Pre-Photography Toolkit

Find it on the Web

• American Memory Project

<memory.loc.gov>: Search by collection or the entire group of 7 million digitized records.

• Getty Research Institute

<www.getty.edu/research/library>: The institute developed The Art and Architecture Thesaurus and The Union List of Artists’ Names. You can search its databases through an online catalog.

• Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division

<www.loc.gov/rr/print>: About half of the division’s holdings are accessible through its online catalog.

• Making of America

<moa.umdl.umich.edu>: Search online digitized books and journals from the antebellum period through Reconstruction.

• National Portrait Gallery

<www.npg.si.edu>: Search by subject of the painting and then look for biographical data. You can specify the artistic medium you’re looking for — painting, engraving, caricature and others.

• Otherdays.com

<www.otherdays.com>: Use this site’s online library of digitized photographs from the Lawrence Collection (1870 to 1910) or its prints and drawings galleries to find scenes of Ireland.

On the Bookshelf

• The Ancestry Family Historian’s Address Book by Juliana Szucs Smith (Ancestry)

• The Art of Family: Genealogical Artifacts in New England edited by D. Brenton Simons and Peter Benes (New England Historic Genealogical Society)

• Finding Images Online: Online User’s Guide to Image Searching in Cyberspace by Paula Berinstein, edited by Susan E. Feldman (Pemberton Press)

• Painting and Portrait Making in the American Northeast (Boston University Scholarly Publications)

Organizations & Archives

• American Antiquarian Society

185 Salisbury St. Worcester, MA 01609 (508) 755-5221

<www.americanantiquarian.org>: The society has strong collections of 18th- and 19th-century engravings, which you can search online. Researchers must apply to use the collections.

• The New York Public Library

Print Collection Humanities and Social Sciences Library Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street New York, NY 10018 (212) 930-0817

<www.nypl.org/research/chss/spe/art/print/print.html>: Learn about the history of printing and search the library’s collection.

• Allen County Public Library

900 Webster St. Box 2270 Fort Wayne, IN 46801 (260) 421-1200

<www.acpl.lib.in.us>:

Like most large research libraries, Allen County Public Library has a special department devoted to art research.

• American Printing History Association

Box 4922 Grand Central Station New York, NY 10163

<www.printinghistory.org>: