The Library of Congress began last year first collaboration with Flickr and now has launched its pilot project called The Commons. Yesterday they announced a partnership that will put photos from the LoC’s collection online in a social environment and users to interact with them. LoC started organizing historical photograph collections through Flickr offering 3000 photos (so far): two sets of digitized photos from the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information and photos from the George Grantham Bain News Service. “The key goals of this pilot project are to firstly give you a taste of the hidden treasures in the huge Library of Congress collection, and secondly to how your input of a tag or two can make the collection even richer.” By tagging or commenting.  From official web site Library of Congress you can find more information about this project, as well as on the blog of LoC.

Also interesting additional information on new tagging initiative – The Commons  says that these photographs from the Library “represent materials for which the Library is not the intellectual property owner. Flickr is working with the Library of Congress to provide an appropriate statement for these materials. It’s called “no known copyright restrictions.”

I’ve been tagged twice by Bora for different memes, and I admit I’ve been lazy blogger lately, as I’ve been overwhelmed (and still I am) with other tasks in digital and analogue world. In between of creating the wonderful SNS (social networking system), drawing and making scraps of drafts and frameworks of clusters and nodes with some of the specifications, now (better late than never) I’m writing on cool animal meme , though as being child grown in the city, I’ll try to recall some moments and facts.

An interesting animal I had

When I was a baby kid (just started to walk), we had German Shepperd dog. He was very old and by surprise of all in the family -he had never ever bitten me. I used to, as every curious baby, approach to play with him and everyone kept me away from this cute and tamed dog. I remember one afternoon, I brought some food, he was so good dog, used to eat food from my hand. My aunt, who took care of me, was so upset seeing this, but the dog was cool as I was, didn’t understand why she was so upset. Not long after that he died (not because of the food I gave to him), he was old dog, and he is still in my memory as tame animal despite of his general characteristics. He was my best friend then, and was always happy to be around him. We didn’t have any animal after him for long time, later I had fish(es), cats and other dogs.

An interesting animal I ate

I have really bad feeling about the thought to eat an animal. Beside all possible seafood I ate (from the rive, sea and the ocean, from squids to octopus) – I won’t name them here, maybe an interesting animal I ate is young deer meat and I didn’t know that as people tricked me and told me it was chicken fillet. Of course, the taste is different and when I told them so, they were laughing telling me what was the (wild) animal. I immediately stopped to eat as I always had association for Walt Disney’s cartoon with young Bambi.

An interesting animal in the Museum

In National Museum in Prague, I saw the oldest Mamut (Mammoth) in Europe. In the Zoo (if we can call it animal live museum) I saw unique mother and baby panda, Su Lin and her mom Bai Yun. It was in San Diego zoo.

An interesting thing I did with or to an animal

Ok: I stepped on the European Scorpio last summer. On purpose. It sneaked into the house, I panicked and I dared to approach and took photo. Later, my sister biologist told me it’s harmless and neighbours told me it’s harmless and that they had one too? Huh. So: I killed scorpio. I felt bad afterwards as I never did anything similar to the spider or any other animal. I guess I am paying now my (animal karma.

An interesting animal in its natural habitat

I adore birds in parks, at the ocean, sea, anywhere.  Seagulls, I love to enjoy and record the sound they are making, flock of seagulls make very interesting sound. When I used to live in United States, every morning in front of my door, and everywhere, I was surrounded by lot of squirrels. Several times deer bumped right into the highway while driving. I saw deer and foxes, in urban nature. It’s not that usual for this part of Europe. Recently, I found the cool fossil of animal at the beach of the Northern sea. I am still trying to figure out the possible name of this animal/fish eaten by the seagulls? Any possible answer is welcomed.

Now I am tagging others for cool animal meme: Don, Robyn , Yan and Peggy.

Seems that tagging and writing memes are popular these days, so I’ve been tagged by Robyn, to write 4 memes on Belgrade, my favourite corners or places, which idea came first from Robert from Middle Zone Musings. This is hard as each corner of the city has its own charm, and those are referred at some extent to me(me).

1. Dorcol, upper side, downtown of Belgrade, near Kalemegdan , near my former Universities, Plato and down to Faculty of Maths, old beautiful streets with it’s own story, all down coming to real Dorcol, its churches and

2. Markets, open lively markets with food and other goods. Someone said that you have to go first to the open market when you visit some city in order to know better the soul of the city and its habitants, people who live there. One of my favourite is Bajloni market, also downtown, market with its own culture. Next to Bajloni is – Bitef Theatre building.

3. Beside cozy small warm caffees and indoor lovely places, one of nice outdoor place to be and enjoy the view is the biggest and the greatest Serbian orthodox temple on Balkans – Saint Sava temple/church. Different view, architecture masterpiece.

4. Plazma keks (special unique kind of bisquit) that every child and adult love. It’s Serbian brand, and wherever I go abroad – I take Plazma keks with me. You can eat it per se, with pancakes and melted chocolate, mix with bananas or make delicious cake from this beurre.

Now I tag 4 people as I would like to know more about their hometowns, 4 memes on their choice, favourite corners, places:

1. Raphaël – Paris

2. Marc – Florida

3. Mirko- Fribourg

4. Alex – San Francisco

Others, who would like to join this ’4-my home town fact meme’ are welcome to be tagged by me.

via

Issue 12, closing in 33 days. Three themes:  Creative licence (photography as design), Family (Who are the people close to you?),  and Fashion (telling stories with photos and clothing). I’ve been busy to submit more, but you feel free to register and to participate.

World Environment Day, commemorated each year on 5 June, is one of the principal vehicles through which the United Nations stimulates worldwide awareness of the environment and enhances political attention and action. This year’s theme ,”Melting Ice – a Hot Topic?”, focuses on the threat posed by climate change. In this article you can find out how UNHCR promotes World Environment Day, this is how Norway ‘celebrates’ 5th of June, and this is detail, an hour ago in downtown of Belgrade, five minutes before the heavy showers started (day 2).

…was the name of the 2007 OSCE photo contest. As I earlier talked about this competition, the results you may see on the offical web site, 21 winner photographs with interesting backgrounds, scenes, locations, stories.  My picks:

Power plant “Kosova A” near Pristina, 4 March 2006. The plant produces much need electricity but also considered to be one of the main polluters of land and water in central Kosovo. The photo was one of the winners of the 2007 OSCE Photo Contest. (Photo by Driton Pacarada)

From a series about the Aral Sea which won the first prize in the 2007 OSCE Photo Contest. The photos were made in the villages of Karateren and Zhalanash, and the regional centre Aralsk, in Kazakhstan, in April 2005. (Photo by Shamil Zhumatov)

From a series about floods in Hungary. The series was one of the winners of the 2007 OSCE Photo Contest. (Photo by Bela Szandelszky)