March 25, 2009
Image Resource Roundup
By Elisabeth Grant
Using images in the classroom can more fully engage and excite students, making history come alive. AHA Today has posted a number of articles on image resources online, and below we share some from our archives, as well as a few new finds.
Past Posts on Image Resources
- Picturing U.S. History: An Interactive Resource for Teaching with Visual Evidence
Picturing U.S. History is a collaborative effort of the American Social History Project/Center for Media and the Graduate Center at CUNY. This site “promotes ways for teachers in art history, American studies, and other humanities to incorporate historical visual media into their lesson plans.”It offers the following categories of content: Lessons in Looking, Web Resources, Forums, Essays, Reviews, and a section called My Favorite Image, which provides essays from teachers on images they’ve found useful in the classroom.
- Snapshots of the Past: The Commons on Flickr
When our post on the Flickr Commons first appeared on the blog a mere three months ago, only 16 organizations were a part of the project. Now the project has bloomed to include images from 23 institutions. The Flickr blog has introduced the newest additions, which include the Swedish National Heritage Board, the Nantucket Historical Association, the Oregon State Archives, the State Archives of Florida, the State Library of Queensland, the National Galleries of Scotland, and the New York Public Library.Participation in the Commons is a unique new way for museums and institutions to display their holdings and interact with the public. Anyone who visits the site can leave comments or tag photos, adding to the descriptions and information on these images.
Curious about what it takes to join the Commons? See this ArchivesNext interview with Tiah Edmunson-Morton, from the Oregon State University Archives.
- Old Pictures Get New Life on Shorpy
While the Shorpy blog is simple, with posts consisting of just images, photo credits, and explanations, its vintage photographs are fascinating, high-quality, and provide a unique look the hundred years between 1850 and 1950.Scroll through galleries of World War II photos, railroads, WPA Posters, and much more.
- Explore Historic Federal Courthouses
The Federal Judicial Center’s Historic Federal Courthouses site presents hundreds of high-resolution images and information on federal courthouses from around the U.S. Besides images, this site also contains Judge biographies, Court histories, Tutorials, and links to other court materials.
Other Image Resources
The abundance of digital images online is staggering, but here are a few more sites that categorize and present images from a variety of topics:
- Library of Congress – Visit the LOC’s Prints & Photographs Reading Room online and gain access to images for popular topics, view the online catalog, and check out supplemental information like the Researcher’s Toolbox.
- American Museum of Natural History – According to this site, “Visual display of natural science has been a cornerstone of the mission of the American Museum of Natural History since its inception.” Now you can experience visual displays from the American Museum of Natural History online through sections on Dioramas, Education, Exhibition, and Exhibition Preparation.
- Digital History – This site is full of resources (handouts, primary sources, and virtual exhibitions) as well as American Historical Images.
- LIFE – The LIFE photo archive includes photos and etchings that go back all the way to 1750. Eventually, Google plans to post the complete LIFE archive of nearly 10 million photos.
- The National Archives World War II Collection – These 200 plus photos portray WWII island campaigns, Navy & naval battles, victory & peace, and more.
ARTstor (www.artstor.org) is another terrific resource for teaching history. It contains almost a million extremely high-quality images that can be viewed using sophisticated tools for zooming and comparing images. It covers a broad range of fields. I recently consulted it, for example, in order to view architecture, coins, and artifacts from early Islamic history, but they have works from all cultures and all times, including 70,000 images that they just added from Magnum (which covers the best of photojournalism from the Spanish Civil war to the civil rights movement and all kinds of other things). Images like these are so helpful for bringing course material alive.
Professors whose courses touch on African history should also look at Aluka (www.aluka.org), which is a collaborative digital library of materials from and about Africa. The images found there range from photos of anti-Apartheid activities to incredible interactive 3D models of Timbuktu (Mali), Lalibela (Ethiopia), and other places—among lots of other things.
— Meredith Quinn Apr 1, 09:45 PM