*SAVING AND SHARING THE AGS LIBRARY’S HISTORIC NITRATE*
*NEGATIVE IMAGES*

*An NEH-Funded Project*

*American Geographical Society Library*
*University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Libraries*

In 2010 the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) generously
funded a two-year project to preserve and provide access to the American
Geographical Society Library's seventy thousand nitrate negatives. These
invaluable images span every continent with the exception of Antarctica
and document a global range of peoples, cultures, and landscapes as seen
through the eyes of geographers, adventurers and professional photo
journalists.


The AGS Library is the former research library of the American
Geographical Society (AGS), which was founded in the early 1850s to
promote the collection of geographical information and to establish and
maintain a library with a collection of maps, charts and instruments.
Through the years, the AGS Library succeeding in building a
distinguished photographic collection, with images dating from the
mid-nineteenth century to the present, which included a sizable number
of nitrate negatives. Cellulose nitrate film, introduced in 1889, was an
important innovation in photography and was popular for well over half a
century. It is, however, a volatile and flammable material, and it was
clear that the AGSL’s deteriorating negatives required immediate attention.


The NEH-funded project enabled the AGS Library to rehouse, scan, create
metadata for, publish online and provide cold storage for these historic
images.


To view the results of this project please go to :

http://www4.uwm.edu/libraries/digilib/NEHgrant/