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2005One Million Pictures Say One Million Words
2 Comments | Posted by Dave in Digital Collections, News, Public Service, Technology
The Library of Congress Prints & Photographs Division announced a new landmark (or is it a benchmark?): one million images from its collections are now available in digital form, online.
The millioneth image is, Barry will be happy to note, baseball related. The photograph depicts Washington Senators baseball player Herman A. “Germany” Schaefer using a camera during a visit to play the New York Highlanders in April 1911.
This photo comes from the collection of the first syndicated photo news service in the U.S., George Grantham Bain Collection.
Has anyone used any of these massive photo archives for reference or research (Ginger, Toby, Barry)? It strikes me that the sheer amount of visual material is daunting in projects like this. How do we maintain a knowledge of what types of information are available in what places?
2 Comments for One Million Pictures Say One Million Words
Author comment by Barry | November 29, 2005 at 10:58 am
Author comment by Dave | November 29, 2005 at 11:08 am
Barry et al.,
Our own photograph archive is about 1/5 digitized, and that 1/5 is the entire collection of photographs of buildings and grounds. This site, specific to our campus and community, has been used every single quarter for classes in Chicago or area history, urban renewal, or art history (it will be linked to by a course webpage in the winter, too). We also direct alumni and off-site researchers all the time. So, in brief, the digital photos are well worth the trouble.
But I think the site gets its function from the limited scope of its offerings. I’m not sure we would have the same usage patterns if it included, say, photos of the Mississippi River or images of the Civil War mixed in. But, maybe it would – who knows for sure.
Is it better for users to have specific sites and databases for subject areas, or to lump them all together?
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Dave, I love this site. To offer personal testimony, I found one of my all-time favorite photos by Walker Evans through this site, printed it, framed it, and it is now on the wall above my desk. I did this, more or less, for the price of the frame.
Bells and whistles aside, when I worked at CollegeAmerica I introduced this incredible photo archive several history students, as well as one through the Colorado Historical Society. The students always appeared impressed with the collections, but never got past the “gee whiz” factor to use them for their research or presentations (that I know of).
Perhaps some of you have had or will have better luck. As daunting as the size of the collection appears, the archive is fairly easy to search, and even if the results are whittled down to a few dozen at best, is that any less efficient than flipping through physical photo archives?