Photograph of No. 34A Andreianou, Athens, Greece, April 13, 1965. Copyright © 2004, The Trustees of Indiana University. Used with permission.

The Featured Collection for this issue of D-Lib Magazine is The Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection, part of the Indiana University Digital Library Program.

In late 1999, an Indiana University archivist made an amazing find in a University Archives annex—suitcases full of Kodachrome slides, bequeathed to the university upon the death of the photographer, alumnus Charles W. Cushman, in 1972. Mr. Cushman began taking black and white photographs when he worked for the Indiana Daily Student newspaper, but his true life's work consists of 14,500 Kodachrome slides, dating from 1938—only two years after Kodachrome was introduced—to 1969. A talented amateur photographer, Mr. Cushman's images document an amazing cross-section of American and international subjects, from inner-city storefronts and industrial landscapes to candid portraits and botanical studies. The value of Mr. Cushman's remarkable collection is enhanced by his meticulous record keeping; he recorded detailed descriptions for each image in small notebooks and on the cardboard slide mounts.

In 2000 the Institute for Museum and Library Services awarded the Indiana University Digital Library Program a National Leadership grant to catalog and digitize the collection and to create a Web site presenting the images and contextual information about Mr. Cushman and his work. The Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection was launched on November 1, 2003; new functionality was added with the second release in March 2004. The current Web site offers users more dynamic and flexible searching and browsing options. By integrating the structure of the metadata with the search engine, access is augmented by providing the ability to limit or expand users' original queries based on the underlying hierarchical relationships of the metadata. Users may also toggle between digital images of Mr. Cushman's notebook pages and the corresponding slides.

Photograph of a Farm scene, Marrs Township, Posey County, Indiana, October 25, 1941. Copyright © 2004, The Trustees of Indiana University. Used with permission.

The resulting Web site offers users a complex environment in which to explore the work of Charles W. Cushman. The richly saturated Kodachrome slides add color to an era primarily recorded in black and white—"a world that we had long since resigned ourselves to viewing only in shades of gray," writes Eric Sandweiss, IU's Carmony Associate Professor of History, in an essay included on the collection's Web site. "In Cushman's work," he observes, "the past becomes, for an instant, impossibly present." Users attest to the addictive nature of the images. The brilliance of the color and the variety of the subject matter entice visitors to the Web site to explore the photographs again and again.

The URL for the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection web site is <http://www.dlib.indiana.edu/collections/cushman >.

Contributed by:
Kristine Brancolini
Indiana University

(On October 19, corrections were made to links in this feature at the request of Kristine Brancolini, Indiana University.)

Copyright^© 2004 Kristine Brancolini

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doi:10.1045/october2004-featured.collection