It was created over four days by Larry Moss and Kelly Cheatle's company Airgami for the lobby of the Virgina Museum of Natural History.

airigami (headed by larry moss) has completed a 20-foot long acrocanthosaurus--a dinosaur from the early cretaceous period. this is not the first time the team has built one of the mammoth creatures from their signature medium of balloons, but it is the first occasion in which they have produced and displayed one alongside a cast of an actual skeleton of a prehistoric reptile. finished over the course of four days, the massive inflated beast is installed within the virgina museum of natural history (for as long as it will last).
the core team of marsh gallagher, TJ michael, phil cosmos and dee cosmos who realized the larger than life blow-up sculpture were assisted by many helpers including elementary school students and museum staff.

20-foot dinosaur made from balloons by airigami [Designboom]

Bangalore's brain museum

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 08 Apr 2013 22:03:58 +0000

Dr Shankar’s Brain Museum in Bangalore is shelf upon shelf of largely unlabelled brains in jars, along with various other bits of anatomical pickle (human and otherwise). Andy Deemer took a visit and provides some lovely snapshots.

I’m not sure that I’d call Dr Shankar’s Brain Museum a museum. There were no explanations, no details, no citations or learning. Just six hundred brains in an otherwise empty room.
On reflection, perhaps “Collection” would be a better word. A fantastic collection of diseased and healthy brains, sandwiched between a Brain Bank and the Hospital Canteen.
Two dozen purple slides showed something. Ten or so brains were marked by a shared label: Intracerebral Hemorrhage. Another row was marked Glioma. Arterial Stroke. Schwannoma. Schizophrenia.

Dr Shankar’s Wonderful Collection of Brains and Other Medical Obscura

A disc of wooden cow

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 14 Jan 2013 20:15:33 +0000

The Horniman museum in London has this German wood-turned disc from which individual toy cows may be sliced in its Handling Collection. For some reason, I never imagined that this is where wooden animals came from, but it's an awfully clever way to make them.

toy animal (via Neatorama)

Absurd licensing terms imposed on public domain works by libraries and museums

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 19 Nov 2012 19:35:16 +0000

Dee sez, "Keneth Cerws' published studies take copyfight to libraries and museums where restrictive - often absurd - copyright claims and licensing terms are forced on those requesting images of art works and scans of books and documents where the original work long ago entered the public domain, often decades or centuries ago. This raises relevent questions about fair use, academic and research use and how we treat copyright for new images and renderings, often digital images, of old works that many consider vital pieces our common human history, heritage and cultural commons."

Museums face steady demand for images of artworks from their collections, and they typically provide a service of making and delivering high-resolution images of art. The images are often intellectually essential for scholarly study and teaching, and they are sometimes economically valuable for production of the coffee mugs and note cards sold in museum shops and elsewhere. Though the law is unclear regarding copyright protection afforded to such images, many museum policies and licenses encumber the use of art images with contractual terms and license restrictions often aimed at raising revenue or protecting the integrity of the art. This article explores the extent to which museums have strained the limits of copyright claims and indeed have restructured concepts of ownership and control in ways that curtail the availability and use of art images far beyond anything that may be grounded in the law. This article examines the relevant copyright law applicable to the making and use of reproductions of art images, and it identifies the challenging pressures that museums face as they strive to make policies in the context of law but that also serve the multiple competing interests coming to bear on officials and decision makers inside museums. The article analyzes selected policies from major museums and provides an original construct of forms of “overreaching” that often appear in written standards offered by museums for the use of images. The analysis of policies also demonstrates that museums have choices in the shaping of institutional policies, and that breaking away from familiar policy terms can sometimes better serve institutional and public interests.

Save the Canadian National Archives

Cory Doctorow — Sun, 23 Sep 2012 06:47:33 +0000

Readers will remember that Canada's national archives are in trouble: they've undergone a $9.6M cut, with more to come. The collections are being sold off to private collectors, many outside of the country. Now the Documentary Organization of Canada has weighed in: "Lisa Fitzgibbons, Executive Director of the Documentary Organization of Canada (DOC), succinctly states a case for continuance of sustainable funding of Library and Archives Canada."

Library and Archives Canada advocacy message from DOC

Raising money to build a Tesla museum

Cory Doctorow — Fri, 17 Aug 2012 01:19:58 +0000

The Oatmeal's Matthew Inman -- who raised a small fortune for charity from readers who were offended by a groundless legal threat penned by Charles Carreon at the behest of the website Funnyjunk -- has kicked off a new fundraiser. This time, he's asking his fans to donate money towards buying the site of Nicola Tesla's lab and building a national Tesla museum on it. The charity is the beneficiary of the fundraiser needs $850,000 to buy the site, and millions more for the museum (though this might come from corporate grants -- Inman suggests that Westinghouse and GE would be good sponsors, since the former was founded by the man who was Tesla's original patron and the latter was founded by his archnemesis).

Help me raise money to buy Nikola Tesla's old laboratory - The Oatmeal (Thanks to everyone who suggested this!)

Smithsonian building archive of printable 3D scans

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 00:03:45 +0000

The Smithsonian, the world's largest museum, is planning on producing 3D scans of its collection and making them freely available to the public to print out at home on their 3D printers (or incorporate into their virtual worlds). CNet's Daniel Terdiman has the story:

Update: Sarah Taylor Sulick from the Smithsonian sez, "Unfortunately we have no plans to make 3D scans of our collection freely available for the public to print. The CNET story is a bit misleading on that point. Our 3-D team mentioned that we COULD go there theoretically, but as of right now it is not part of our plan. The reality is also that we have 137M objects in our collection and only 2 people working on this project. So we are no where near being able to scan everything and essentially never will be."

Now, with that high-end scanner, as well as less expensive tools that include normal digital cameras and freely available cloud-based digitization software, Metallo and his fellow 3D digitization coordinator Vince Rossi are slowly setting out to begin building a new Smithsonian digital archive. They hope this initiative will eventually lead to scores of 3D printed exhibits, as well as countless 3D models that could theoretically be used in the museums, in schools, or just about anywhere people have an interest in the Smithsonian's vast physical holdings...
Metallo and Rossi's goal is clear: they want to build a large collection of 3D scanned objects and archaeological sites that can support the entire Smithsonian complex. They've got technology on their side--with minimally invasive laser scanners they can capture the geometry of just about any object or site with accuracy down to the micron level.
But their resources are few, and the two told CNET that they have to be smart about the projects they choose to digitize. They have to know that their work is going to tell a story in a new way or give researchers new tools in order to justify spending the time it takes to do the work.

Smithsonian turns to 3D to bring collection to the world (via /.)

(Image: Red Eye on Demand/Smithsonian)

High-rez scan of Einstein's brain slide from Philadelphia's Mütter Museum

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Nov 2011 17:55:06 +0000

Last week, I toured Philadelphia's Mütter Museum -- the Philadelphia College of Surgeons' astounding collection of pathological oddities -- and was treated to a sneak peak at the museum's latest acquisition: 46 microscope slides from Albert Einstein's brain. They were donated by Dr. Lucy Rorke-Adams, one of the College's trustees. Mütter curator Anna Dhody was kind enough to scan one of the slides at high resolution for us, and you can click through the image above to get it at full rez. The slides are now part of the Mütter's permanent collection, and are just another reason to visit this remarkable collection.

The slides were prepared in 1955 in the pathology lab of Dr. William Ehrich, Chief of Pathology at the Philadelphia General Hospital and the Graduate School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania. Five sets of slides were prepared in the lab, one set was given to Dr. Ehrich by Thomas Harvey, MD, the physician who performed the post-mortem exam on Einstein at Princeton Hospital.
After Dr. Ehrich died in 1967, his widow gave them to Allen Steinberg, MD. Dr. Steinberg gave them to Lucy Rorke-Adams, MD, Senior Neuropathologist, The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia and Clinical Professor of Pathology, Neurology and Pediatrics at the University of Pennsylvania, and a longtime Fellow of The College of Physicians of Philadelphia.

Mütter Museum

Rare Alan Turing papers bought by Bletchley Park Trust

Cory Doctorow — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 19:55:51 +0000

A collection of Max Newman's hand-annotated offprints from sixteen of Alan Turing's eighteen books have been purchased by the Bletchley Park Trust with help from the National Heritage Memorial Fund and a USD100,000 donation from Google. The papers were up for auction, and had they not been bought by the Trust, they likely would have gone to a private collection. They will now be available to the public at the wonderful Bletchley Park museum.

The collection of articles belonged to Professor Max Newman, Turing's friend and fellow Bletchley Park codebreaking genius. It includes offprints of sixteen of Turing's eighteen published works including his momentous paper 'On Computable Numbers' A limited number of the offprints would have been produced at the time and Turing's gifting them to Newman bears testimony to their unique relationship. The set includes articles which have been annotated by Newman, along with Max Newman's name inscribed in pencil in Turing's hand. Accompanying the set of offprints is the Newman household visitors' book with several signatures of Turing, that of Turing's mother and, of special significance to Bletchley Park, signatures of other wartime codebreaking giants.
The Turing-Newman Collaboration Collection is particularly rare, important and valuable as very few physical traces of Turing's work or personal belongings still exist. Most of the wartime records at Bletchley Park were destroyed after the war, while Turing himself kept little of his work and very few personal belongings...
Turing's close relationship with Newman was crucial to the historic contribution Turing made, starting with Newman's encouragement to investigate 'mechanical processes' and his help in securing Turing a fellowship at Princeton to continue his research. In 1952 at a time when homosexuality was illegal in the UK, Turing was convicted of having a sexual relationship with another man. Turing was sentenced to a hormone treatment that amounted to chemical castration. The conviction robbed him of his security clearance for GCHQ, for which he still worked, and made him the target for surveillance at the start of the cold war. Having made one of the most outstanding contributions of the twentieth century, he died after eating an apple laced with cyanide.

ELEVENTH HOUR RESCUE OF TURING COLLECTION (Thanks, Martin!)

Archive.org and 150 libraries create 80,000 lendable ebook library

Cory Doctorow — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 05:07:25 +0000

Rick Prelinger sez, "Internet Archive (disclosure: I'm a board member) has joined with 150 US and Canada libraries to develop a cooperative collection of (mostly 20th-century) eBooks that library patrons can "borrow" on a laptop, an e-reader or a library computer while visiting a participating branch. This "digital lending" dramatically expands the collections of each library, and updates the traditional library model to embrace digital titles. Many rare and one-of-a-kind titles (e.g., genealogy, family history) are included."

The reasons for joining the initiative vary from library to library. Judy Russell, Dean of University Libraries at the University of Florida, said, "We have hundreds of books that are too brittle to circulate. This digitize-and-lend system allows us to provide access to these older books without endangering the physical copy."
Digital lending also offers wider access to one-of-a-kind or rare books on specific topics such as family histories - popular with genealogists. This pooled collection will enable libraries like the Boston Public Library and the Allen County Public Library in Indiana to share their materials with genealogists around the state, the country and the world.
"Genealogists are some of our most enthusiastic users, and the Boston Public Library holds some genealogy books that exist nowhere else," said Amy E. Ryan, President of the Boston Public Library. "This lending system allows our users to search for names in these books for the first time, and allows us to efficiently lend some of these books to visitors at distant libraries."
"Reciprocal sharing of genealogy resources is crucial to family history research. The Allen County Public Library owns the largest public genealogy collection in the country, and we want to make our resources available to as many people as possible. Our partnership in this initiative offers us a chance to reach a wider audience," said Jeffrey Krull, director of the Allen County Public Library.

Internet Archive and Library Partners Develop Joint Collection of 80,000+ eBooks To Extend Traditional In-Library Lending Model (Thanks, footage, via Submitterator!)

Miami Erotic Museum uses fraudulent DMCA notice to censor Flickr

Cory Doctorow — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 21:35:08 +0000

Thomas Hawk sez, "I was disappointed to have hundreds of my photos pulled down last week off of Flickr due to a fraudulently filed DMCA takedown notice by the World Erotic Art Museum in Miami. The museum submitted a sworn statement claiming copyright over 100% of the items in their collection, including items out of copyright, clearly transformative abstracts, and even works by unknown artists. While a museum might object to our posting images of their collection, abusing the DMCA is not the answer."

Miami's World Erotic Art Museum Fraudulently Uses the DMCA to Take Down Items in Their Collection From the Web (Thanks, Thomas!)

EFF's annual DMCA whitepaper gets a refresh - Boing Boing