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Archive: November 2015 (2 Posts)

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

“What’s this Gadget?”: Solving Mystery Photos

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

We asked “What’s this Gadget?” about a set of twenty-five uncaptioned photographs from the Harris & Ewing Collection, and you definitely put on your thinking caps – or maybe your psychographs – which we learned the smiling woman below is “wearing”! This previously uncaptioned photograph shows a psychograph, a phrenology machine meant to measure the …

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

Flipping through the Card Catalog

Posted by: Kristi Finefield

Even if I weren’t a reference librarian, I would have a fondness for the card catalog. When I was introduced to the cabinets of small drawers filled with cards in my high school library, I enjoyed the ability to browse through the cards and discover new books to read or topics to explore. Until automated …