Posts Tagged digital collections
Bobby Unser is one of auto racing’s major figures, counting among his victories three wins at the Indianapolis 500 and 13 wins at the Pikes Peak Hill Climb. In 2009, Bobby and his wife Lisa donated papers and photographs documenting Bobby’s racing career and the family’s life to The Henry Ford, and over the course of 2013, we added nearly 2300 of these photographs to our digital collections. Just added is this photo of Bobby and some of his military colleagues, with a handwritten note on the back lamenting too-large Air Force shorts. Explore all our digital Bobby Unser material on our collections website.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
digital collections, photographs, by Ellice Engdahl, race car drivers, racing
Just Added to Our Digital Collections: Records from The Henry Ford
The Henry Ford, dedicated in 1929 as The Edison Institute, has a long institutional history. Over the years, exhibits have come and gone, programs have evolved, and events both anticipated and unanticipated have changed the look and feel of Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village. We’ve recently been digitizing some of our own history in the form of photos and documents from previous decades. For example, this activity sheet encouraged young visitors during the holidays in 1986 to find animals in our collections items—but today, you might be even more interested in the included map that shows how much the Museum’s footprint has changed in 27 years. To see the map and the quiz questions, visit this collections record in our online collections—or view additional historic photos and documents related to Greenfield Village and Henry Ford Museum.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections and Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Greenfield Village, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl, Henry Ford Museum
I have always had a love for history— though, as an Anthropology major focused in Classics, my interests were initially focused on more ancient times. Interning at The Henry Ford, with its vast collections of objects relating to the American experience, has definitely broadened that love! Each day, I have the opportunity to “walk though” nearly 400 years of American history, whether represented in Greenfield Village, with all of its historic buildings, or Henry Ford Museum, with its historic objects. Here, history sits “side-by-side,” offering objects and stories from different eras. And all of the objects here have a story. As an intern working in the curatorial department, I am able to help bring these stories to the public and share my passion for history in a different way.
The Henry Ford’s collection is so vast that we can’t display all of our artifacts all at one time. Yet, with the advancements in digital technology, we can bring these objects and stories to the public through the use of the internet. Currently, we offer images and information for about 20,000 of The Henry Ford’s historic objects on our collections website. But there are additional opportunities to share our collections on the web. That’s what my work as an intern has focused on.
I have been preparing information about many of the quilts in our collection for The Quilt Index, an internationally-known online database of quilt construction and history. This database is comprised of information about hundreds of thousands of quilts owned by museums and individuals. It's the single largest source of information on quilt construction and quilt history resources on the web.
My internship project involves working with others on our staff to gather additional information about each of our quilts and its quilt maker, if known. Since I seem to have a flair for computer programs, my efforts were chiefly focused on learning The Quilt Index’s software system, and then adding information about The Henry Ford’s quilts to this database. Information on nearly 120 of our quilts can now be found on The Quilt Index.
While The Henry Ford’s collections webpage has allowed people who come to our website learn about our quilts, The Quilt Index broadens our reach. Through The Quilt Index, people all over the world can readily find information on many of our quilts—even if they were unaware that we have a quilt collection. Too, The Quilt Index allows researchers to examine our quilts “side by side” with quilts from other sources—even though the quilts themselves may be thousands of miles apart.
We have so many great quilts in our collection. When I first started working with the quilts, I could tell you which one was my favorite. Yet now that I have spent a great amount of time learning each quilt’s story, I have a hard time choosing just one! But there are some that do stand out more for me. These include the 1880s Vine Quilt by Susan Noakes McCord and the 1980s Indianapolis 500 Quilt by Jeanetta Holder. These two quilts are quite different in feel and are almost 100 years apart in age. Yet both of these quilts interest me. Susan’s appliqué quilt is so intricately detailed with many thousands of pieces, all sewn by hand. And I love the story surrounding Jeanetta’s 1980s quilt, made to celebrate race car driver Bobby Unser’s three Indianapolis wins.
The thought that I am able to share the information I have learned about our quilt collection with people all over the world is a very humbling experience. It really hits home for me, though, because I had to use The Quilt Index to complete a class assignment during my undergraduate studies. Now, here I am adding information to the site for others to use just like I did just over a year ago!
Take a look at our collections site to see more of our quilt-related artifacts.
Amanda Messer is a Curatorial Intern at The Henry Ford.
#Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, technology, quilts, digital collections, by Amanda Messer
If you’ve ever been to Holiday Nights in Greenfield Village, you know what a massive event it is, with performances, shopping, dining, bonfires, Santa and his reindeer, and even fireworks. What you might not know is that every year we add hundreds of artifacts, including toys, silverware, and china, from our vast collections to the houses to lend some authentic Christmastime cheer. We’ve recently digitized a few of the toys you’ll see during Holiday Nights this year, including this set of puzzle blocks on display at Susquehanna Plantation. If you’re visiting us this year, you can also keep your eyes peeled for this toy horse, toy lamb, and toy stork at Smiths Creek Depot. If you can’t get enough toys, our collections website currently features nearly 500.
toys and games, events, Greenfield Village, Christmas, Holiday Nights, holidays, by Ellice Engdahl, digital collections
With the holiday season firmly upon us, many people’s thoughts are turning to presents, and what present is more classic than a doll? This week’s collections object is a doll handmade from a woolen sock sometime in the first half of the 20th century. Though it may look a bit less friendly now, with its painted-on face having mostly faded away, it was no doubt a child’s beloved possession. Visit our collections site to find more than 140 dolls and related items, including more than 20 just-added dolls of bisque, cloth, papier mache, and wood, as well as dolls that walk and talk.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
childhood, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl, toys and games
Friends Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Thomas Edison, and John Burroughs went on camping trips together for a number of years, calling themselves the Vagabonds. Their trips were quite luxurious, by camping standards, involving a sizable caravan of staff and equipment. Why eat off tinware, for example, when one could use china instead? The Henry Ford’s collection includes a selection of the early 20th century Tudor Rose china that these august figures used on their wilderness trips, including the bouillon cup shown here. View photos and artifacts related to the Vagabonds on our collections website.
Thomas Edison, 20th century, 1920s, 1910s, Vagabonds, John Burroughs, Henry Ford, furnishings, Firestone family, digital collections, camping, by Ellice Engdahl
The Henry Ford Museum has hundreds of pieces of silver and pewter on display. We’ve recently been making upgrades to the cases and labels in this exhibit, and as this work has progressed, we’ve also taken the opportunity to clean, conserve, photograph, and update our documentation for this material. We currently have about 50 of these beautiful objects available for you to peruse on our digital collections site—everything from this early 18th century tankard to a complex mid-19th century compote—and we will be adding more over the coming months.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
The Digital Collections of The Henry Ford: 20,000 Items and Growing
October 24, 2013, was a Thursday like any other Thursday in the offices of The Henry Ford—until 5:48 PM rolled around. At 5:48 PM precisely (not that we were counting), we completed digitization of our 20,000th collections item! There was much rejoicing and taking of celebratory screenshots of our collections management system.
Having seen this goal on the horizon, we had already discussed which item should be the auspicious 20,000th. We settled on something both significant and (we felt) celebratory: a photograph of the first industrial robot, Unimate, serving a drink to George Devol, its creator.
We also arranged to have cake, celebrating the many staff in the institution who work on digitization in large and small ways.
And, we commemorated some of the notable digitization projects we’d worked on over the past few years with stickers created from our digital collections images.
Long-time photographer Rudy Ruzicska proudly showed off his stickers to Henry Ford.
There is a good reason we made such a big deal out of this milestone. Even though digitization is a relatively new process for The Henry Ford (and for many other museums and archives), the potential of getting our collections online is enormous.
Case in point, only about 9% of all the material we’ve digitized thus far is items currently located in public areas in the Museum or in Greenfield Village. About 60% of our digitized content is located in our archival stacks, previously accessible only through a visit to the Research Library in the Benson Ford Research Center. About half a percent of our digitized collections are items currently on loan to another institution, ranging from a few miles away (this Hudson, for example, is currently on loan to the Ypsilanti Automotive Heritage Collection) to halfway across the world (as witness this Rolls-Royce hood ornament, currently located in China). The remaining 30% or so of the collections items we’ve digitized are neither on public display nor accessible through the Research Library—they are items the public (and even many of our staff and volunteers!) would never otherwise get to see.
This is where the digital world offers a whole new way for our visitors to learn the stories behind our collections—not just by paying us a visit in person, but by making a virtual visit to the treasure trove of documents, photographs, and objects that we hold in trust for current and future generations.
We hope you enjoy viewing all of our growing digital collections. If you have a suggestion for what we should digitize next, or have thoughts on how we can make these digital collections more useful and meaningful, please let us know in the comments below!
Ellice Engdahl, Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford, is already counting down to our next digital collection milestone.
digitization, #Behind The Scenes @ The Henry Ford, by Ellice Engdahl, digital collections
The admiration Henry Ford held for his friend Thomas Edison has deeply shaped Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, as evidenced today through the cornerstone in the Museum and through more than a half-dozen buildings related to Edison’s life and work in Greenfield Village. We’ve just digitized a number of photos of Edison to bring the total number of our Edison-related collections objects online to nearly 250, with a few more coming soon. Visit our collections site to see this photo of Edison in his West Orange lab in 1920, as well other recently added photos of the inveterate tinkerer analyzing things such as dictating machines, telegraph keys, and even an electric streetcar.
Ellice Engdahl is Digital Collections & Content Manager at The Henry Ford.
Additional Readings:
- Edison at Work
- First Known Portrait of Thomas Alva Edison, circa 1851
- Thomas Edison Goes Hollywood
- Thomas Edison
archives, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl, Thomas Edison, photographs
You might have seen a news story making the rounds earlier this year involving analysis of some of the patent medicines in The Henry Ford’s collections by the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department at University of Detroit Mercy in conjunction with conservation staff from The Henry Ford. We’ve just digitized a sampling of the medicines that were analyzed, including “Dr. Sawens Magic Nervine Pills,” with a few more coming soon. See a variety of the medicines and related trade cards on our collections site. Be sure to click the second tab on the medicines’ records to see the analysis that was done!
19th century, patent medicines, healthcare, digital collections, by Ellice Engdahl
