The DPC: Venturing into a New Frontier

Now the Picture Collection is beginning to go online. Its first Internet presence is being established with 30,000 images from the reference portion of the collection— pictures mainly dating before 1923 and thus out of copyright.

These pictures are available as part of the NYPL Digital Library and are accessible for browsing online by the traditional subject headings that are used by patrons and staff in the Mid-Manhattan Library. Additionally, they are now searchable online by:

Names

The artists, engravers, & creators of the images.

Titles

The individual image names.

Subjects

From both The Thesaurus of Graphic Materials & The Library of Congress

Source

The material from which the pictures were originally clipped

Keywords

From the full text of the accompanying catalog records

Like the circulating collection, much of the reference collection is clipped from books, magazines, and newspapers, but a large amount of prints, photographs, posters, postcards, advertisements, and other non-bibliographic material has also been collected, indexed, and filed by the Picture Collection staff over the years. It is a unique collection of material, traditionally used by artists, designers, and professionals of the visual arts.

This invaluable online resource with its enhanced searchability offers new opportunities for picture researchers of all types, particularly historians, teachers, and students because the images can be immediately printed or downloaded from the Internet, with or without the accompanying cataloging information. In addition, all images within the Digital Picture Collection can also be licensed for publication. Browse the DPC »