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Archive: 2012 (22 Posts)

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: Last Minute Shopping

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Have you left your holiday shopping to the last minute? Hoping you can find that perfect gift just minutes before the stores close? Well, it turns out shopping on Christmas Eve – and fighting the crowds to do it – is nothing new, if this photograph from December 24, 1920 is any indication: Several things …

The Visual Legacy of Jack E. Boucher, Architectural Photographer

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

  In a career spanning forty-six years, Jack E. Boucher traveled through forty-nine states and two U.S. territories to photograph for the Historic American Buildings Survey (HABS) and its sister projects, the Historic American Engineering Record (HAER) and Historic American Landscapes Survey (HALS). Boucher passed away recently, so I asked colleagues here to share stories …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: Most Original Costume

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Still trying to decide about your costume for Halloween? Torn between a witch or a princess? An astronaut or a librarian? (Surely someone out there was going to dress as a librarian?) Throw out all those ideas because I have the solution! Amaze your friends and family by arriving at your Halloween festivities (or even …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

A Yak by Any Other Name: Meet the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Fishbowls, Whittling, Email, and Ice cream parlors.  What could those four terms possibly have in common?  It turns out they are all recent additions to the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM). Which naturally leads to the question:  What is the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials? Briefly, TGM is a tool for indexing visual materials, both by …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: Fashion Flashback

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Earlier this month, New York City’s catwalks were filled with the latest creations from the world of fashion during the biannual ritual of Fashion Week. At the same time, I was searching in the George Grantham Bain Collection while answering a reference question and came across this stylish photograph. How could I resist stopping to …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

Caught Our Eyes: Better with Butter

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Reading the caption for a photograph can sometimes change every assumption made at first glance. One word in the title of this photograph shifted my entire view, and definitely caught my eye. Look at the image yourself, and then read the full title as it was written on the back of this stereograph card. The …

Smiling woman dressed in outdoor winter clothes holds a large, old-style camera

An Olympic Tug of War

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

I love the Olympics. I love the competition, the ceremonies, the sportsmanship. My earliest personal experience with a festival of games was on a pretty small scale: the annual Field Day in grade school. My favorite event wasn’t the water balloon toss or the three-legged race. It was the ultimate battle between classes, Tug of …