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.

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, 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:

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.

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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.

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.