The United States is dotted with thousands of Historical
Societies. Some, like the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (mentioned in
detail in the February 2, 2013 Finding Stuff post) are
chock-a-block full of digital documents and finding aids. Others, like the tiny
Russian River Historical Society in Monte Rio,
California don’t have much in the way of textual sources, but have a splendid
selection of digitized photographs—in this case images depicting life among the
redwoods along the Russian River.
There are dozens of photographs in their gallery, dating from
about 1890 through 2011—with the richest troves in the early 20th
century. They are classified by town. All images are downloadable JPEGs of
quite decent quality. However, all images have a white historical society logo watermark
in the center of the frame.
For general research, the watermark is not a hindrance. But
if you want to use clear images you’ll have to contact the society and order
prints or digital copies (and get permissions). The charge for one 8x10 print
is $17. And the charge for a single image on a CD is $15 plus $8 for the CD.
Add $10 for shipping of either. In this age of ultra-modern telecommunications,
it would seem better, faster, and cheaper if the RRHS could email the file as a
.jpg. In the case of a digital scan that would save users $18 per order. Their
photo order form says nothing about discounts for additional images.
Down in the hometown of Apple you’ll find the Cupertino Historical Society and Museum.
There, in the very heart of Silicon Valley, you might expect to find a fabulous
trove of amazing stuff. Or not. The CHSM lists no digital resources on their
website —no historical photos, no documents, no oral histories. What a
disappointment. But they do list links to other local repositories, including
the California History Center
at Cupertino’s De Anza College.
The California History Center is a great source for South
Bay Area materials. They have student research papers, thousands of
photographs, hundreds of oral histories, maps, clippings, and other primary
sources. Unfortunately none of this is yet available online—not even finding
aids. (To be fair, some of their photos are available on the Silicon Valley History Online website.
Sticking around Northern California, there are two really
good sources for stuff: The San Francisco Public Library and the California Historical Society.
On the former’s home page click on eLibrary. That takes you to a page of SFPL links. The two that are
of most interest to researchers are SF
Historical Photos and SFPL-Created
Research Tools.
![](https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig-f6cPiyniin4Cf7GQNQKEo7lx2drXVQ8x180phOiOQCxOYHMQ6yAClVqc_FBtyAb6zm0334k1JL3IdKL5h52GMBicZkagE2-8VUnn1A_UwPU8hlSB3zjk9HqVz-4RVoLn2D0Kx7722Hg/s400/screen+-+sfpl+elib.jpg)
The photo collection
has more than 38,000 online images
available for download. If you go to the Browse by Subject page you’ll be confronted by a few dozen broad
categories, like Banks, Bars, and Baseball. Some of the listing can be browsed
alphabetically, others by subjects—Baseball,
for example, is divided into Early, Giants, and Seals. And some categories have both features.
Browsing Baseball,
Seals, brings up 52 thumbnail images of that pre-Giants minor league team
and their compact stadium.
If you find an image you like, you can click on View Full Record for more information
and click to a larger, downloadable, image.
If you’re just researching, then this image will probably be
fine. But for commercial use, you must get permission from the library. You may
also order a print or a scan (the scan is certainly the better bet). For $15
you can get a 300dpi TIFF file of any existing image in the database.
The California Historical Society is also based in San Francisco. They
currently have 23,000 records, only 40 of which are digitized. However, most of
their Finding Aids are available
online (in conjunction with the OAC—the Online Archive of California [more
about this amazing resource in a later post]).
Navigate to the SearchCollections page and enter your search term(s) into
either of the boxes provided (I usually start with the CHS’s).
I wanted to know what they might have about my favorite old
subject, Asbury Harpending.
Type the
name. Click. And up come four entries. The first is the one I’m really excited
about: his Personal Papers. By
clicking on that, the Finding Aid appears. It tells me that the CHS has ten
boxes of material, three of which are flat (suggesting maps, plans, or other
large items). There is a brief summary of the scope and content of the
collection, but, alas, no box-level descriptions.
To troll Harpending’s papers I’ll either have to go to San
Francisco myself (sounds like fun—great food!) or hire a researcher to fish for
me.
The U.S. is abuzz with historical societies. The smaller
ones, working on tiny budgets, and relying mainly on volunteers, are trying
their best to catch up to the 21st century. But it will take time.
If you want to speed up the process, consider volunteering at your local
society.
In the next post we’ll get take a look at the digital
offerings of college and university
special collections.
Disclaimer: The description of web pages are accurate as of
the date of the post. Like everything else in this digital world of ours, they
can change in the blink of an eye.
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