Researcher's Toolbox

Identifying and Interpreting Images

• Visual Literacy Exercise (PDF document / 165 kb / Download Adobe Reader for PDFs) - A method for looking systematically at an image and determining what you see, what knowledge you bring to what you see, and what you would like to investigate further.
• Solving a Civil War Photograph Mystery - Describes clues and resources used to identify a Civil War Photograph reputed to be of Ulysses S. Grant.
• What Do You See? (via Library of Congress Learning Page) - Asks questions about sections of a Civil War photograph and, on a second page, supplies the answers.
• Popular Photographic Print Processes Represented in the Prints and Photographs Division - Provides brief descriptions and chronology of processes popularly used to make photographic prints since the beginning of photography.
• Dating Photographs:
  • The Costume Detective: How to Date Old Photographs by the Costume - Provides information on fashion trends of various eras that can be used to help date photographs, as well as examples showing how fashion details visible in a photograph can be used to narrow down the date of the image.
  • Family Chronicle: Dating Old Photographs - Provides dated photographs (including several from Prints & Photographs Division Collections), of people 1840s-1900s, as a tool to match clothing styles and styles of portraiture for purposes of dating undated photographs.

Researching Specific Prints and Photographs Division Collections

• Collection and Subject/Format Overviews - Lists online documents about specific collections.
• Publications Relating to Prints and Photographs Division Collections - Lists printed books and articles about the Prints and Photographs Division holdings and specific segments of it.
• Cartoon-related Research at the Library - Describes cartoon material held in various Library of Congress divisions and how to search for them.
• Historical Prints: Evaluation, Authenticity, Copyright, Dealers, and Bibliography - Describes general characteristics of historical prints and resources for researching them.
• Women's History Resources in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division (Picture Pathfinder) - Provides a checklist of collections and sources to check for various themes and types of images; may be applicable to topic areas beyond women's history.

Resources for Learning More About Researching Images

• Picture Research and Visual Literacy in Visual Materials: Processing & Cataloging Bibliography - Lists sources that discuss picture research and analysis.
• Media and Format Identification and History in Visual Materials: Processing & Cataloging Bibliography - Lists sources for researching visual formats.
• Online Reference Sources for Cataloging Visual Materials - A list of tools and sources useful to anyone who is trying to identify or verify information about pictures.
• "Worth a Billion Words: Library of Congress Pictures Online" - An article about how digitized images support research, published in Journal of American History, 94 (June 2007) 99-111.