Brunswick, Georgia, Twin Oaks Drive-In Bar-B-Q Restaurant sign, Photograph by John Margolies, 1990; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, John Margolies Roadside America photograph archive (1972-2008)

In this season between autumn and winter, it is a good time to share some recent items I’ve discovered or rediscovered that are helpful in our hunting and gathering of all that information for those myriad research projects.

New, or added materials to websites for Researching Photographers Working in the South:

The Arkansas Digital Ark-ives from the Arkansas State Archives includes documents, maps, broadsides, photographs, and other items. Images found on this site include those related to Arkansas in WWI, the Civil War, African Americans, Women, Farming, Folk life, as well as thousands of historic postcards covering numerous landmarks, streets, and buildings around the state.

I have told you about the John Margolies Roadside America Photograph Archive before. Here is a link to all the images Margolies took in Georgia. A search can be done on any state of interest, and remember that these images are free for you to use  — like the Arrow photo I’ve used above, taken by Margolies in Brunswick, Georgia.

The North Carolina site DigitalNC has put online the Hmong Keeb Kwm: Hmong Heritage Project Materials, via the Catawba County Library, with over one hundred photographs, documents, artifacts, oral histories, and other materials The site includes photographs of textiles, jewelry, embroidery and other physical objects, and it also has photographs of Hmong individuals, plus those documenting their family members, and their personal lives.

Cover of the January 1943 Morris Code, issued at Morris Field (Charlotte, N.C.); State Library of North Carolina

Speaking of North Carolina, a set of World War II resources were recently added to the North Carolina Digital Collections (NCDC). Online now is the first half of their original holdings of North Carolina World War II military installation camp newsletters and newspapers. There is a list of the military installations and the newsletter titles published at those installations that are available online now, or will soon be added.

If you are searching for anyone who lived or worked in Tennessee, you can now search across all collections in the Tennessee State Library & Archives and take a look at the all-in-one “Genealogy Index Search” including over a million names from their records at sos.tn.gov/tsla – the index link is there, along with separate links to Tennessee maps, Supreme Court cases (1809-1850), the Tennessee Virtual Archives.

I mentioned some military publications above, many with photos, but for another view of military personnel, see the Women Airforce Service Pilots Archive, honoring the first female military pilots. The Archive is housed at Texas Woman’s University, but women from all over the country trained during WWII in Sweetwater, Texas, at Avenger Field.

Organizations who post to Flickr include Southern institutions, such as SMU Libraries Digital Collections with over 10,000 photos. There is also Texas State University and The Libary of Virginia with a presence on Flcker, and you will find may other Southern collections represented.

There are those contributors who are located outside the South but have many Southern images in their collections.  The (U.S.) Library of Congress photostream, has over 34,000 photos on Flickr, and The U.S. National Archives has over 16,500 photos. The Internet Archive Book Images , with over 5,240,000 photos on Flickr, has many, many book illustrations pertaining to the South and free to use.

Related miscellany: 

Genealogist Lisa Cooke posted some information on finding historical photographs on Flickr, and she noted that “An important part of the Flickr world is Creative Commons, which describes itself as part of a “worldwide movement for sharing historical and out-of-copyright images.” Organizations posting to Flickr offer different rights for downloading and using their images via Creatives Commons. You will notice that attribution — giving credit to the source — is very important.

For that matter, “Copyright sure gets people confused.” The Legal Genealogist (Judy G. Russell, JD, CG, CGL) tells you how to decide if something is copyright free. She points to how to use the free tool from the Cornell University Copyright Information Center, which I probably have cited here before – the chart is for Copyright Term and the Public Domain in the United States.

Chicago : Photo Jewelry Mf’g. Co.: Campaign, Souvenir, Advertising and Photo Buttons to order….” from the Early Photography Trade Catalogs and Manuals, Robert Lehman Collection Library, Metropolitan Museum of Art (N.Y, N.Y.)

Back to the military again, the largest collection of Air Force photographs relating to WWII in the National Archives is the World War II Air Force Unit Photographs, but the full collection also covers the Korean War, and predecessor agencies, etc., 1940-1980.

Especially interesting for those of you researching photographers, or with an interest in the topic, is the digital collection of Rare Materials in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Here you will find photography catalogs and manuals from the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the 103 catalogs donated to The Met by Alfred Stieglitz regarding Pictorialist Photography, various bound and unbound photograph albums, 1880s to 1938, and selections from the rare books in the Joyce F. Menschel Photography Library.

And in closing, it’s always good to check to see what’s new at The Ancestor Hunt, particularly in the list of Photo Archives and Online Galleries as well as seeing all the new things going on with Archival Resources at the Smithsonian Institution .

© E. Lee Eltzroth and Hunting & Gathering, 2019. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material, without written permission from this blog’s author is prohibited. The piece can be re-blogged, and excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to E. Lee Eltzroth and Hunting & Gathering, with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.