ResearchBuzz

Apparently it’s visual image day here at ResearchBuzz. There’s a new database of 6,000 photographs — 3,500 by Jack Richard and 2,500 by Charles Belden — showing northwestern Wyoming over a span of 100 years.

The photographs are in two collections — one for Richard and one for Belden — at http://www.bbhc.org/hmrl/collection.cfm . (This is the Buffalo Bill Historical Center, by the way.) I took a look at the Jack Richard Collection.

You can do a browse of everything in the collection, or you can do a keyword search (the keyword search, by default, spans both collections.) I did a search for cowboy and got over 300 results. All the results were in black and white and included Native Americans in parades with cowboys, calves getting branded, bucking broncos, and an adorable picture of a cowboy feeding an antelope.

Results are presented in a table with thumbnails. Click on the thumbnails for a larger image and more details, including date (I saw a lot that were just “circa 1930s”), notes, subject matter, and the location. There’s also a link to where you can order reprints of that image.

I didn’t see a way to browse by date, but you can do a search within a certain date range without including keywords. Meaning, of course, that you get all the pictures for that date. I did a search for 1901-1910 and got 80 pictures, with images from other photographers besides Belden and Richard. (Jack Richard, age 4, is even in one of these very old pictures.)

All the pictures I saw except one were black and white (the one was a grizzly bear pelt from the 1950s) and most of what I saw was from the 30s. I don’t hear often about digital collections from Wyoming, so I wanted to spotlight this one here. Try the subject listings for each picture to go browsing off in lots of different directions.

The George Eastman House, home of the world’s oldest photography museum, has announced that it is developing a wiki for documenting the photographic process. This new wiki is being aimed for use by collectors, curators, archivists, and conservators.

The wiki, which owes its creation to a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, will include information on cameras, chemical processes, and other topics related to photography. What I found especially interesting is that the site will also facilitate a classification scheme for imaging materials. Criteria will include detail, type, condition, age, and process.

The wiki is expected to take up to two years to develop (you’ll pardon the pun) and once developed, is expected to be “closed”, with edits coming only from staff at the Eastman House and curators, scholars, and other experts.

While you’re waiting for the new Wiki, you can check out the Eastman house podcasts, view the digitized offerings, and take a virtual tour. (Don’t miss the samples from the Kodak advertising collection).

Merriam-Webster has leaded up with QA International to launch a new online visual dictionary, which contains information on over 20,000 terms and more than 6,000 illustrations. Visual Dictionary Online is available at http://www.visualdictionaryonline.com .

You can browse the dictionary by topic (from astronomy to sports & games) or you can do a keyword search of the index, which will suggest words. Doing a search for giraffe, for example, brought up an illustration called “EXAMPLES OF UNGULATE MAMMALS” and included a giraffe, hippo, elephant, etc. Beneath that were brief captions about each type of mammal and a link to an audio pronunciation.

I believe I would like these illustrations more if they were not accompanied by a GIANT DISTRACTING WATERMARK. I understand the need for the watermark, but perhaps a little smaller and a little more transparent. Other than that I liked the scope of what is here — I wasn’t expecting an illustration for delicatessen (see the difference between American and Canadian bacon at a glance!) or a whole set of illustrations related to optics (cross-section of an electron microscope.)

In addition to the definitions there’s also a game of the week (match the definitions to the illustrations; this week’s was pretty easy but the archived game for the castle looks tough) and a place you can buy the software version of the visual dictionary. There’s a place for tools — blog, Web, and school lessons — but nothing’s there yet.