The University of Southern California Libraries have digitized roughly 1,300 rare photographs of midcentury modernism in the American West, as documented by two of its insiders.
Digitization
Posted inArt
Art Deco Patterns of Beetles and Butterflies
Emile-Allain Séguy was enamored with the overlooked wonders of the natural world.
Posted inNews
From Kittens to Curling, Thousands of European Lantern Slides Are Going Online
Tens of thousands of magic lantern slides, for decades hidden in the collections of museums and archives across Europe, are currently being digitized and released into the public domain.
Posted inArt
Rescuing the Logbooks of 19th-Century Whaling Ships
Each whaling ship that departed the northeastern United States carried a logbook aboard, in which whale hunts, shipwrecks, weather conditions, and daily sailing life were recorded.
Posted inNews
40,000 Canisters of Aerial Film from World War II Land Online
Aerial photography dates to the early years of the 20th century, when pioneers like George R. Lawrence launched cameras into the skies with kites.
Posted inNews
A Map Library Is Digitizing Its Rarest Globes as 3D Models
“Globes have a very low survival rate,” explained Ian Fowler, director of the Osher Map Library (OML) at the University of Southern Maine.
Posted inArt
The Hand-Mounted Photographs that Illustrated 19th-Century Books
Before the widespread use of photomechanical printing processes to illustrate books, original, hand-mounted photographs largely embellished the pages of printed matter.
Posted inArt
New York Public Library Releases 180,000 Images, and Invites Users to Remix Them
This week, the New York Public Library announced the release of over 180,000 public domain images available in high resolution.
Posted inNews
An Archive of 10,000 Cylinder Recordings Readied for the Spotify Era
From cakewalks to carols, historic sounds of all kinds are preserved at the University of California, Santa Barbara’s Cylinder Audio Archive.
Posted inArt
Early-Morning Photographs of Turn-of-the-Century New York City
In the early-morning hours in turn-of-the-century New York City, a photographer who was afraid of the dark took his camera out into the light.
Posted inBooks
The Fantastic 17th-Century Book of Birds, Made from Feathers
In the 17th century, a gardener created a strange book of birds in which the illustrations were completely made of feathers.
Posted inBooks
Too Fragile to Open, World’s Oldest Multicolor Printed Book Is Digitized
The 17th-century Manual of Calligraphy and Painting (Shi zhu zhai shu hua pu) is so fragile that until digitization no one was allowed to open it.
