[Edens Library Home] Reference Sites
Digital Images and Collections

Alabama Mosaic "Initiated by a grant from IMLS, Alabama Mosaic, the Web interface for the Cornerstone Project, features content from libraries, archives and museums from across Alabama. The project’s aim is to make historical collections openly accessible to researchers through a public Web site. The site allows for browsing by collection name and permits searching across all collections by keyword. Collections may also be searched individually at their native site. Alabama Mosaic provides access to thousands of images. The Alabama Photographs and Picture Collection at the Alabama Department of Archives and History holds close to 5,000 images alone."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
Library of Congress American History and Culture Collections "Officially launched online in 1994, the Library of Congress digital collections provide access to millions of digitized photographs, manuscripts, maps, sound recordings, motion pictures, and books, as well as born digital primary materials such as Web sites. The American History and Culture Collections, also known as the American Memory Historical Collections, began as a pilot project in 1990 to provide middle school as well as high school teachers and students with digital surrogates of collection material on CD-ROM. Over the years, the collection has become a “National Digital Library” with diverse institutions from all across the United States contributing content. Rich in imagery, the collection may be searched or browsed by way of alphabetized subject lists, time periods, and geographical locations. American Memory Historical Collections features more than 100 thematic subjects ranging from advertising to maps to women’s rights."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
Library of Congress International Collections "The International Collections, accessible through the Library of Congress’ Global Gateway provide access to content from American Memory Historical Collections as well as international visual resource collections, such as the Abdul Hamid II collection of photographs of the Ottoman Empire and the Prokudin-Gorskii collection of photographs of the Russian Empire. Additionally, Library of Congress partnered with national libraries in other countries to create the Collaborative Digital Libraries, also available through the Global Gateway. These image-plentiful collections highlight the history of the United States in relation to other nations, such as “France in America” and “The Meeting of Frontiers: Siberia, Alaska and the American West."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
University of Washington Digital Collections "Comprised of digital content from the University of Washington Libraries, faculty, and departments as well as holdings from other partner institutions in the State of Washington, the University of Washington Digital Collections provide access to tens of thousands of digital images covering a wide variety of subjects. With an emphasis on the Pacific Northwest, the digital collections include image-heavy resources, such as the J. Willis Sayre Photographs of actors, vaudeville performers, and movie stills; the Washington Women’s History Consortium Fashion Plate Collection; the Dearborn-Massar Photographs of Architecture; and the Seattle Photographs Collection."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
Duke Digital Collections "Founded in 1995, the Duke University Libraries’ Digital Collections have amassed impressive digital image holdings from various collections. Subjects cover an array of national and international subjects. While the database allows for federated keyword searching across the featured collections, other collections must be browsed by subject or through the alphabetized list of collection names. Featured collections are freely available on the Internet and include the Emergence of Advertising in America, Ration Coupons on the Home Front (1942–1945), and the 50,000 item William Gedney Photographs and Writings collection."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Online Catalog "A pathfinder to more than 1 million digital images, the online catalog of the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division is one of the largest digital image databases in the world. Freely accessible online, researchers may search for images representing a vast selection of subjects and primary media by keyword, by browsing lists of alphabetized subjects, or by choosing a collection and looking through individual image records."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
New York Public Library Digital Gallery "Launched in 2005, the NYPL Digital Gallery is one of the largest open-access image databases available on the Internet. Featuring more than 600,000 digital images, content covers a variety of subjects from the arts to science and technology and includes all kinds of primary materials, such as manuscripts, maps, photographs, prints, restaurant menus, sheet music covers, and much more from the special collections of the NYPL Research Libraries and the Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection. The Digital Gallery offers basic and advanced searches and also allows users to browse alphabetized lists of names, subjects, and libraries. As an added enhancement, users may select and store around 50 or more images for later viewing using the “selections” option."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08
The Library of Congress Photostream on Flickr "In 2007, the Library of Congress’ Prints and Photographs Division contributed more than 3,000 images to Flickr, the photo-sharing social-networking Web site. The Library of Congress thus became the flagship partner for the site’s project known as The Commons, which aims to increase exposure to public image collections housed at civic institutions around the world and to facilitate knowledge about the collections. Visitors to the site are free to apply social tags to the images and comment on them. As of January 2008, about 70 of the Library of Congress’ images had been identified by Flickr users. Other collections will be joining The Commons project."
- Anne Blecksmith C&RL News, 5/08



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Page last modified by Sarah Hood
Date: 5/26/08
[Columbia College]
[Edens Library, Columbia South Carolina]