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.
Sunday, February 21, 2010
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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.)
Tuesday, February 2, 2010
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.
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.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)