Blog Archives
Mathew Brady Civil War Photos Get Organized on Flickr
The National Archives has had Mathew Brady photos on Flickr for quite some time, though only about half the photos have been uploaded. But I was thrilled to read yesterday that NARA has a) organized the photos into over 40 topical sets and b) geotagged most of the images. Yow! I don’t know the count of images in this collection but I would guess thousands…
The Brady photos are available here on Flickr; this page also shows the sets. Unfortunately Brady’s name is put first in the set, so it’s hard to read the sets for descriptions here. Still, on this page you can see sets for Zouaves, Union generals, railroads, prisoners of war, and camp scenes, and several place names (among other things.)
(There is also a clearly-marked set of images of causalities. This set does have images, sometimes graphic, of wounded and dead people. Please be aware.)
I took a look at the Civil War Entrenchments and Defenses set, which has at this writing 111 photographs. A set of thumbnails was on the front page, with some details available on mouseover. All the images I looked at more closely had geotags and some additional information, though most of them did not have comments.
These new sets make it a lot easier to browse these remarkable photographs. One tip: when looking at individual photos be sure to look at available sizes. All the images I looked at had maximum sizes that were very large — 3000 x 2405, for example — and at that size the level of detail is fascinating and at the same time absolutely chilling.
Google Images Gets a Revamp
I don’t do a lot of image searching nowadays unless I’m looking for a logo or I’m trying to win a bet about sloth toes. (Really, really long story.) But I was intrigued when I read that Google had updated its image search and found the results pretty interesting. (I was also interested to note that Google gives an image index count of over 10 billion images. Do you think we’ll get a Web index size estimate any time soon? Nah, me neither.)
Google’s image search as usual exists at http://images.google.com/. The advanced search lives at http://images.google.com/advanced_image_search and I encourage you to try it if you haven’t look at it in a while; search options include image size, aspect ratio, color, and license types. You can even do some searches for specific image types (like faces, clip art, and line drawings.)
When I first started experimenting with the new search interface, I did a search and then restricted the results to one color. Then I ran a bunch of other searches. I started thinking, “Wow, these search results kind of suck,” and didn’t realize until I was ready to take screenshots that my search results were still restricted to one color. So make sure you’re resetting your search options every time you enter a new keyword.
Anyway, as you’ll see in the screen shot the results are more dense and the thumbnails of the images themselves are larger. Hold your mouse over a result to get a slightly larger version and some information about the dimensions and the original site. If you click on an image, you’ll be taken to a new page that has the image on top, with the site beneath it. There’s still a link to be taken directly to the original images. I had always disliked Google Images’ “image page” as clunky, but I hadn’t realized how awful it was until I used this far nicer one. I think the new one loads faster too. Well done Google.
You can now navigate all search results (up to 1000 per query) via scrolling down a page, instead of loading page after page of images. Just keep rolling down a page and you’ll get set after set of images — unless you scroll too fast. Then you’ll get gray boxes, then a set of images. I like this better than having to reload pages of images, but it can get kind of confusing.
If you’ve been using Google at all you’re probably aware of the sidebar in the search results where you can narrow down your search results. The same thing’s on Google Images. Here you can narrow down your search results by image dimension, type, etc. That’s great, and it’s better search options across the top as I’ve seen in the past. But where’s the option to narrow results by usage license, especially since it seems like just about all the other search options from the advanced page are there?
Google has done a lot of work to pack more into its images search results and to make the landing pages for images more useful. The fact that I have to take a couple of extra steps to find licensed images — unless I start my search filtering by license — looks extra annoying against all this effort. But it’s still worth a look.
Wondering What the World Looked Like Before? SepiaTown.
I like maps. I like vintage photographs. So it’s no wonder I like SepiaTown, which combines maps with vintage photographs. You can try it at http://www.sepiatown.com/.
The front page has links to featured areas and a map of New York, but you can also search out interesting places of your own. I did a search for Washington DC and a few other places but I didn’t have any luck until I did a search for Hollywood, zoomed out, and found a few places in Los Angeles.
The old images are placed on a map. Click on them and you’ll get a vintage photo side by side with a map with links over it. The links give you additional detail about the image, any available comments (though I didn’t see any), an opportunity to share the image with a huge host of social networks/bookmarking sites/etc, and, best of all, the ability to compare the image then to the current Google Mapped image now. (Since not all streets are still there some of the map placements are approximate.)
The images I saw came from a variety of places, including public library collections, Flickr Commons, and Wikipedia. All the uploads I saw were from SepiaTown staff, though the site encourages uploads from visitors. There is a site blog available that shows highlights from the collection, as well as a latest uploads page.
How much you get from this site depends on where you’re looking — some places are wonderfully covered but many places have no pictures at all. I hope very much the site gets more contributions from the Web in general. SepiaTown will really be something to see when 70%, say, of searched locations give you a map with pictures.
Online Telecommunications Image Gallery from BT
If you like vintage advertising, do I have a site for you. I read on Web User yesterday about a new online image gallery from BT (which I thought was called British Telecom but it looks like no, it’s BT.) This site has just over 1100 images related to telecommunications and going back to the late 1800s. You can access it here (sorry, messy URL).
Categories include Advertising & Marketing, Communications in War, Famous Events, Phonebooks, etc. Some of the categories have subcategories. (There’s a keyword search as well, but there are few enough images scattered across enough categories that I liked browsing better.) I checked out the Kiosks and Payphones section — 46 pictures of phone kiosks, I am not kidding you. They’re presented in thumbnails with titles; clicking on the thumbnail gives you a larger version and descriptions of the images, including dimensions, date, description, category, etc. You might want to keep a close eye on those dates; one kiosk photo was dated 2026 and unless it was a TARDIS I’m fairly sure it’s from 1926 or therebouts. (Yes, I know the TARDIS was a police box. They look similar.)
The images in this collection are for sale. In addition to the regular-sized image you also have the option to view a larger image, and while there’s a watermark it’s not too bad, so this site is a fun browse even if you don’t want to buy anything. If you DO want to buy something for personal use, the prices are reasonable; low resolution photos are 1/10 of a pound (which is, what, 15 US cents?) High-res pictures are eight pounds (about $11.82). Commercial use is a different scale which is “confirmed at checkout.”
If you had told me that over 1100 photos of the telecommunications industry would be so interesting I don’t think I would have believed you, but there’s plenty of good stuff here. Despite the fact that the site is designed to sell items, there’s enough data available to make browsing fun as well (which is smart because then the site gets covered/linked to by people like me.) If you enjoyed this site back up to the BT Asset Bank; here you’ll find more things like videos, pictures of BT buildings, logos, etc.
New Easy Tool for Bird Photos and Songs
Dang it! I missed the 2010 International Day for Migratory Birds. I had plans to put up my birdhouse with tinsel and little lights too. HALLMARK YOU BETRAYED ME!
Oh well, I can wait until next year, and in the meantime use a recently-announced tool to identify the birds that hang around in the backyard. Dendroica is available at http://www.natureinstruct.org/dendroica. This site does not have the most extensive number of details on each bird, but it’s easy to search and incredibly easy to browse a large number of birds at a time.
When you first visit the site you can choose being a visitor from Canada, the US, or Mexico. once you’ve chosen you’ll get a list of species available (in the US there are 642) and a search box for narrowing them down. Click on a bird in the search box and you’ll see a picture and hear an example of the bird’s song. (Very occasionally there is not a picture available for a bird.) Underneath the picture is a description of the birds’ song and in almost all cases links to hear more versions of the bird’s song and see more pictures. If you can’t think of what bird you want to hear/see there’s also a link to get a random bird from the list.
There’s no data about habitat, or range, or anything like that, but this is an incredibly easy site to browse. If you’re interested in sparrows, search for the word sparrow and you’ll get a list of 33 species through which you can easily browse, comparing pictures and songs. Most other bird sites I’ve used would require a lot of page reloads to go through a list of birds like this. Very nice.
Registration is not required, but if you DO register you’ll have the ability to contribute pictures and songs of your own, as well as take quizzes based on the birds you’re looking at, or create customized lists.
If you need a lot of scientific and habitat data about a particular bird, this site is not for you. But if you want to quickly get a bird song or photograph, or easily browse through lists of birds looking for whatever’s been ransacking your apple tree, this site is terrific! Recommended.
Georgia O’Keeffe Museum Gets Database
The Georgia O’Keeffe Musuem has announced an online database with over 3,000 images of items from its collection as well as archival materials. This includes lots of drawings and paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe herself. You can access the museum at http://contentdm.okeeffemuseum.org/.
You may either browse the collection or search it by keyword. Browsing involves going through different types of collections — Drawings, Paintings, & Sculpture; Photography; Georgia O’Keeffe General Correspondence; Personal Tangible Property; and William Innes Homer Papers.
The Drawings, Paintings, and Sculptures collection alone has over 900 items in it; I just started there. The listing of items includes a thumbnail of the item, a title (or a description if it was untitled), name of the artist (O’Keeffe, naturally) and the date of creation if available. Click on the thumbnail and get a lot more details including dimensions, medium, etc.
Now let me tell you something so you don’t miss out. The detail page has a small image and a large image. It looks like this is it, and you might think, “Wow, that’s irritating. I can’t view more detail than this?” Look in the upper left corner. You’ll see a magnifying glass and a 12.5% notation. You can magnify the large image another eight times or so and use the smaller image to navigate around the details. Also up in that corner there’s a link to add an item to your “Favorites” or to get a citation URL for the item you’re viewing.
Wanting to explore more, I did a keyword search for the collection; naturally I searched for skull. I got 31 results. Some of these were multiple shots of a patio and the side of a house but there were also several drawings here, photographs, and even a few of those “tangible items.” Actual skulls.
Be sure to view a great image of a skull with a broken pot, and a perhaps unintentionally funny photograph of two ladies gingerly holding a critter skull. The search results look very much like the browse results, with thumbnails, creation date, etc.
Once you’ve explored the collections, be sure to go back and check out the museum’s site itself, which contains an O’Keeffe biography, overviews of her art and the houses in which she lived, and of course information on the museum’s hours, collections, research, and everything else you might expect.
I enjoyed browsing these databases. There was enough here that you could do a lot of exploring (and the zooming ability is terrific!) but not so much that you feel overwhelmed or like you can’t find anything familiar. Recommended.
Library Of Congress Overhauls Prints and Photographs Online Catalog
Oh wow, I was SO glad to see this article in the Library of Congress Blog yesterday. The LOC has an incredible archive of prints and photographs (over 1.25 million!), the but nav for them has always been icko. The blog announced a new version of the Prints and Photographs Online Catalog, now available at http://www.loc.gov/pictures/.
This new front page has featured collections on the front as well as a regular list of collections and a search box. I did a search for snowball fight, remembering a sketch from a Civil War drawings collection I’d seen. I didn’t find that (I actually found it doing a search for snowballs), but I did get several pictures of kids having snowball fights and even a comic page from R.F. Outcault. Group records and records that are unfortunately not digitized are clearly marked.
Individual record pages are cleaned up and easier to view. It seems to me like getting larger images is a bit easier. The LOC is also going social media full force, with links for getting RSS feeds and sharing content all over the place.
The LOC has some amazing image collections but I always cringed at visiting the prints and photographs site because it seemed difficult to navigate and search, and the URLs were such that it really was tough to share them. This revamp is excellent, with a good integration of social media. Nice.
