Contextualizing the Visual Archive for Teaching

Professor Josh Brown is lead historian for a project-in-progress, jointly sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and American Social History Project/Center for Media and Learning (ASHP/CML) called “Contextualizing the Visual Archive for Teaching.”   Funded by an Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS) planning grant, the project will build “an enhanced catalog prototype for visual collections that will draw information from a primary catalog database and supplement it with resources to assist interpretation and understanding of historical visual documents.”

During the planning phase, AAS will conduct more extensive research among potential users and carry out preliminary programming on a small set of test images for an online, open-source resource that will allow visual images from any library or museum collection to be linked to collection records and other materials. This project is intended to build an interactive online interface for teachers working with high school and college students that will link historical American images to rich contextual information as well as to full catalog records.