Free from the New York Public Library: Digital Archive of 180,000 Files
Posted on January 10, 2016 at 3:28 pm
Copyright 2016 NYPL
The New York Public Library is one of the world’s great repositories and now 180,000 items in its collections are available to anyone with online access.
That means everyone has the freedom to enjoy and reuse these materials in almost limitless ways. The Library now makes it possible to download such items in the highest resolution available directly from the Digital Collections website.
No permission required. No restrictions on use.
To provide further inspiration for reuse, the NYPL Labs team has also released several demonstration projects delving into specific collections, as well as a visual browsing tool allowing users to explore the public domain collections at scale. These projects, which suggest just a few of the myriad investigations made possible by fully opening these collections, include:
a “mansion builder” game, exploring floor plans of grand turn-of-the-century New York apartments;
a then-and-now comparison of New York’s Fifth Avenue, juxtaposing 1911 wide angle photographs with Google Street View; and
a “trip planner” using locations extracted from mid-20th century motor guides that listed hotels, restaurants, bars, and other destinations where Black travelers would be welcome.
The public domain release spans the breadth and depth of NYPL’s holdings, from the Library’s rich New York City collection, historic maps, botanical illustrations, unique manuscripts, photographs, ancient religious texts, and more. Materials include:
Berenice Abbott’s iconic documentation of 1930s New York for the Federal Art Project
Farm Security Administration photographs by Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, and others
Manuscripts of American literary masters like Walt Whitman, Henry David Thoreau, and Nathaniel Hawthorne
Papers and correspondence of founding American political figures like Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, and James Madison
Sheet music for popular American songs at the turn of the 20th century
WPA-era lithographs, etchings, and pastels by African American artists
Lewis Hine’s photographs of Ellis Island immigrants and social conditions in early 20th century America
Anna Atkins’ cyanotypes of British algae, the first recorded photographic work by a woman (1843)
Handscrolls of the Tale of Genji, created in 1554
Medieval and Renaissance illuminated manuscripts from Western Europe
Over 20,000 maps and atlases documenting New York City, North America, and the world
More than 40,000 stereoscopic views documenting all regions of the United States
PBS Special “Web Junkie” on the Impact of Screen Time on Children
Posted on January 10, 2016 at 2:02 pm
The New York Times reports that “Web Junkie,” a special to be shown January 11, 2016 on PBS, has some disturbing data for parents about the impact of screen time on children.
Excessive use of computer games among young people in China appears to be taking an alarming turn and may have particular relevance for American parents whose children spend many hours a day focused on electronic screens. The documentary “Web Junkie,” to be shown next Monday on PBS, highlights the tragic effects on teenagers who become hooked on video games, playing for dozens of hours at a time often without breaks to eat, sleep or even use the bathroom. Many come to view the real world as fake.
Chinese doctors consider this phenomenon a clinical disorder and have established rehabilitation centers where afflicted youngsters are confined for months of sometimes draconian therapy, completely isolated from all media, the effectiveness of which remains to be demonstrated.
There is an amazing statistic that there has been a 40 percent decline in all the ways we know how to measure empathy among college students in the past 20 years and most of it in the past 10 years. That’s just an alarming number. And another fascinating experiment is that if you leave college students alone and just ask them to sit without a device and without a book for six minutes they will administer electric shocks to themselves rather than just sit quietly with their own thoughts. So there are two parallel developments: incapacity to emphasize and a lack of capacity for solitude.
I think these things go together because both of them are what you would expect if from the very youngest stages we give people a screen to go to at the moment they feel the tiniest boredom. And that’s what’s happening. There are screens for baby bouncers. There are screens on potty trainers. There are robots that will read to your child instead of you sitting and talking to your child. So when I first got into this project I was asked to consult by a middle school. It was just a regular middle school and their teachers were saying that the students were not behaving for example the way 12-year olds should behave on the playground. They were behaving more like seven and eight year olds. That is to say they were being cruel to each other and excluding each other and didn’t seem to be able to put themselves in the place of other children. They couldn’t seem to be able to imagine what other children felt like which of course is the signal accomplishment of empathy.
Which of Todd’s films do you think she was the proudest of?
I think it has to be ‘You Made Me Love You,’ which Thelma made in England with Stanley Lupino. She loved her time making the movie and often commented afterwards that it was a film she was very proud of. In fact, just days before she died, Thelma spoke to an English reporter and said she was desperate to return to England to make another movie. On her last night alive, she spoke to Lupino and the two made big plans to work together again.
Do you know if she preferred drama to comedy?
I am pretty sure she felt conflicted. In one sense she was hugely popular with comedy roles, but in another she desperately wanted to break into serious drama. Her role in ‘Corsair’ was supposed to be her big break but it was a disappointment in many ways, and critics made it clear that she was better suited to comedy. What really irritated Thelma was that she became stuck in short comedy movies for Hal Roach, and wanted very much to have larger roles. I don’t think she minded comedy half as much as she minded being pigeon-holed into these small parts.
Which is your favorite, and why?
I have two favorites. One is ‘Speak Easily’ with Buster Keaton and the other is ‘You Made Me Love You.’ ‘Speak Easily’ is hilarious and Thelma really shows off her comedy talents. Her part is substantial which is pretty rare for her, and there was a good chemistry with Keaton. I really enjoyed ‘You Made Me Love You’ for several reasons. Firstly it is a very funny film and secondly I love that it was made in England (where I live) and you get to see a lot of the English countryside in the movie. When I first watched the film, I could only do so online and the version I found was in a dozen parts in no particular order! It was really hard work to watch and discover what order the parts went in. However, it has just been released on DVD in the UK, and my husband bought it for me this Christmas. It was fantastic to watch it in one big chunk, instead of a dozen small ones!
What resources did you use in your research that had not previously been examined? Where did you find your most surprising information?
I was very lucky to have access to the Coroner’s Inquest, which is well over 100 pages long, and then literally thousands of pages of press reports, interviews, stories etc, from the 1920s and beyond. When I discovered Thelma had visited England, I was determined to find out a lot about the trip, so I started researching newspaper articles that were printed in the UK at the time. I found out that she had visited Scotland, and a lovely lady at the Glasgow library was able to send me some really substantial interviews that Thelma had done on her arrival. To my knowledge, these had never been used by a biographer before, and were of great interest in a general sense because she described her plans for the trip, her hopes and dreams etc. However, the most surprising information was when Thelma suddenly started talking about encounters she had had with gangsters in the USA. In fact she told reporters that one mobster had sent his men to see her safely on the boat to England. This was a brilliant find for me, because up until that point there had been no mention of Thelma ever talking about gangsters during her life. Of course underworld characters have been tied to her story for many years, so it was amazing and exciting to read Thelma’s view of them, over two years before her death. These interviews were gold to me, and I’m so grateful to the librarian who sent them to me.
Todd’s insistence that she was not “discovered” through a beauty contest and that she did not need to go beyond what the character was experiencing to call up tears show that she took acting seriously. Who do you think gave her the most significant guidance about acting?
Thelma went to the Paramount School, which was designed to train would-be screen actors and actresses. However, I don’t think she really got much acting experience out of it, and she also expressed that herself. Ironically, while she grew frustrated with her Roach comedy shorts, I do actually believe that it was Hal Roach who gave Thelma the most significant guidance. She made dozens and dozens of short movies and each one gave her a great deal of experience and confidence. Before she became a Roach player, Thelma was the first to admit how inexperienced she felt, but towards the end of her life you can really see her shine in those movies. Her confidence is everywhere apparent.
If you could interview Todd, what would you want to ask her?
That’s a great question! During the writing of the book, I’d have asked what the real story was behind her death. Now that the book is finished, I’d really like to ask if I did a good job with her story. If she approved of my work, then I’d be a very happy lady.
You lay out the possible scenarios to explain her death, from accident to suicide to murder. Which do you think is the most likely?
For me, I think the murder scenario is definitely the most likely. The idea of an accidental death is just not something I buy into. Why would Thelma walk 271 steps up a windy cliff-side, wearing an evening dress and high-heels in the middle of the night, to get to a garage because she was locked out of her apartment? The last time she was locked out she actually smashed the window to wake up her partner, Roland West. He said that no-one could keep Thelma out of a place she wanted to enter, so why was she kept out that night? Roland West’s window was incredibly close to the door she was supposedly locked out of. How could he not have heard her pounding on the door or window (especially since we know he had a dog in the room)? There are so many questions about that scenario. I explore it all in the book, but basically I find the entire accident story suspect at best. Others would disagree of course, but that is my own, personal opinion.
You seem to like writing biographies of beautiful blondes who have experienced great loss. What do we learn from their stories?
It has never been a conscious decision to write about blondes, but somehow I always seem to! My next book is about Carole Lombard who of course is another blonde with a tragic end. I think we all learn something different from their stories, and what I take away from it is probably in contrast to what others may take from it. For me, the most important thing as a biographer, is to show my subjects as human beings. Thelma was not just “the body in the garage;” Carole was not just “the one who died in a plane crash,” and Marilyn was not just “the blonde who might have committed suicide.” They were all made of flesh and bones like we all are. They had their good times and bad; their accomplishments and their regrets. If we all realize that these ladies were real-life people, not just images on the screen, then I know I have done my job.
This year’s upcoming release from DisneyNature showcases the spectacular wildlife and natural beauty of China, including rare footage of endangered snow leopards.
. When I spoke to her last fall, 
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