How to Search Still Photographs for World War II Navy Personalities

For an overview of Military Personnel Photographs, please see our website https://www.archives.gov/research/still-pictures/military-personnel-photographs. Finding veterans who served in the US Navy during World War II just became digital. At the Still Picture Branch we have multiple indexes to search for various branches of the US Military. Our index, 80-GX: Index to Photographs of Personalities in the … Continue reading How to Search Still Photographs for World War II Navy Personalities

Subject Finding Aid Project (Update)

Hello my fellow Unwritten Recordians, I’m back with an update from the Still Picture Branch regarding progress on the Subject Finding Aid Project!  As of my last post in June, we had one batch of descriptions live in the National Archives Catalog, with a second one on the way.  As of today, the second AND … Continue reading Subject Finding Aid Project (Update)

Subject Finding Aid Project

While the pandemic significantly altered our day-to-day responsibilities in the Still Picture Branch, our team adapted to the challenges presented by the work-from-home environment and bolstered our Research and Reference capabilities by increasing access to our holdings, digitally and on-site.  One of the projects we’ve undertaken to help in this endeavor is the description and … Continue reading Subject Finding Aid Project

Special Media Catalog Updates

While our research rooms have been closed to the public, the Special Media Division has made many significant additions and updates to our online catalog. Highlights include: Cartographic Branch Construction and Design Drawings of Guns, Related Machinery and Parts, 1862-1921, 1862 - 1921 (NAID 569429). (8880 item descriptions) Williams Numbers Maps , 1928 - 1957 … Continue reading Special Media Catalog Updates

Photograph of Josephine Cobb inspecting a Mathew Brady photograph.

Visual Cues and Clues: Picking the Right Record Group for Still Pictures

Photograph of Josephine Cobb holding a Mathew Brady photograph. Local Identifier: 64-NA-1595, NAID: 12169321. Finding a specific photograph on the internet can be easy. Finding a specific photograph within the holdings of the National Archives can be trickier. If you have a specific photograph you found in the course of your research and it is … Continue reading Visual Cues and Clues: Picking the Right Record Group for Still Pictures

Spotlight: Dorothea Lange

If you are not familiar with the name Dorothea Lange, at the very least you may recognize Lange's iconic photograph "Migrant Mother." Throughout the 1920s, Dorothea Lange worked as a studio portrait photographer in San Francisco. However, by the height of the Great Depression, she turned her focus towards documenting people and her surroundings. As … Continue reading Spotlight: Dorothea Lange

NARA Film Preservation Unit Serves State and City Level Colleagues

Today’s post is written by Larry Shockley, Archives Specialist in NARA's Office of Innovation. One of the more rewarding aspects of working for an institution such as the National Archives is our ability to serve archival colleagues at state and local levels. A recent trip to the West Virginia Archives and History provided one such … Continue reading NARA Film Preservation Unit Serves State and City Level Colleagues

How to Research: Photographs Relating to WWII Marine Corps Units

In this fourth and final post of How to Research WWII photographs, we will provide an example of how researchers can search for and identify images related to a specific US Marine Corps unit. As is true with the WWII Army, Army Air Forces, and Navy photographs, prior to beginning your search in Still Pictures, … Continue reading How to Research: Photographs Relating to WWII Marine Corps Units

How to Research: Photographs Relating to World War II Navy Ships

When it comes to research in the Still Picture Branch, our staff would agree that World War II photographs are by far some of our most requested records. Given their popularity, our How to Research posts are intended to be a quick reference guide, with some tips and examples of how to effectively search through our … Continue reading How to Research: Photographs Relating to World War II Navy Ships

Playing Fetch with Pilot Whales: The Navy’s Project Deep Ops

Back in June, we published a post about animals in the military. It featured war dogs, bat and pigeon bombs, and monkey saboteurs. We thought we’d covered everything, but almost as soon as that post was published, we digitized a film for our research room that highlights torpedo-retrieving whales. One of these whales is Ahab. … Continue reading Playing Fetch with Pilot Whales: The Navy’s Project Deep Ops