Category: Behind the Scenes

Last week, we had the chance to give NBC Philadelphia a tour of the photo collection at the City Archives and a peek into the research we completed this past spring on augmented reality. Check out the embedded video below to learn more or watch the segment over on the NBC10 site!

View more videos at: http://www.nbcphiladelphia.com.

Metadata. This rather ambiguous term is the skeleton underneath every image on PhillyHistory.org. Metadata is how we know when and where a photograph was taken. It is how we know who took the photograph and, to some extent, why they took it. Without metadata, searching PhillyHistory.org for photographs of Independence Hall or your grandmother’s house would be nearly impossible. But what is metadata?!

Metadata is essentially “data about data,” meaning information about any type of “data” – whether it’s a letter, a photograph, a painting, or even a piece of furniture. Metadata can range from the time and date something was created to who created it and even the reason behind its creation. At its core, metadata allows us to describe an object and, in the case of databases like PhillyHistory.org, use that description to locate one item out of thousands. When you enter a book’s title and author into a library catalog, you’re using metadata to find the specific book you want to read. Similarly, when you search PhillyHistory.org for a photograph taken at a specific location, that location and any other information about the photograph is metadata.

Before we upload a new photograph to PhillyHistory.org, we first create a database record, known as an “asset,” that details as much information as possible about the image. For the majority of the photographs in our collections, this includes a title, description, photographer name, location, and date, as well as the photograph’s record group and negative number. By and large, this information is taken from the original envelope containing the negative or from a log book kept by the photographers as shown here.

When entering metadata into a new record, we follow certain standards, commonly known within the archival community as “best practices.” Perhaps the cardinal rule of metadata is that all information must be entered as it appears in the original historical record. In our case, this means entering each title as the photographer recorded it in the log book or on the original envelope, even if the title is as general as “Houses, Stores, Etc.” In these instances, PhillyHistory.org users or one of the members of the PhillyHistory team often recognize a building or a house and suggest a better title for the photograph, but, according to the rules of metadata, we can’t change the title. Instead, additional details from a user or one of our archivists are entered in the “Notes” field. In a PhillyHistory.org record, the “Notes” field is our chance to add anything the photographer forgot or to correct something that is wrong or misleading. One common correction involves location, as the location the photographer recorded is sometimes not the one pictured in the photograph but rather the location from which the photograph was taken. In these cases, we title the photograph just as the photographer did, “Northeast Corner of 12th and Market Streets” for example, but leave a note about the difference between the photographer’s location and the location pictured in the photograph.

One other fun fact about metadata – if a photographer misspelled a street name, best practices tells us to enter the street name as the photographer recorded it, followed by the correct spelling in brackets. In the archival world, brackets indicate a change or addition to the original historical record and are peppered throughout the records on PhillyHistory.org. In this way, metadata is also about translating records that someone wrote fifty or a hundred years ago, an endeavor almost as challenging as understanding metadata!

Managing metadata in an archive comes with all sorts of additional and complex issues. For more information beyond this brief introduction, visit the following links.

“Metadata Resources” – Compiled by the Minnesota State Archives.

“Metadata Standards/ About” – Compiled by the Princeton University Library.

“Understanding Metadata” – Published by the National Information Standards Organization Press in 2004.

“Getting Meta with Metadata” is the second article in “Behind the Scenes at PhillyHistory.org,” a new series of blog entries that will provide insights into the activities that go into creating PhillyHistory.org.

When we enter new photographs into the PhillyHistory.org database, we include as much information as possible about an image from the date and photographer’s name to the location. Without a doubt, location is one of the most important parts of our photo collections as many of the historic images depict street scenes and the exterior of buildings. Whenever possible, we try to geocode (assign latitude and longitude coordinates) to an image. We can geocode a photo by identifying an address, street intersection, or place name (such as City Hall) or by selecting a point on a map. The software behind PhillyHistory.org will take this information and calculate the latitude and longitude coordinates associated with that spot. Once a photo has been geocoded, users can search for and find the image based on its geographic criteria. The geographic location of a photo is crucial as PhillyHistory.org users search for images by address or neighborhood more than keyword or any other search criteria. If a photo has an identified location, users also can download it to Google Earth or compare the historical images with the present-day Google Street View.

However, what we know about a photo depends upon what information the photographer left behind. Sometimes, we unfortunately have little or no knowledge of where a photo was taken. Photographs of bridges, railroads, and creeks are among the most challenging to locate since the photographer’s terminology is frequently too broad or too narrow for our purposes. In some instances, photographers used surveying markers to describe their location, but unfortunately “North from Station 109+70” can’t tell us exactly where a photo is located along the Frankford Creek. Alternately, some locations were recorded in very basic terms. In these cases, tracking down an address often requires some ingenuity and super sleuthing, along with a little help from our friends.

So how do we do it? Here’s an example using a PhillyHistory.org image taken on March 27, 1898.

The title, “Broad Street Bridge,” places the photo at any number of locations along Broad Street. When the title and the description provided by the photographer prove vague or indefinite, we turn to the photo for more details. Fortunately, the photo itself provides a few clues; we can see that this was a railroad bridge and there is a sign on the right-hand side building that reads “Gas And…” Following these leads, I turned to the Greater Philadelphia GeoHistory Network (www.philageohistory.org), a pilot project of the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries and now led by the Athenaeum of Philadelphia.

Among other resources, the GeoHistory Network provides digitized copies of historical maps and atlases from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, along with an awesome interactive maps viewer that allows users to zoom in on a location and compare the historic map with the current street grid. To find a location for this photo, I used the 1910 Philadelphia Atlas by G.W. Bromley. Following North Broad Street from City Hall, I found the old Philadelphia and Reading Railroad freight yard at North Broad and Callowhill Streets, which seemed like a good candidate for this photo’s location. To confirm my suspicions, I scanned the map area, which lists business names on the building outlines, and found the Horn and Brannen Gas and Electric Fixtures Factory at the next intersection – North Broad and Noble Streets. This matched the “Gas And…” sign visible on the right-hand side of the photo and, to make my final determination, I zoomed in on a high resolution copy of the image. Not only was the full factory name visible, but the building on the left-hand side turned out to be the Baldwin Locomotive Works, which was also visible on the map. Satisfied with my findings, I geocoded this photo to North Broad and Callowhill Streets and set the Street View to look north toward the intersection of Broad and Noble Streets.

Often, the maps from the GeoHistory Network are an invaluable resource in our efforts to locate photos; additionally, we also rely on the knowledge of our users who can submit comments and error reports for any photo on PhillyHistory.org. As the story of this one photo shows, sometimes all it takes is a keen eye, a bit of research, and a little luck to solve the mystery of photos without a location.

“Oh Where Can This Be?” is the first article in “Behind the Scenes at PhillyHistory.org,” a new series of blog entries that will provide insights into the activities that go into creating PhillyHistory.org.