Ready for Research: From Latin America and Baseball Cards to Moral Re-Armament and Historical Trademark Designs

The following is a guest post by Helena Zinkham, Chief, and Aliza Leventhal, Head, Technical Services, both of the Prints & Photographs Division.

Every week our department organizes, houses, describes, and selectively digitizes a wide variety of pictures. Here are the highlights from the more than 125,000 items completed in the past six months. You can enjoy many of the images online, and can view and research many more by visiting the Prints & Photographs Reading Room.

Tres Ríos Photographs of Latin America, 2000-2016. These 2,285 striking color photographs show the diverse cultural life and heritages in Mexico, Cuba, Brazil, Ecuador, and Nicaragua. Adalberto Ríos Szalay is a Mexican photographer, writer, and anthropologist who works as “Tres Ríos” with his two sons, Adalberto Ríos Lanz and Ernesto Ríos Lanz. Try these keywords for an introduction to their fully online collection: Artisans, Dance, Food, Music, and Traditional. (Publication permission is required.)

Moral Re-Armament (MRA) Records, primarily 1920-1970. An estimated 68,000 photographs document the people and activities of a global social and spiritual movement started by Frank Buchman. The images show the members; notable visitors; movie, music, and theater productions; and facilities in the United States and Caux, Switzerland. Supporters of the organization included Mary McLeod Bethune, tennis star Bunny Austin, and such international political leaders as United Nations Secretary-General U Thant and Germany’s Chancellor Konrad Adenauer. A 1,505 page finding aid provides detailed information about the photographic prints, negatives, and color transparencies.

Topps Baseball Cards. More than 45,000 cards, most published by the Topps Company, show individual players, coaches, managers, stadiums, signatures, and mascots. Collector Peter G. Strawbridge carefully preserved complete sets of every Major League Baseball team from 1973 through 2019 as well as Boston Red Sox cards that date from earlier years. His family recently donated the entire collection to the Library of Congress. At least one card from each team is available online.

Patent Office Trademarks, 1869-1911. The online collection of trademark designs has expanded from about 10,000 to 20,000 images. Our goal is to add 10,000 more images each year until all 80,000 designs are online. This special search can show you the most recently added trademark images at the start of the display screens: https://www.loc.gov/pictures/search/?q=trademarks&fi=number&st=gallery&so=desc&sb=source_created   (Search tip: You can add this string of letters to any search in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog to see the newest images display first: &so=desc&sb=source_created.)

Looking ahead, the new processing projects underway include:

• Copyright Deposits from Class I, 1938-1950 (15,000 items)
• Patent Office Advertising Prints and Labels, 1870s-1920s (more than 180,000 items)
• Postcard File, 1890s-present (more than 50,000 items)
• Robert H. McNeill Family collection, 1840s-1990s (about 25,000 items) documenting nearly two hundred years of African-American life and leadership.

Learn More:

• Enjoy the picture collections presented in previous Ready for Research blog posts.
• Receive links to new finding aids by subscribing to the Finding Aids RSS or email feeds.
• Explore the growing set of collection and subject guides that describe popular Prints & Photographs Division collections.