American Memory:   Technical summary

Black and White Photographs from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, ca. 1935-1944

Future American Memory collection


Collection Overview

Description
Extensive photographic coverage of rural and small town America during the late 1930s, including the Depression era farm photos represented by Dorothea Lange's "Migrant Mother" and Walker Evans's images in the book "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men." In addition, the collection includes coverage of the defense and war mobilization effort from 1939-1944.
Source collection
Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Collection , Prints and Photographs Division.
Technical features
Large number of varied scenes, image quality is moderate. Not individually described.
Original material formats
Number of original items
ca. 170,000 when complete; first installment ca. 20-50,000
Status of collection
First installment of 20-50,000 images expected during first half of 1998. Most similar collection is Color Photographs from the Farm Security Administration and the Office of War Information, ca. 1938-1944
Public access
The Library is not aware of any U.S. copyright or other restrictions in the photographs in this collection. See notes on rights and restrictions provided by the Library to users of the color FSA/OWI photograph collection.

Aids to intellectual access

Type & granularity
  1. Group-level records. Each record describes a group of items (ca. 20-200), but records are not 100 percent mapped to images by number.
  2. Captions. Captions are to individual items but only exist for about one-third of the photographs in the first installment.
Linking to digital reproductions
Where identifiers exist in descriptive records, they point to filenames for all versions of image. Last character of filename is feature code for image type.

Digital reproductions

Total file-space for digital reproductions: Approx. 270 Kbytes per photograph for first installment.

Photographs Archival image Service image Inline thumbnail Additional thumbnail
Marker Filename ends "u" Filename ends "r" Filename ends "t" Filename ends "t"
Formats TIFF JPEG/JFIF GIF TIFF
Tonal resolution (grayscale) 8 bit 8 bit 8 bit 8 bit
Spatial resolution (approx) 560x440 pixels 560x440 pixels 150x100 pixels 150x100 pixels
Quantity (approx) 20-50,000 in first installment 20-50,000 in first installment 20-50,000 in first installment 20-50,000 in first installment
Sample Sample archival Sample service Sample thumbnail Sample thumbnail

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