general purpose use, particularly for use in PowerPoint, or an online presentation, the larger JPEG images work just fine. For publishing in print media, let your publisher guide your choice. As an example of the level of detail available, consider this picture (below). This is one part of a four-frame panorama of Gloucester Harbor in Massachusetts, shot in 1905. Notice the steamer docked on the right-hand side of the picture. By zooming in on the biggest TIFF file, we discovered that she is the Grantham, a 2358-ton general cargo steamer out of West Hartlepool,
UK. We contacted the local historical society in West Hartlepool and learned that the steamer in the photo was built in 1890 as Bussorah. She was renamed in 1891, and was torpedoed and sunk by U-31 in 1918. Searching the Collection As of June 2020, there are approximately 30,000 high-resolution images in the collection, with around 25,000 of them scanned in the highest resolution (in the neighborhood of 150 MB). There are also a large number (~20,000) of unscanned items of various formats in the collection.
As with any online collection, there are various ways of searching for that which you wish to find, but there are a few caveats to be aware of about the database before describing some details about searching. The item records at the Library of Congress were constructed partly from information that they received in 1949, when the plates first arrived in Washington. Keep in mind that the Detroit Publishing Company photographers were interested in getting images to put on postcards to make money. Historical accuracy was simply not part of their mindset. Inevitably, a fair amount of
This image is one of a four-part panorama of Gloucester Harbor, ca. 1905. Zooming in on the steamship towards the right of the photo, you can easily make out the ship’s name and home port— Grantham, West Hartlepool.
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SEA HISTORY 172, AUTUMN 2020