Words on Pictures

   Romana Javitz’s career at the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection was not only about building a massive visual archive; it was equally about building a profession around that archive. She treated the Picture Collection as a laboratory for what a “picture library” could be, and then used that experience to help create a professional community—within the Special Libraries Association (SLA), in other libraries, and in graduate library education.    By the late 1940s and early 1950s, large numbers of special libraries—corporate, media, government, museum—were maintaining picture files and photographic archives. Most were subject-based and heavily used, but there were few shared standards for subject headings, storage, or research methods. In a 1965 interview, Javitz captured the situation bluntly: the field of picture libraries was “only three decades old… most picture collections have grown haphazardly and few even today are organized… the field is waiting f...

 The Picture Collection began a Source Card file in 1929, soon after Romana Javitz became supervisor. It is still maintained today and is a rich resource, not just for tracing the original maker of a print or photo found in the files but also from an historical perspective .  In addition to provenance, the cards reveal many of the addresses of the contributors, some only blocks away from the Picture Collection at 42nd and Fifth Avenue.   Here is just a small sample from A to M of the variety of Source Card files documenting the Journals, Magazines and Serials that were clipped for circulation. Capitalized alpha indicators were written on the clipped images for tracing the source.   Words on Pictures: Romana and the New York Public Library’s Picture Collection .  edited by Anthony T. Troncale. New York:  Photo | Verso Publications, LLC , 2020.    ISBN 978-1-7346409-0-8 (hardcover)   Identifiers ISBN    978-1-7346409-1-5 (eb...