Carnegie Mellon University Libraries

History

Pictorial Resources

Below are resources for finding historical pictures and photographs. Hunt Library has many other pictorial resources, too numerous to list here. Many can be found by doing a subject keyword search in Carnegie Mellon's library catalog, using the terms history and pictorial and X, where X is the subject in which you are interested, e. g., history and pictures and medicine. Please remember that the resources listed in General can be useful for any subject. If you need help finding historical pictures, please ask at the Hunt Library reference desk.

• African History: Pictorial Resources
• African American History: Pictorial Resources
• American History: Pictorial Resources
• Asian History: Pictorial Resources
• Atlantic World: Pictorial Resources
• Business and Industrial History: Pictorial Resources
• Environmental History: Pictorial Resources
• European History: Pictorial Resources
• General
• Historic Preservation: Pictorial Resources
• History of Medicine: Pictorial Resources
• History of Technology and Science: Pictorial Resources
• Labor and Economic History: Pictorial Resources
• Latin American and Caribbean History: Pictorial Resources
• Political Cartoons
• Pittsburgh History: Pictorial Resources
• Sports History: Pictorial Resources
• Urban History: Pictorial Resources
• Women's History: Pictorial Resources

General

• Ad*Access (Digital Scriptorium, Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library, Duke University)
  Browse or search for U. S. and Canadian newspaper and magazine ads from 1911-1955. The five main subject areas covered are radio, television, transportation, beauty and hygiene, and World War II.

• Adams, James Truslow. Album of American History. 6 vols. and supp. New York: Scribner, 1969.
  HUNT REF-1 E178.5 .A482
  Pictures of all aspects of American life from the colonial period to ca. 1980. Volume 6 has a subject index for volumes 1-6; the supplement has its own index.

• The Amazing Picture Machine (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory)
  Searchable database of graphic images on the web.

• America During the Great Depression to World War II: Photographs from the FSA-OWI, 1935-1945 (American Memory, Library of Congress)
  Photographs of rural life, the negative impact of the Great Depression, farm mechanization, the Dust Bowl, and the mobilization effort for World War II. You can search for black and white or color photographs, or both, by subject or creator, or browse state and county indexes.

• America's First Look Into the Camera: Daguerreotype Portraits and Views, 1939-1864 (American Memory, Library of Congress)
  More than 650 photographs, from 1839 to 1864, which can be browsed or searched by keyword.

• Andrew Carnegie Image Collection (University Archives, Carnegie Mellon University)
  Photos of Andrew Carnegie, daughter Margaret, and friends at their leisure in and around Skibo Castle in the early 1900s.

• AP Images (Carnegie Mellon users only)
  ca. 1840s-present (updated daily)
  Regional, state, national and international news photographs with descriptive captions and identifying information including photographer, date and location. Search by "What," "When," "Where," singly or in combination. Some images are deleted over time.

• Around the World in the 1890s: Photographs from the World's Transportation Commission, 1894-1896 (American Memory, Library of Congress)
  Search or browse about 900 images of different types of transportation, as well as city, street, and harbor scenes from all over the world.

• ARTstor (Carnegie Mellon users only)
  Digital image library containing approximately 300,000 images pertaining to art, architecture and archeology. ARTstor provides software tools that enable active use of the collections as well as the ability to save groups of images online for personal and classroom use.

• Built in America: Historic American Buildings Survey/Historic American Engineering Record, 1933-present (American Memory, Library of Congress)
  More than 363,000 measured drawings, large-format photographs, and written histories for more than 35,000 historic structures and sites from the seventeenth to the twentieth century. Additional images will be added monthly.

• EASE History (Michigan State University)
  Browse Historical Events (ca. 1900-present), Campaign Ads (ca. 19520-2004), and Core Values. Includes photographs and videos.

• Frank M. Hohenberger Photograph Collection (Indiana University)
  Search or browse photographs of the life, customs, and scenes of Brown County, as well as other areas of Indiana, of Kentucky, of South Carolina, and of Mexico, from 1917-1960.

• HarpWeek (Carnegie Mellon users only)
  1857-1912
  Contains all the pages of Harper's Weekly from 1857-1912 as scanned images. Search for illustrations by marking the illustration index and entering your subject term. Since the scanned images (11 x 15.5") are too large to print full size on 8.5 x 11" paper, please see Printing from HarpWeek for printing and downloading information.

• The House of Worth: Fashion Designs: A Photographic Record. London, England: Mindata, 1984. Microfiche.
  HUNT MFICHE-3 746.9 V64H
  Reproduction of the Worth photographic albums in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

• Images of American Political History (William J. Ball, College of New Jersy)
  Search or browse over 500 images.

• Inventing Entertainment: The Motion Pictures and Sound Recordings of the Edison Companies (Library of Congress, American Memory Project)
  Search or browse motion pictures, disc sound recordings, photographs and original magazine articles.

• Life Photo Archive hosted by Google
  Search or browse about 10 million photos from the Life photo archives. "In addition to housing some of the most important images taken by LIFE photographers, the LIFE photo archive also includes the Zapruder film of the Kennedy assassination; the Mansell Collection from London; Dahlstrom glass plates of New York and environs from the 1880s; Hugo Jaeger Nazi-era Germany 1937–1944; DMI red-carpet celebrity shots; Pix, Inc. personalities; and the entire works left to the collection from LIFE photographers Alfred Eisenstaedt, Gjon Mili, and Nina Leen."

• Mathew Brady's Portraits (National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution)
  Tour the Portrait Gallery or learn how a photograph was made during the late 1800s.

• Nagasaki Journey: the Photographs of Yosuke Yamahata (The Exploratorium)
  Photographic portion of Remembering Nagasaki, an online exhibition.

• NOAA Photo Collection (NOAA Central Library)
  Search or browse photographs and images from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and NOAA's ancestor agencies. Coverage includes meteorology and climatology, the history of NOAA's satellite program, geodetic and hydrographic surveying, fisheries science, marine biology, geophysics, and the military uses of these disciplines.

• Photo Gallery (New Deal Network)
  Photos on all topics of the New Deal including, culture, construction, social programs, federal agencies, etc.

• The Photography Collection (Denver Public Library Western History/Genealogy Department)
  Browse or search 50,000 images of Native Americans, pioneers, early railroads, mining, Denver and Colorado towns, etc.

• The Prelinger Archives (InternetArchive)
  Browse or search and view over 1,200 "ephemeral" (advertising, educational, industrial, and amateur) films made from 1927 through the present.

• The Siege and Commune of Paris, 1870-1871 (Northwestern University Library -- Special Collections)
  Browse or search over 1200 digitized photographs and images recorded during the Siege and Commune of Paris ca. 1871. Included are portraits, landscapes and architecture, and political caricatures.

• Smith, C. Carter. The Faces of America. New York, N.Y.: Facts on File Publications, 1987.
  HUNT REF-1 CT213 .F33 1987
  Copyright-free reproducible illustrations of Americans from the colonial period to the 1980s.

• Time-Life Books. This Fabulous Century. 7 vols. Alexandria, Va.: Time-Life Books, 1985.
  HUNT REF-1 E161 .T55
  Pictures of all aspects of American life from 1870-1970. Each volume has a subject index.

• Touring Turn-of-the-Century America: Photographs from the Detroit Publishing Company, 1880-1920 (American Memory, Library of Congress)
  25,000 glass negatives and transparencies, and about 300 color photolithograph prints, mostly of the eastern United States, which can be browsed or searched.

• U.S. Steel Gary Works: Photograph Collection, 1906-1941 (Indiana University)
  When completed the site will contain 1,900 photographs of the Gary Works steel mill and the corporate town of Gary, Indiana.

• Visual Resources Collection (Amy Mans, Carnegie Mellon University Libraries)
  Pictorial resources for Carnegie Mellon users. Most are primarily geared for, but not limited to, art and architecture.

• World War II Poster Database (Northwestern University)
  300 World War II posters issued by various government agencies during the war years of 1940-1945. Also included are a few images of ration stamps and coupons, and facsimiles of proclamations and treaties.

• WWW-VL: History: History and Images

• Yahoo: Arts: Visual Arts: Photography: Exhibits: Historic

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Political Cartoons

• America in Caricature:, 1765-1865 (Lilly Library, Indiana University)

• American Political Prints: 1766-1876: Catalog of the Collection in the Library of Congress (Bernard F. Reilly, Jr., Library of Congress, HarpWeek)
  Browse or search by topic, person, or keyword.

• Baldy Editorial Cartoons (Digital Library of Georgia)
  2,500 cartoons from the Clifford H. Baldowski Collection at the Richard B. Russell Library for Political Research and Studies. Under the pen name "Baldy," Baldowski depicted local, national, and international news, such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Cold War, the Vietnam conflict, Middle East tensions, and Watergate in the editorial pages of the Augusta Chronicle, Miami Herald, and Atlanta Constitution.

• Cartoon Archive (Daniel Henry Backer)
  Cartoons from the Guilded Age, which are used in Backer's master's thesis, Uniting Mugwumps and the Masses: Puck's Role in Gilded Age Politics.

• A Catalog of Political Cartoons by Dr. Seuss (University of California, San Diego)

• Herblock's History: Political Cartoons from the Crash to the Millennium (Library of Congress)

• Political Cartoons.com
  Search or browse political cartoons by international political cartoonists.

• The Presidential Elections, 1960-1912 (HarpWeek)
  Cartoons from Harper's Weekly, Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, Vanity Fair, Puck, Judge, and the Library of Congress Collection of American Political Prints, 1766-1876.

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November 21, 2008 -- http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/user/sc24/History/pictures.html
Sue Collins, Senior Librarian, sc24@andrew.cmu.edu