Medical school 'orphans' need identification
Recognize any of the people or the device in this photo? Archivists at Lane Medical Library are hoping to leverage the power of the Internet to identify the people, places and objects in a variety of historic photos.
The archives of Lane Medical Library are filled with orphans that bear no resemblance to Oliver Twist. Rather, they are monochromatic scenes from earlier times at the School of Medicine.
There are hundreds of these photographs in the Lane archives that depict unidentified people, places and objects at the school. In some cases, even the photographer is unknown. In archivists' parlance, they are known as "orphans." Now Lane is turning to Flickr, a popular photo-sharing Web site, to help identify the subjects.
With the help of the school's Office of Communication & Public Affairs, Lane is publishing a series of orphan photos on the Stanford Medicine Flickr photo stream and inviting Flickr's users to use tags and comments to help identify the photographs. The first set, titled "Medical Mysteries," consists primarily of mid-20th century black-and-white photos.
The Library of Congress tried a similar program last year, asking Flickr users to help identify photographs from the 1930s and 1940s. The response was overwhelming. If the project at Stanford proves successful, Lane plans to add additional photos to the set.
The "Medical Mysteries" photography set can be viewed at the following Web site: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stanfordmedicine/.
Share This Story