Summary of Readings

In order to make the readings I did for my internship easier to locate, I moved them to the beginning of my blog and created this post linking to each of them.

Reading 1
Wilhelm, H. (1993). Chapter 16: Storage Environment: Relative Humidity, Temperature, Air Pollution, Dust, and Fungus. The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures. Grinnell, Iowa: Preservation Publishing Company. (pp. 539-574)
ISBN: 0-911515-00-3

Reading 2
Wilhelm, H. (1993). Chapter 18: Handling and Preservation of Color Slide Collections: Selection of Films, Slide Mounts, Slide Pages, and Individual Slide Sleeves. The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures. Grinnell, Iowa: Preservation Publishing Company. (pp.625-654)
ISBN: 0-911515-00-3

Reading 3
Wilhelm, H. (1993). Chapter 7: Monitoring the Long-Term Fading and Staining of Color Photographs in Museum and Archive Collections. The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures. Grinnell, Iowa: Preservation Publishing Company. (pp. 239-266)
ISBN: 0-911515-00-3

Reading 4
Reilly, J. M. (1986). "Chapter IV: Identification of 19th-Century Photographic and Photomechanical Print Processes." Care and Identification of 19th-Century Photographic Prints. Eastman Kodak Company. (pp. 48-72)
ISBN: 0-87985-365-4

Reading 5
Reilly, J. M. (1986). "Chapter I: The History of Photographic Printing in the 19th Century." Care and Identification of 19th-Century Photographic Prints. Eastman Kodak Company. (pp. 1-13)
ISBN: 0-87985-365-4

Reading 6
Ritzenthaler, M. L.; G. J. Munoff; & M. S. Long. (1984). "3. Appraisal and Collecting Policies." Archives & Manuscripts: Administration of Photographic Collections. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists. (pp. 55-70).
ISBN: 0-931828-61-9

Reading 7
Ritzenthaler, M. L.; G. J. Munoff; & M. S. Long. (1984). "2. History of Photographic Processes." Archives & Manuscripts: Administration of Photographic Collections. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists. (pp. 27-54).
ISBN: 0-931828-61-9

Reading 8
Shatford, Sara (1986). Analyzing the Subject of a Picture: A Theoretical Approach. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 6(3). (pp. 39-62).

Reading 9
Foster, Anne L. (2006). Minimum Standards Processing and Photograph Collections. Archival Issues, 30(2). (107-118).

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

Today was the last day of my internship.

I spent most of it working on a fun project--someone from England emailed us to offer more information about some images shot by Cushman in London in the 1960s, and I worked on verifying the information using Google and Google Earth. I'm particularly interested in London because I spent a semester there as an undergraduate in 2005. I loved seeing how the photographs taken by Cushman compared to more recent images. This was one of my favorite comparisons. In 1961, Cushman took these pictures of St. John's church in Smith Square that had been ruined by bombing and was not yet repaired:

The original can be found on the Indiana University Cushman site, here.

If you look carefully in the image above, you can see weeds growing through the church steps. The original can be found on the Indiana University Cushman site, here.

The church has since been restored as a concert hall. Here is an image of the church from Google Earth:


Since the trees are kind of in the way in that picture, here is another recent photograph of the building: http://www.essential-architecture.com/IMAGES/St_Johns_Concert_Hall.jpg

And here is the website for the church/concert hall: http://www.sjss.org.uk/

I also worked on some permission-to-publish forms.

Monday, April 26, 2010

I worked on more permission to publish forms today. One of the most interesting ones was for someone working for a Supreme Court Justice.

Tuesday, April 20, 2010

Today I worked on permission to publish forms for Cushman images and sent another patron information on the publication fees for Counts images. One of the permission to publish forms I worked on was one for some photographs of San Francisco taken by Cushman. This wasn't one of the images requested, but it was also taken in San Francisco at the same time as some of those that were on the form, and I enjoyed it:


You can find the original image on the Indiana University Cushman site, here.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

I spent most of the day pulling and scanning sports negatives for the ongoing sports exhibit project. I also entered some more items into the accessions database.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Brad was out sick, so I didn't get to go back to the off-site storage facility today.

Instead, I worked on filling an order for images of the Forest Quad dorm. The requester had selected particular images, so I just had to pull the negatives and scan them. Once the images were scanned, Dina placed them on a website where the patron could download them.

I then entered some more items from the memorabilia cabinet into the accessions database.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Today we went to an off-site storage facility to prepare some of the films belonging to the University Archives for transfer to the ALF (the Auxiliary Library Facility). The off-site storage facility is actually in a converted bowling alley:


It's a very strange space. It's also used by Indiana University's Elizabeth Sage Historic Costume Collection, so there are mannequins strewn around the hallway leading to the film storage room. Some of them are whole, but there was also a garbage can full of arms and hands near the door. The room in which the films are stored is similar to a warehouse--a very large and open space filled with rows and rows of films in cases.

I worked on going through some of the films from WTIU, the Indiana University television station. Brad called the films I was going through "quads," although he wasn't sure why they were called that. After some Googling I thought maybe they were quadruplex videotape, but I'm not sure about that.

In any case, they were very large reels of film in cases, and I spent the day going through them and creating a list of the films. I looked at the labels on the cases and copied down any information about the content of the video and its date of creation. I then stuck a barcode next to this information on the sheet and an identical barcode on the case.

Most of the films I went through were on "Microcomputers," but there were also a significant number on "English Composition" and other miscellaneous topics. Most of them were from the 1970s.

Brad was also going through films, and he ran across some very odd labels. My favorite was the one that was apparently of an earthworm dissection.

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

I found out today that someone interested in Tad Shideler had left a comment on my blog last week, so I responded to that person with the information we have about him. Hopefully they will be able to assist us in locating living relatives of Shideler who might have photographs of him.

We also worked on gathering some information on a particular person for a visitor who is coming in at the end of the week. We pulled the clippings files, reference files, and photographs related to this person, and we printed out copies of some of the related finding aids.

We also located some negatives of the men's swimming team in the 1960s for an alum, and I scanned these images.

***

One of the most interesting requests we dealt with today allowed us to use the "Pering Letter." The requester needed an image of the first Bloomington courthouse, and the only image we have of it is a watercolor included in an interesting letter written by Cornelius Pering in Bloomington, Indiana to S. Edwards, Esq. in Somerset, England on August 27th, 1833. The letter is long and detailed--a double-spaced transcript of the letter runs to 19 pages--with lots of fascinating information about the United States in 1833 and Pering's impressions of it.

Near the beginning of the letter, Pering writes of the United States, "The more I see and know of its government, customs, manners and people, the more am I convinced that it will one day be (if it is not at present) the most powerful, the most prosperous, and the most happy community in the World. Some parts of it, it is true, particularly here in the West, look rude and uncivilized to those accustomed to the splendour of European cities; but if we do not see the magnificence, we look in vain for the sights of wretchedness, the squalid misery, and hopeless destitution which every where excite the commiserations of the sympathetic... Sixteen years ago the spot on which I am now writing was Indian Hunting Ground, an almost pathless Wilderness, an illimitable Forest, now the frontier settlements are four hundred miles west of this place."

Later parts of the letter include more detailed information, but those were some of his general first impressions.

Here is an image of the letter:


One of the most fascinating features of the letter is the watercolor views of Bloomington and other locations in the United States in the center. You can also see that the paper has been written on both horizontally and vertically in order to include as much information in as small a space as possible (an approach Brad indicated was necessitated by the high cost of sending mail to England from the United States at the time). This certainly conserves space, but it makes the letter a bit difficult to read. You can see a close-up of some of the writing here:


And here is a close-up of the watercolors in the center of the letter (clicking on the image will allow you to see a slightly bigger version):


The image at the top includes the first courthouse. Pering writes that "The upper view is in the center of this town, the middle building is the Court House where all the judicial business is transacted. On the left of it is the jail; on the right the Clerk's office and County Library. The white weather-boarded house on the right forms the angle of the street."

The center image includes the first buildings of Indiana University. Pering writes that "The New College is the center picture, which is not yet finished in the interior, the building on the left is the one at present occupied. It will remind you more of Mr. Rister's Factory than the princely halls of Oxford and Cambridge, but I have no doubt as good scholars will be turned out from that humble Edifice as from the more celebrated seats of learning in England. The President and Professors are men of great talent and would do honor to any University in the World... the admission fees are only $15 a year, which it is expected, will be soon altogether dispensed with, as the College is richly endowed by the State."

The whole transcript looks really interesting... I'm hoping to get a chance to read through the whole thing this weekend.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

Today, we continued trying to locate living relatives of Thaddeus "Tad" R. Shideler. The Social Security Death Index indicated that a Tad Shideler had died in June 1966 in Winston-Salem in Forsyth county in North Carolina. The Social Security Death Index gave a slightly different birth date than the registrar's records, but we thought it was likely to be the same person.

We then searched the white pages of North Carolina online and located one person named Shideler in the state. We sent him an email with some of the information we had on Tad Shideler and asked him whether he was related to this athlete.

***

We also received and worked on filling a request for some images by Will Counts. This request was a little unusual in that it included some images the requester already had which he or she thought might have been taken by Will Counts. Since the requester wasn't sure, they asked us whether we could determine whether or not they were Counts images.

***

Another interesting request we dealt with was related to the renovation of the Forest Quad residence hall. The hall was originally built in 1966, and the university is hoping to have images of other significant events at the university during that year on the walls of the building. We looked through the 1966 and 1967 yearbooks and alumni magazines to find such events and milestones. Some of the things we suggested included other university buildings which were constructed and performers and politicians who visited campus during that year.

Wednesday, March 31, 2010

This morning, we tried to identify the living descendants of Thaddeus (Tad) Shideler, a track and field athlete from Indiana University who competed in the 1904 Olympics, so we could try to get a better photograph of him than the one we had for the sports exhibit.

We began by calling the registrar, who told us that Shideler has only attended Indiana University during the spring semester of 1904. We also learned that he attended Indianapolis Manual Training High School and died on June 2, 1966. We then called the Alumni Association to try to learn about his descendants, but there was no one there.

We checked the alumni magazines from 1966 in the hope of finding an obituary for Shideler, but we only found a brief death notice that again gave his death date as June 2, 1966 and seemed to indicate that he had died in Indianapolis. We checked the microfilm of the Indianapolis News and the Indianapolis Star at the Herman B. Wells Library for an obituary for Shideler, but didn't find anything.

We tried searching for Shideler in some newspaper databases and with Google, and, while we didn't find any obituaries in the databases, we did find a different date for Shideler's death on several websites--June 22, 1966. We also found him on the Phi Gamma Delta website. We checked issues of the Indianapolis News and the Indianapolis Star again around the new death date, but still didn't find an obituary. We also contacted the national headquarters of Phi Gamma Delta, but they didn't have any information on Tad Shideler. They did, however, have some information on another man named Shideler who was a member of this fraternity. We hoped he might be related to the Shideler we were looking for, but this was as far as we got today.

***

We also received another email from someone in Ireland identifying two more of the Cushman photographs.

One of them was this one, which the person identified as Baldoyle Racecourse, which as since been torn down and redeveloped. We confirmed his identification with Google Earth and a few websites.

This person also identified the general location of this image, which we confirmed using Google Earth. It's near the intersection of Ravenswell Road and Harbour Road in County Wicklow, Ireland.

Here is the image of Baldoyle Racecourse in 1961 (it's since been demolished and mostly built over):


Here you can see a screenshot of the same location in Google Earth. If you look carefully, you can see the outline of the lower left corner of the racetrack and the outline of those two white buildings inside the track:



And here is the image of the area near the intersection of Ravenswell Road and Harbour Road in County Wicklow, Ireland in 1961:


And here is a screenshot from Google Earth showing the Ravenswell Road and Harbour Road area today:

Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Today we spent most of the day preparing permission to publish forms. One of the forms we prepared was again for some of Will Counts's images of the desegregation of the high school in Little Rock. They're definitely popular images. We also located an image of an Indiana University assistant coach for someone, as well as an image of a track and field athlete from Indiana University who was in the Olympics in 1904. However, the only image we had of this athlete was a scan from a yearbook photo, which isn't very good quality. Since this image will be used in one of the sports exhibits, we're hoping to find a better one. Tomorrow we will try to identify any living descendants of the athlete so we can contact them to find out it they might have photographs of him which we could scan.

Monday, March 29, 2010

I've mentioned the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection on this blog before, but again, it is a collection of photographs taken by an Indiana University alumnus that has been made available as a digital collection. While Cushman generally provided good descriptions of the subjects of his photographs, people who have come across the site sometimes contact Indiana University to offer further identifying information for particular images. The University Archives is collecting this information, and it will ultimately be made available in a separate notes field on the website along with the images and Cushman's metadata.

Several of Cushman's images of Ireland in the 1960s were recently published in a Dublin magazine, and this has generated a lot of interest in the collection from people in Ireland. In addition to requests from other Irish publications and organizations to use the images, we have also received emails from several people in Ireland with more information about the locations shown in the images. In each case, we have investigated the information provided to us to make sure it is accurate and saved it for eventual inclusion on the website.

One of the emails we received today offered further information about this image of an island off the coast of Ireland. (I've also included a small version of the image at the end of this post, because this blog has been picture-less for too long.) Cushman simply identifies it as an "Islet in Irish Sea near Irish Coast," but the person who emailed us indicated that it was Lambay Island. Comparison of Cushman's image to Lambay Island on Google Earth and maps like this one confirmed its identity. The island has an interesting history, which is outlined in this Wikipedia article on the island.

***

Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Today I continued entering items from the memorabilia cabinet into the accessions database. Brad and I also went through some orders for images and prints.

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Today, Brad and I continued going through patron requests and he showed me how he goes about filling these requests by selecting appropriate images and informing the requester of the Archives' policies regarding the use of images. I scanned two negatives and a photograph of two Indiana University chemistry professors for an article, and tomorrow I will probably select images for a requester.

I also accessioned some more items from the memorabilia cabinet.

Monday, March 22, 2010

While I accessioned memorabilia last week, I set aside any problem items I came across that I wasn't sure how to deal with. I spent most of the morning discussing these items with Brad and entering them into the database once our conversation had clarified what I needed to do with them. Brad also showed me the original accession system in the University Archives. It was used before the archives purchased the AskSam database software and relied on assigning ranges of numbers to particular university offices or departments and keeping track of accessions on cards. Brad indicated that many of the archives I might end up working in are likely to have the remnants of such a system.

Towards the end of my shift, Brad showed me how he goes about filling photo orders. He said that people from other Indiana University offices often contact the photographs department on the behalf of someone who has contacted them with a photographs request, but that it's always best for an archivist to work directly with the person with the request rather than working through intermediaries. In the case of the Indiana University Archives photographs department, there are forms that must be tailored to the requester's situation, if he or she plans to publish the image. The questions about the intended use of the image and the related fees make it particularly important that Brad be in direct contact with the person who needs the image.

However, working directly with the requester also provides the archivist with the opportunity to clarify the request or get more detail from the requester. It seems like this interaction would be the equivalent of the "reference interview" we discussed in my SLIS Reference course, and, just like the more traditional reference questions we worked with in that class, it seems that taking the time to work directly with the person who needs images from the archives can make things much easier in the long run by avoiding potential misunderstandings and problems.

We began filling a request for photographs of two chemistry professors who were at Indiana University during the 1950s, and we will complete this request tomorrow.

Wednesday, March 17, 2010

[10:45 a.m.]

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

I'm at my internship right now, continuing to accession realia from the memorabilia cabinet and also working at the desk. It's pretty quiet, though, since it's spring break. No one is in the reading room at the moment.

I started accessioning items from a new box, and I've run across some interesting things. One of those things was a piece of rope used to pull the plow at the groundbreaking for the New Gymnasium at Indiana University on December 7, 1915. I would have thought the dead of winter, when the ground is frozen, wouldn't have been the best time for the groundbreaking on new construction, but I don't really know much about construction.

***

[11:30 a.m.]
I've just accessioned what is supposed to be the first touch-tone telephone installed in Monroe County. I wish I'd remembered my camera--I'd have taken a picture and posted it.

[12:00]
Finished the second box and started on a third.

Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Today, I continued accessioning realia from the memorabilia cabinet and finished my first box. Some of the things I added included a tie pin and key chain that belonged to Herman B. Wells. I also came across an interesting box with a lot of different things in it. I haven't added it to the database yet since I wasn't sure how to handle all the different pieces, but one of the things inside was an envelope of nineteenth century calling cards and invitations. These were some of my favorites.

Monday, March 15, 2010

This morning, Brad showed me how to enter realia into the University Archives accession database, AskSam. We brought a box from the memorabilia cabinet up to the photographs area and went through several items together.

Basically, entering the items involves searching the database to make sure the accession number they have been assigned has not already been used, creating a new record, and then entering information about the object, including a description of the item and, if available, the date it was created, the person or entity who created it, the person or entity who gave it to the University Archives, whether there are any restrictions on use or reproduction of the item, and the item's location in the archives. While I may not use the same database program in my first job, this will still be useful experience, since most archives will probably keep very similar records of their accessions.

Some of the items I accessioned today included a bag of buttons from the Little 500 race, a paperweight given to Indiana University president Herman B. Wells, and a pin commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Indiana University chapter of the fraternity Sigma Nu.

Cased Images and Opera Images

Rather than creating a new post for the opera images I scanned last week, I edited my March 8th post to include images from these productions.

I am, however,creating a new post for the cased images we looked at on March 2nd.

Here is a scan of the photographs of Madison and Lucinda Evans. These are the photographs which have the slightly mysterious text underneath them.

***

The subject of this photograph is E. Jennie Hoover. It was taken in 1855.

***

The subject of this photograph is Eliza Jane Sluss Hoover. An interesting bit of trivia: because of the photographic process used to create them, daguerreotypes are usually reversed. This reversal can often be observed by looking at the hands of the subjects of the photographs. If the person is married, his or her ring will appear to be on the right rather than the left hand. We corrected for this by flipping the scan in Photoshop, so Eliza Jane Sluss Hoover's ring appears on the correct hand. You can also see that her rings have been tinted silver.

Wednesday, March 10, 2010

Today, Brad explained to me how he orders supplies for the University Archives (things like negative sleeves and envelopes, acid-free folders and boxes, brushes to clean negatives, etc.) and showed me some of the suppliers he uses. It's important for me to be familiar with things like this since many of the places at which I might find employment after graduation, such as most university archives, will be small institutions or departments and I may be responsible for ordering these kinds of supplies.

We looked at some catalogs of supplies, as well as websites for those suppliers. These were the main suppliers Brad showed me:

Gaylord: http://www.gaylord.com/

Hollinger Metal Edge: http://www.hollingermetaledge.com/

Light Impressions: http://www.lightimpressionsdirect.com/

I also scanned some images of Indiana University gymnasts for the new sports facility. Most of the images I scanned were of a man who was known for his skills on the trampoline, so there were lots of interesting shots of him tumbling in the air.

One of the negatives I scanned had what looked like some dried liquid on it. Since it wasn't just stuck on the negative but rather seemed to be partially embedded in the negative, Brad thought it was probably a result of an error during development. I was able to clean a little of the substance off the negative using PEC-12 photographic emulsion cleaner. A product that looks similar to the one I used can be found on Amazon.com. Fortunately, the substance was not on the emulsion side of the negative, so it was not very visible in the scanned image.

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Today I continued working on filling the patron request for the opera images. This time I scanned slides of the same productions from yesterday. I also continued working on transferring information from the backs the the Photoservices prints to the negative envelopes in preparation for entering the information into the new database and putting the negatives into sleeves.

Monday, March 8, 2010

I spent today scanning negatives of opera productions again, which was a nice change from scanning sports negatives. Going through these images really makes me wish I'd had the opportunity to see more operas at Indiana University during my time here--it looks like they always put on amazing productions.

I scanned images of the 1999 production of Gianni Schicchi, the 1999 production of Suor Angelica, and the 2001 production of Faust. In this post, you can see one image from Suor Angelica (the nuns) and two images from Faust.

Tuesday, March 2, 2010

Today, Brad and I looked at some of the oldest images in the archives--a box of cased images. The examples we looked at included daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, and tintypes. Brad explained how to distinguish between the three types, and showed me how to safely take apart cased images by using a suction cup to gently lift the image from its case rather than attempting to pry it or shake it out of the case, both of which can damage the case. Lifting the image from the case sometimes reveals information about the subject of the photograph or the photographer beneath, so we went through all the images and checked for this kind of information beneath.

The cased images are really fascinating. I especially liked the daguerreotypes--I think they're a little eerie. At certain angles their subjects become almost invisible in the mirrored surface of the photograph, and instead you see your own face reflected back at you.

Lifting out the images is fun, since you never know what you'll find underneath. One of the cased images we examined had portraits of Madison Evans and his wife, and the inscription beneath one of the photographs was a little mysterious--inside three hearts, someone had written the following information: "E&H Jan & Feb 1880," "Ring performance by L July 29, 1880," and "Lost 1880 June 9th." We're not sure what any of that means, but hopefully I'll uncover something when I start researching Evans.

We scanned some of the cased images, but I forgot to email them to myself, so I'll post about the cased images in more detail later when I can include the scans.

For some of the images, we only know the names of the subjects, so sometime within the next few weeks, Brad will have me work on researching those subjects to see if I can uncover any more information about the people pictured.

We also looked through a photo album of Charles Cushman's early work and Cushman's camera. In this post, you can see a photograph of Cushman's camera and a photograph of a page from his album. Only a few of his early black and white photographs are currently available on the Cushman website.

We also looked at some Indiana University photo albums from 1881 and 1885, one of which contained small, "carte de visite" photographs while the other included larger "cabinet cards." Brad showed me how to safely remove photographs from these types of albums, since these types of photographs often have information about the photographer on their backs.

Monday, March 1

I started today by scanning a few negatives of a football game and a football player for the Hall of Champions, another sports exhibit which is being installed on the Indiana University campus. This project will require images of all university sports rather than just basketball.

I also continued working on going through the Photoservices contact sheets and transferring the information from the contact sheets to the negative envelopes in preparation for scanning these negatives and entering them into the new photographs database.

Today I worked on images of the construction of the Herman B. Wells Library. It was really interesting to see areas I walk through every day under construction! Here you can see a photograph taken on August 3rd, 1967 of a partially completed Main Library. This is a scan of the contact sheet. Once all the negatives have been scanned, the images added to the new photographs database, and the information entered into the database, these prints will no longer be needed except for exhibit purposes.

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Today I went through some binders full of sports negatives that do not have contact sheets and have not been put in negative envelopes with the rest of the collection. Most of the images were from 1993, and I found a few team photographs I hadn't found in the main collection. I scanned these, as well.

I also went through all the media guides we have for women's basketball and tried to match up the team photographs in these guides with the images I had scanned in order to determine the academic year during which each team pictured had played. I was able to identify some of the photographs I had scanned, but there were many team photographs in the media guides which I had not found by going through the contact sheets. It may take a little more digging to find those images and to identify the team photographs which I have not been able to locate in a media guide.

One resource we may be able to use are the framed team photographs belonging to the athletics department. One of the people who works for athletics has photographed the team photos they have hanging on their walls and emailed these images to Brad. By checking these images against those I have scanned, we may be able to date more of the team photographs. So far we have identified one more photograph using this method.

Tuesday, February 23, 2010

Today I continued scanning the negatives of the women's basketball team photographs. That's pretty much all I have to post about--the exhibit in this basketball practice facility has been a really big project for us, but we are fortunately almost done with it! It will be fun to go see the finished exhibit once it has been completed.

Monday, February 22, 2010

Today I finished going through all the sports contact sheets, which end in 1997. Once I had all the contact sheets that included photographs of IU women's basketball teams, I pulled the corresponding negative envelopes and began scanning them.

I am including in this post an image of a contact sheet like the ones I have been examining. These contact sheets reproduce the negatives in actual size, but as positive images. While these images are small, they are much easier to examine than the negatives and, unlike the negatives, they do not require careful handling since they are only reference prints.

This particular contact sheet shows a men's basketball game at Indiana University on February 5th, 1972 during which Indiana University played against Michigan State.

At the upper right corner, you can see the negative number. Both the contact sheets and the negative envelopes are arranged by these numbers.

Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Today I continued going through the sports contact sheets looking for women's basketball team photographs. I am currently in the early 1990s.

Brad Cook, my supervisor, spent part of the day showing me some of the requests he has received this week for permission to publish images from the University Archives collections. He also explained to me how he keeps track of the requests and determines what fees should apply in each situation. The fees vary depending on the purpose for which the image will be used, the collection the image comes from, and whether the requester is purchasing one-time use rights or in perpetuity rights.

The Will Counts collection and the Charles Cushman collection are among the most popular image collections at the University Archives, and most of the requests for permission to publish are for images from one of these two collections. Charles Cushman donated about 14,500 slides to the University Archives. These photographs were taken from 1938 to 1969 in the United States and elsewhere and are available in an online collection. Will Counts is best known for his "Scream" image of Hazel Massery yelling at Elizabeth Eckford as she enters Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas when that school was being desegregated in 1957.

Brad also showed me the files he maintains of permission to publish transactions which are still open. While most of these transactions go smoothly, problems sometimes arise when the individual or publisher that has requested permission to publish images from the University Archives collections fails to pay the fees, does not properly credit the University Archives, or fails to send two copies of the published work to the University Archives, all of which the contract they must sign to receive and use the images requires them to do.

Most of the requested images are used in books or articles, but some of the requests or more unusual. For instance, several years ago an image was requested by a restaurant owner for use on the placemats in his business, and we recently received a request to use images from one of the collections in a multimedia art project in a museum.

Tuesday, February 16

I spent the entire day today going through sports contact sheets for the late 1980s looking for images of the women's basketball team. So far I have found about two or three team photographs in each year. I haven't started scanning them yet; instead, I'm setting aside the contact sheets and I will pull the negatives and scan them once I've gone through all the years.

I'm learning some interesting things about Indiana University sports by going through all these contact sheets. I'm not much of a sports fan, so I learned about the "Old Oaken Bucket" by running across a photograph of the trophy. This trophy is held by either Indiana University or Purdue University, depending on which school wins the game between the two in the "Big Ten" football conference. Each year a link shaped like an "I," a "P," or an "IP" is attached to the chain. An "I" is attached if Indiana wins, a "P" if Purdue wins, and an "IP" if it is a tie. This tradition goes back to 1925. There is even a Wikipedia article on the "Old Oaken Bucket."

Purdue currently holds the bucket.

Some of the images, however, are completely inexplicable, like the contact sheet I ran across with several rows of identical photographs of a Pepsi vending machine.

Monday, February 15, 2010

Today I continued identifying the photographs of women's basketball teams I scanned last week. The photograph shown in this post was labeled 77-298.3. (The "77-298" portion of the number appears on the negative envelope and indicates that the photograph was taken in 1977. The ".3" portion indicates the specific negative in that envelope which the image comes from.) The actual scan is of much higher quality. Not only is this image less than a third of the size of the actual scan, it also became very grainy because the old version of Paint Shop Pro I have can't handle tiff images. I had some trouble working around that to get a version of the image I could open in my paint program and save as a jpeg to upload to this blog.

This photograph was taken in 1977, but I haven't yet identified which team it depicts. Some of the earliest years of women's basketball did not have media guides produced for them and some of the early media guides did not include team photographs, which makes it more difficult to identify some of these photographs from the 1970s.

The AskSam database only gave me images up to 1986 when I performed a search for women's basketball team photographs. However, this does not mean that there are no photographs of the women's teams after this date, just that they have not been entered into the database. The only way for me to locate these later images is to go through all the sports contact sheets for the years we need and look for photographs of the women's basketball teams. I started doing that today. Since there are hundreds of contact sheets for each year, this will be a long process.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Today I continued pulling negatives of photographs of the women's basketball team produced by my search of the AskSam database and scanned them.

I ultimately found photographs of the team from these years by searching the database:

1975, 1976, 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, and 1986.

However, because of the way in which the negatives are labeled, I can't be sure yet of what teams these photographs show. The negative envelopes are labeled with the last three digits of the year in which the photographs were taken followed by a dash and a sequential number assigned to the photographs when they were developed. So, for instance, a set of negatives labeled 975-0173 would have been shot in 1975.

However, this doesn't tell me whether those negatives show the 1974-1975 team or the 1975-1976 team. If the images were taken in the spring of 1975, they show the 1974-1975 team, but if they were taken in the autumn of 1976, they show the 1975-1976.

The sequential number can provide some guidance since photographs shot near the beginning of 1975 probably depict the 1974-1975 team while photographs shot later in the year probably depict the 1975-1976. However, we need to be completely certain of the year in order to label these photographs for the basketball exhibit. Photographs may sometimes have been taken and not developed right away, so a photograph's position in the sequence of images shot during that year doesn't provide enough evidence to determine the team which that photograph depicts.

The only way to identify one of these photographs with complete certainty is to find it or a similar photograph of all the same people printed in one of the women's basketball media guides. At the end of the day, I started comparing the photographs I'd found to images in the media guides to try to identify the teams depicted in the photographs. I then named the files accordingly.

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Today I finished scanning the images of women's basketball coach Maryalyce Jeremiah I located yesterday. Some of the scans had dust or small hairs on them, so I used Photoshop to clean the images up a little.

As part of the basketball project, we also need to find photographs of each year's women's basketball team. I started by searching for images of the women's basketball team in the AskSam database and then pulled all the negatives this search produced.

While some of these were scanning, I continued preparing Photoservices negatives for entry into the new database by pulling the envelopes of negatives showing the construction of one of the power plants on the Indiana University campus and transferring information from the prints of these images to the negative envelopes.

Monday, February 8, 2010

I spent Monday looking for images of Maryalyce Jeremiah, a women's basketball coach at Indiana University from 1980 to 1984, for the ongoing basketball project. I was looking for photos of Maryalyce Jeremiah at a 1983 game against Kentucky in particular. I was unable to find photographs from this game, but I did find a few other images of her coaching the women's team during games and some good portrait shots of her.

Since out sports database in the AskSam database program does not list the individuals appearing in specific envelopes of negatives, the only way to find images of this coach was to check the women's basketball media guides to find out what years she she spent coaching at Indiana University and to see what she looked like. I then went through all the contact sheets for those years to find images of women's basketball and checked each image with the loupe to find those in which Maryalyce Jeremiah appeared. I then pulled those negatives and scanned them.

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Today I continued working on scanning negatives and slides of women's basketball for the exhibits in the basketball practice facility, which is scheduled to open sometime in March. So far, I have scanned all the images of women's basketball from 1972 to the beginning of 1976 that looked like they might be acceptable for use in the exhibit.



Since it takes time for each batch of negatives and slides to scan, I continued working on transferring information from the Photosevices collection prints to the negative envelopes while the scanner was working. This time I was working on a folder of prints showing the construction of a power plant on campus.

The new computer and scanner have also been installed in the photo archives (see pictures at right). I haven't used the new scanner yet, but it is supposed to be better for scanning slides. Also, now that we have three workstations, we will be able to work on projects requiring the use the Ask Sam database while the other computer and scanner are occupied with scanning. (No other programs can be used while images are being scanned.)

Monday, February 1, 2010 and Tuesday, February 2, 2010

We're still working mostly on finding images for the exhibits in the new basketball practice facility. Yesterday and today, I worked on finding images of the early years of women's basketball. While women's basketball began at IU early in the 1970s, these first games were not frequently photographed, so images are a little scarce.

For some of the earliest years, I checked all the sports negatives individually for shots of women's basketball. Since many of these envelopes are unlabeled, I added labels identifying the sports pictured to each of the envelopes as I went through them. For later years, we used the "Ask Sam" database to identify and pull the negatives of women's basketball. I then went through all the negatives I'd pulled and looked for good-quality images--images that were clear and showed the faces of IU players. I scanned these and, if they still looked clear when scanned at 2400 dpi, I saved them.

Internship Reading Overview

As part of my internship, I will be reading professional literature for the field in which I'm working and writing abstracts for that literature. For every twenty hours I work, I will write an abstract of one article or book chapter I have read. Since I am doing this internship for 3 credits and working 180 hours total, this should work out to a total of 9 readings.

On Wednesday, January 27th, Brad and I discussed possible reading material, and he suggested several books from which I will select chapters. Most of my reading will probably come from these books:

Reilly, J. M. (1986). Care and Identification of 19th-Century Photographic Prints. Eastman Kodak Company.
ISBN: 0-87985-365-4

Ritzenthaler, M. L.; G. J. Munoff; & M. S. Long. (1984). Archives & Manuscripts: Administration of Photographic Collections. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists.
ISBN: 0-931828-61-9

Wilhelm, H. (1993). The Permanence and Care of Color Photographs: Traditional and Digital Color Prints, Color Negatives, Slides, and Motion Pictures. Grinnell, Iowa: Preservation Publishing Company.
ISBN: 0-911515-00-3

Ritzenthaler, M. L. & D. Vogt-O'Connor. (2006). Photographs: Archival Care and Management. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists.
ISBN: 1-931666-17-2

Mahard, Martha. (May 24, 2007). Describing Photographs in the Online Environment: SAA Workshop. Bloomington, IN: Society of American Archivists.

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

I spent first part of the morning scanning negatives for the basketball project, which we hope to have completed soon.

Afterwards, Brad and I went to the reading room, where he showed me how he tries to identify unknown subjects in photographs. A relative of one of IU's first basketball players has loaned several photographs to us so they can be scanned and made available through the IU archives, but several of the people and locations in the images are unidentified. In particular, there are two photographs of unknown men who were probably IU students.

Since it is possible that the unknown people in the images might be friends of the basketball player, we began by finding out whether the player was in a fraternity, since the others might then be members, as well. He did belong to a fraternity, so we checked the photographs of that fraternity in the yearbooks covering the years he was at IU, but were unable to match any of the people in those images with the photographs we had.

Since the photographs identified the towns in which they were taken, we used the yearbooks to find men at IU who were from those towns, information which used to be included in early IU yearbooks. This provided us with three or four possible names for our unknown men. We then began going through the yearbooks page by page, since they show the students not individually in alphabetical order, but rather in groups by department. We didn't identify the unknown people, but we only got through one yearbook while I was working. Brad was going to continue trying to identify the two men.

Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Today, I continued working on locating images of that specific basketball player from the 1970s. The 1972 contact sheets* didn't have any information about the dates or opponents of the games pictured, so we used a few different techniques to identify them. The easiest and most obvious technique was to look at the jerseys of the opposing team and compare them to the list of games in that season's media guide. However, there were images from one game in which the opposing players' jerseys said only "State." We weren't sure whether this referred to Michigan State, Ball State, or another school with a similar name.

Once we narrowed down the possibilities to two dates by looking at the media guide's list of teams played at IU during that season (since Photographic Services only photographed home games), Brad had me go to the 1972 and 1973 yearbooks and the 1972 and 1973 Alumni Magazines near those dates to look for any images used in those publications which came from one of our unidentified prints. I wasn't able to locate any useful information in these publications; however, in examining the the contact sheets for the images, I found faint writing which Brad and I hadn't seen initially indicating the opponent and game date, so we were able to identify all the images.


*Contact sheets are prints produced from negatives in which the images from multiple negatives are printed onto one sheet. With the aid of a loupe, this allows the images to be quickly reviewed without unnecessary handling of the negatives.

Wednesday, January 20 and Monday, January 25, 2010

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

On Wednesday, I finished going through the Biology and Botany prints and negatives, transferred all the information on those prints to the negative envelopes, and sleeved the negatives. I'll be doing this throughout my internship in preparation for the new database, into which we should be able to start entering images from the Photographic Services collection in mid-February, according to the Digital Library Program.

Photographic Services (or Photoservices), an Indiana University service which provides photographers for university events and creates large, high-quality prints of images, today exists as IU Photographics.

I also continued working on locating negatives for the basketball project. This time I was looking at images of men's basketball from the 1960s and 1970s.


Monday, January 25, 2010

Today, I continued scanning negatives of men's basketball from the 1970s. I worked on locating images of a particular player. In general, we will try to work from a student's final year on the team backwards to his or her earlier years, since the best shots of players are usually taken during their later years on the team.

As part of the ongoing preparation for the new database, I also pulled the Photoservices prints and negatives of the construction of Beck Chapel, transferred the information from the prints to the negative envelopes, and sleeved the negatives.

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Today I finished scanning the slides of opera productions. I'm including an image from a 2001 production of Madame Butterfly. It looks like it was a really beautiful show! To give you an idea of the level of detail in the actual scans we're creating for the opera department, that image is saved at 400 dpi (it's been shrunk a little even from that for this blog--click on it to see it at 400 dpi). The full-sized scans are 2400 dpi.

Now that the opera project is complete, I'll be working on scanning images of IU basketball games and players for the new basketball practice facility near Assembly Hall. The lobby of the practice facility will include exhibits on basketball throughout IU's history, so we are finding and scanning images to be used in the exhibits.

The previous negatives I'd worked with were all 35mm, but many of the basketball images are 120mm. The process for scanning them is basically the same, but they are scanned at 1400 dpi rather than 2400 dpi, since they are larger.

Tracking down the images for these basketball exhibits can be a pretty elaborate process. We're given the names of players and games of which the athletic department would like to have pictures, and then we try to locate appropriate images. Photographs in which each subject is identified, such as photographs of the entire team or individual portraits, can be located relatively easily by searching the IU Archives' "Ask Sam" database, but action shots of particular players are a little more difficult to find. Brad keeps the media guides released each year for the sports played at IU, and we have a guide put together by a local IU basketball enthusiast that lists by season every basketball game played at IU with the date and final score for each game, as well as all the people on the team that season with their jersey numbers. It's a really fantastic tool.

When someone wants images of a particular player, we use this guide to determine what years he played and what his jersey number was. Photographic Services photographed IU home games, so we go to the files of reference prints in the Photographic Services sports collection, and start going through the file for each year during which the player was on the team to locate the photographs of basketball games. These reference prints often contain many images on one sheet, so we use a loupe (a kind of magnifier) to examine each image for good shots of that player, whom we identify by his jersey number. It can be pretty painstaking work. I spent part of my day today going through photographs of games from the 1960s looking for good images of two particular players.

Tomorrow we're supposed to get a new computer and scanner installed, so it should be an exciting day!

Monday, January 18, 2010

Today I learned how to scan slides, which was pretty similar to scanning negatives. Most of the settings are the same--Color, transparency, 2400 dpi for the resolution--but the program has to be set to "positive" rather than "negative." The slides were a little easier to handle than the negatives, they scan more quickly, and they seem to attract less dust, so I had much less clean-up to do in Photoshop. However, the colors on some of the slides appeared a little dull and faded, so we sometimes increase the contrast a bit to make them look sharper. I was working on images of opera productions again, and I enjoyed seeing more pictures of previous shows. They've had some really beautiful sets and costumes.

I also started pulling some reference prints and negatives from the Indiana University Photoservices collection in preparation for entering scanned negatives into the new database we will start using soon. Since only the negatives will be scanned, we need to make sure all the information on the reference prints is also written on the envelopes of negatives so it can be included in the database. A lot of the reference prints have notes on the back about the subject of the photograph.

Today I worked on pulling negatives for the prints in one of the "Biology and Botany" folders, and Brad and I discussed some of the strange images that appear in older collections of photo-archives, particularly in photographs of experiments in science departments. I'm a little nervous at the prospect of running across images of animal experiments in some of the earlier photographs. Fortunately, the folder I was working with had nothing more unusual than some images from the 1930s of what looked like mold growing in Petri dishes. Most of the images are either portraits of faculty or show students and faculty at work, often surrounded by racks of test tubes. It's a fascinating glimpse of some of IU's science programs in the 1930s and 1940s.

First Week

I started my internship at Indiana University's Office of University Archives and Records Management on Monday, January 11th. For the rest of the semester, I will be spending my Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday mornings working under the supervision of the Photograph Curator, Brad Cook. Most of my previous archival experience is in processing collections containing few photographs, so this internship will give me an opportunity to learn more about working with photographs, slides, and negatives, as well as methods for digitizing those materials. My work will include pulling materials for researchers, scanning those materials, and adding metadata to digital images. I will also be learning about how to fulfill researcher requests for materials and how to handle requests for permission to publish images from the collections of the University Archives.

The Indiana University Archives photographs collections are located in an office one floor above the main office, so on Monday morning I headed upstairs, where Brad gave me a tour of the space and an orientation to the largest collections. The collections include photographs, slides, negatives, and reference prints for some of the negatives. I spent the rest of my time that day filing envelopes of photographs, reference prints, and negatives to familiarize myself with the location and organization of each of the main collections. I'll be spending a little time each day refiling these envelopes of materials requested by researchers.

On Tuesday, I started working on fulfilling my first request. Since the request came from a university department and is submitted every year, my supervisor gave me permission to write about it in some detail.

It came from the Indiana University Opera department, which requests images of previous opera productions each year in preparation for publicizing the upcoming season. After I located all the negatives that the department had asked for, Brad showed me how to scan them and use Photoshop to remove dust specks from the images. On Wednesday, I scanned and retouched the rest of the negatives myself. I loved the production of Die Zauberflöte (The Magic Flute) put on by Indiana University last November, so it was a treat for me to get to see images of previous productions. It looks like they've put on a lot of really fantastic shows!

The first week of my internship went really well, and I'm looking forward to my next! I think this internship will be fun and will provide me with some really great experience in an area of archival work that I know little about.

Reading 9

Foster, Anne L. (2006). Minimum Standards Processing and Photograph Collections. Archival Issues, 30(2), 107-118.

While I did not process collections of photographs as part of my internship, I will likely have to handle such collections or collections containing a significant number of photographs during my professional career. This article provides a helpful overview of the ways in which the "More Product, Less Process" (MPLP) approach to archival processing was used by the University of Alaska, Fairbanks Archives to make large collections of photographs, which their employees had been trying to process for years, accessible to researchers by finding new processing standards.

The author begins by describing previous attempts by the archive to handle its growing photographs collection. These included a vertical file (1966-1980) in which all the photographs in the collections were kept. Photographs were removed from their original collections, which often meant that provenance information was lost. From 1980 to 1990, the archive tried to maintain provenance information by keeping the photographs with the collections with which they arrived, but filing them separately from the rest of the materials in the collection and organizing them into the same categories used in the vertical file system. From 1990 to 2003, the archive maintained a photo database, but the ever-larger collections which the archive received quickly overwhelmed the database. Additionally, each of these methods required time consuming, item-level processing.

The Alaskan archivists first applied the MPLP approach to the William 0. Field Papers, which included about 40,000 photographs. They did not process the items at the item level, deciding that researchers were unlikely to be interested in specific images, and they merely placed fragile items in a cold-storage vault rather than spending large amounts of time on conservation efforts.

They then received a grant to test the MPLP process on a large variety of collections, and they found the approach to work very well. They noted that one of its particular strengths was its flexibility--it does not prescribe a particular level of processing, but rather that only the minimum amount of processing necessary to make a collection accessible be performed until use justifies further processing. In contrast to their previous methods, they did not weed, number, or sleeve photographs until they received a request for a copy of an image, at which point it was necessary to assign numbers to all the photographs in the series as part of their photograph reproduction workflow. Only certain categories of images--particularly fragile items, pre-gold rush images, images related to "hot topics," and images from collections which came with a donation to finance extra processing--received the level of processing and conservation treatments they had once attempted for all their collections.

They note that one case in which MPLP processing would seemingly not be ideal is when a collection will be digitized, since this generally necessitates describing the images at the item level. However, they tried to be more rigorous in their appraisal of collections before they were digitized, discarding unnecessary images, and they tried to reduce the amount of metadata added to the images to save time. However, they found that the software they used to manage and make their photographs available in an online environment was designed for detailed description and did not allow them to automatically combine collection-level metadata with batch imported images.

Overall, this article provides a good overview of how the popular MPLP approach to processing can be applied to photographs and addresses the potential pitfalls of using this technique on collections of images.

Reading 8

Shatford, Sara (1986). Analyzing the Subject of a Picture: A Theoretical Approach. Cataloging and Classification Quarterly, 6(3), pp. 39-62.

Found in: Mahard, Martha (May 24, 2007). Describing Photographs in the Online Environment: SAA Workshop. Bloomington, IN: Society of American Archivists.

While doing my internship in the photographs department of the Indiana University Archives, I have spent a lot of time working with the Charles W. Cushman photographs collection, both when I've been filling out permission-to-publish forms for Cushman images and when I've been confirming new information people have given us about the images. The Cushman collection includes extensive subject headings and other tags which allow the images to be searched in a variety of ways, and this made me interested in how an archivist should go about selecting subject headings for such a digital collection.

This article does not prescribe a particular classification system or set of procedures, but rather examines in a more general way the "theoretical basis for identifying and classifying the kinds of subjects a picture may have" (39).

The author begins by discussing the ways in which a collection of pictures may be used, since the ways in which a collection will be used should influence the way in which subjects are assigned to its images. Shatford notes that images may be used by "historians, teachers and students, illustrators, architects, designers and hobbyists, collectors and curators of various objects, even by librarians" (41), and that such researchers may use pictures both as a source of information and as illustrations for research. She also points out that researchers with different backgrounds and interests may use the same image in vastly different ways. Most importantly, researchers may seek images in a variety of ways. For instance, they may want an image of a specific person or event, an image of a particular time period or type of event, or even an image that illustrates an abstract theme.

Shatford uses art historian Erwin Panofsky's theory that there are three levels of meaning in works of art as the basis for her analysis of the types of subjects any image can have. Panofsky identifies these levels as pre-iconography, iconography, and iconology. The pre-iconography is the "primary or natural matter, subdivided into factual and expressional" (43). Factual elements include identifiable objects while expressional elements include the "mood" of a work. The first is objective and the second subjective, and Shatford distinguishes the two by identifying the first as what the image is "of" and the second as what the image is "about." The author writes that iconography "incorporates the identification of specific (not generic) objects, as in the sitter for a portrait; it also incorporates the identification of images representing certain ideas, themes, or concepts, as in stories or allegories" (44). Panofsky identifies the third level of meaning, iconology, as the "intrinsic meaning of content" (45), but Shatford indicates that these level of meaning cannot be included in subject indexes in a reliable way. She also notes that all images are both generic and specific--for instance, an image of the Golden Gate Bridge is both an image of a specific thing as well as a representation of a type of object, such as bridges or architecture.

Based on these theories, Shatford creates a "faceted classification" for the subjects of images. She writes that "the different facets for the classification of the subjects of pictures may be defined initially as containing the answers to the series of questions Who? What? When? and Where? Each of these basic facets may then be subdivided into aspects based on Of in the specific sense, Of in the generic sense, and About" (48).

Shatford then goes on to explore each of these facets in detail and provide examples of how each facet could be used in the case of a particular image. For instance, in discussing the "Who?" facet, the author takes as an example a photograph of the Guaranty Building in Buffalo, New York designed by Louis Sullivan. She writes that "This picture might have in the Who facet: Sullivan's Guaranty Building (Specific Of); Skyscraper (Generic Of); and Modern Architecture (About--Manifestation of an abstraction)" (50). She also points out that anyone assigning subjects to images should be aware of the issue of images which are reproductions of other works, such as paintings, and be consistent in how he or she assigns subjects to these images.

The next section is devoted to deciding which of all these potential subjects should actually be assigned to a particular image since practical considerations, such as time and money, will almost always limit the number of terms which can be assigned to any particular image. Shatford notes that one of the most important factors in deciding which subjects should be assigned is the users of the collections. For instance, the author indicates that an image should be indexed very differently if it is in a costume museum as opposed to a general collection. In such a specialized museum, the image should be indexed with subjects relevant to people interested in costumes.

Shatford then tackles the question of how best to determine the appropriate depth of indexing. She gives two guidelines for making this determination: the "threshold of detail" and the "threshold of pertinence" (58). The threshold of detail guideline establishes the rule that anything which is "necessarily an integral part of a larger whole" will not be indexed. For instance, if a woman appears in an image, the woman would be indexed, but not her head, hands, etc. The threshold of pertinence guideline indicates that an element is only meaningful enough to be indexed if it is clearly enough represented that someone looking for that element might find the picture useful or if the presence of the element is unusual.

While this article is a theoretical look at how the subject indexing of images should be approached rather than a practical guide on how to do so, the ideas outlined by the author and the questions she raises seem to be a very good starting point for any archivist faced with the task of coming up with a system for assigning subjects to a collection of images.

Reading 7

Ritzenthaler, M. L.; G. J. Munoff; & M. S. Long. (1984). "2. History of Photographic Processes." Archives & Manuscripts: Administration of Photographic Collections. Chicago, IL: Society of American Archivists. (pp. 27-54).
ISBN: 0-931828-61-9

While the chapter "The History of Photographic Printing in the 19th Century" from Care and Identification of 19th-Century Photographic Prints was helpful, its limited scope meant that many photographic processes I might encounter in my work in archives were not covered. This chapter provided a broader overview of the history of photographic processes, and I found it better organized and easier to follow than the previous reading.

The authors begin by explaining that it is essential that archivists be familiar with photographic processes because this information can assist them in dating images and the means by which a photograph was produced influences the types of conservation and preservation treatments most appropriate for that image. After this introduction, the authors provide a brief description of "basic photographic principles" (29), defining negative and positive images and the basic components of photographs, the base, the emulsion, and the light-sensitive salts. They also include a description of the general process used to produce photographic images. This section includes definitions of printing-out papers and developing-out papers. Printing-out papers were most prevalent before 1890 and are placed in direct contact with the negative and exposed to light through the negative--sometimes for more than a day--to produce the image. Developing-out papers are exposed for a much shorter time and do not have to be placed in direct contact with the negative, allowing for prints that are larger than the negative. The exposure does not produce the image on a developing-out paper; rather, the paper must be chemically processed to produce the image. The authors also describe the fixing and toning process.

The majority of the chapter is devoted to sections describing the major photographic processes. Each section gives the history of the process and describes the process itself, including the specific chemicals used and the techniques used by photographers. The sections also often include advice on identifying those processes by examining extant examples. These sections are well-illustrated, and most processes have at least one image to serve as an example.

The earliest processes the authors discuss include daguerreotypes, plain salted prints, the calotype process, platinum prints or platinotypes, and cyanotypes. They also describe processes using collodion emulsions, which include ambrotypes, tintypes, collodion wet plate negatives, and collodion positive transparencies. They then describe processes using albumen emulsions, which include albumen prints and crystoleums.

The authors then devote several sections to discussion photograph formats, which, they emphasize, are not particular processes but rather ways in which all the various types of photographs discussed were presented. The formats they describe include cartes de visite, stereographs, and photo albums.

They then describe photographic processes using gelatin emulsions, which include gelatin dry plate negatives, Eastman paper and gelatin negatives, cellulose nitrate film, safety film, and gelatin silver prints. Another section is devoted to attempts to create "permanent" photographs and photomechanical processes which do not rely on light-sensitive material. The processes they describe include gum bichromate prints, carbon prints, photogravures, woodburytypes, and the collotype process.

They then move on to color processes. The screen plate color processes they describe include the joly plate and the autochrome. The authors then discuss the tri color carbro process, dye transfer prints, chromogenic development materials, modern color prints, and dye diffusion transfer processes (such as Polaroid images).

Overall, this is a very helpful, concise overview of photographic processes that provides useful background for any archivist working with photographs and it would serve as a convenient reference.