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How Can We Better Display Historical Photos Online?

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Abstract

How can we better display historical photos online, make them more easily explorable and searchable, and share them with the public? How can we connect relevant photos from other archives to our patrons? How can we make photo archives fun and meaningful? How can we encourage public participation in photo tagging, dating, and documentation and champion community members’ local expertise? How can we expand our photo holdings to better reflect the experiences of underrepresented groups? 

Our small team of academics and software engineers, based in Iowa and Connecticut, have been asking these questions for the past decade and have emerged with a new public platform–Fortepan US–that beautifully displays historical photos according to place, time, and theme. Based on the magnificent Hungarian public portal, Fortepan.hu, we are part of a movement that values and safeguards local history, preserves family photos, elevates user experience, and promotes sharing. 

This pop-up presentation is an invitation to find out more about this movement. Having built Fortepan IA and CT, and launching Fortepan AK and CO, we are developing “Fortepan” opportunities for every state, national park, and Indigenous territory. The possibilities for overlap and virtual reunification between the many archives across the Midwest are immense. Fortepan US includes crowd-sourced tagging, embedding (like one embeds a Google map), sophisticated exhibit and mapping tools, and tremendous user participation opportunities. Our goal for this new, free public portal is “ease of use” for administrators and especially users.

Keywords: archive, photographs, family snapshots, archiving portal, fortepan, virtual reunification

How to Cite:

Fabos, B., Waller, O., Kuhlmann, L., Luhring, O., Chatwell, M., Gehle, C. & Bissell, A., (2024) “How Can We Better Display Historical Photos Online?”, MAC Annual Meeting Presentations 2024(1).