Historypin's use of Visual Access

Visual access is the use of pictures to optimize subject access to pictures. One common example is the use of thumbnails. Historypin places the thumbnails on a map, their search page being the "Map" page, allowing the user to search and browse pictures visually.

Current Picture of Flat Iron Building Location?

To give a local example of what Historypin could show, I searched the Flat Iron Building's address, 301 West Main Street Urbana, IL in Google Earth. Of course, the building burned down but, was this really where the Flat Iron Building, featured in an earlier post as a sample of a picture of local history, was originally located? The neighborhood looks very different these days! 

This more recent picture, from the UI Urbana Library Digital Collection's flickr account at least has more modern roads. This also begs the question, can Historypin host several images of the same place and allow a Tour to transition between them chronologically? That would be cool.

Tours on Historypin

The "Tours" function, one of neatest features of Historypin, overlays historical photographs onto Google Earth imaging and allows the user to easily fade between then and now. This example is from the Beatlemania tour.

Use of Tags on Historypin

This Historypin example of a school in Lousiville, KY shows how tags are commonly used to describe photographs and provide subject access beyond location and date. Though tags cannot be edited by the casual visitor, notice the "Suggest more accurate details" option provided. Unlike the description, tags are searchable.

Elements of Photograph Description

Brian Stewart's paper suggests the use of "aboutness" or iconology in photograph description. This table is a mash-up of Shatford's and Panofsky's theories of photograph description and indexing (Stewart, 301) and puts "aboutness" in the context of the more traditional descriptive elements. 

Sample Local Historical Photograph

Photograph hosted by Champaign County Genealogical Society, and located in the Local History Photographs Collection in the Champaign County Historical Archives of The Urbana Free Library.