New York Public Library's Digital Gallery

The New York Public Library provides access to over 700,000 images digitized from the Library's holdings through its Digital Gallery. Items include illuminated manuscripts, historical maps, vintage posters, rare prints, photographs, illustrated books, postcards, and more. Contents may be browsed via the collections guides, broad subject categories (Arts & Literature; Cities & Buildings; Culture & Society; History & Geography; Industry & Technology; Nature & Science; and Printing & Graphics), Subjects, Names, and Library Divisions. Keyword and advanced search options are available.

Scholars and students across the humanities, social sciences, and sciences are sure to find materials of interest in the Digital Gallery. The diverse collections represented are too numerous to list here, but they include:

• Africana & Black History
• After Columbus: Four-hundred Years of Native American Portraiture
• Changing New York: Photographs by Berenice Abbott, 1935-1938
• Classic Illustrated Zoologies and Related Works, 1550-1900
• Ellis Island Photographs from the Collection of William Williams, Commissioner of Immigration, 1902-1913
• Icons and Images of Cultures: Plate Books from the Russian Empire, Early Soviet Russia, and Eastern Europe, 1730-1935
• Illuminated Hebrew Manuscripts
• The Luso-Hispanic New World in Early Prints and Photographs
• Medieval and Renaissance Illuminated Manuscripts from Western Europe
• The Middle East and in Early Prints and Photographs
• Nature Illustrated: Flowers, Plants, and Trees, 1550-1900
• A New Nation: The Thomas Addis Emmet Collection of Illustrations Relating to the American Revolution and Early United States History
• Ornament and Pattern: Pre-Victorian to Art Deco
• Pictures of Science: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration
• Picturing America, 1497-1899: Prints, Maps, and Drawings bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the Development of the Territory that is now the United States
• Posters of the Russian Civil War, 1918-1922
• Russia and Eastern Europe in Rare Photographs, 1860- 1945
• Samuel Putnam Avery Print Collection and Related Works
• Turn of the Century Posters
• William Blake: Illustrated Books
• Woman Suffrage and Feminism Photographs in the Schwimmer-Lloyd Collection
• Wonders: Images of the Ancient World
• World War I Photograph Albums and Postcards
• Yiddish Theatre Placards: Buenos Aires and New York
• and much more!
  

Image: Kitagawa, Utamaro, 1753?-1806. Nibijin ude-zumô (Arm-wrestling between two beauties). ca. 1793. From the New York Public Library, Digital Gallery.

Images from the History of Medicine

The National Library of Medicine's History of Medicine Division has launched its image collection in a new software platform by Luna Imaging. Images from the History of Medicine comprises nearly 70,000 images dating from the 15th through the 21st centuries, with a particular strength in pre-World War II materials. Items include "portraits, photographs, caricatures, genre scenes, posters, and graphic art illustrating the social and historical aspects of medicine." The collection is of interest to a range of disciplines beyond medicine, including the arts, humanities, and social sciences. Materials include:

"portraits of health professionals and biomedical scientists; views of health institutions, such as hospitals and medical schools; fine prints with medically related themes; and images reproduced from the NLM rare book and manuscript collections. There are smaller numbers of illustrations of anatomy, medical techniques, and diseases, chiefly derived from rare book illustrations, such as Andreas Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica. Subjects include medieval astrology, World War I hospitals, international efforts to overcome drug abuse, and sexually transmitted diseases, among others. Of particular note is the fine prints collection, numbering more than 3,000 items, including several hundred caricatures on medically related subjects by Honoré Daumier, George Cruikshank, Thomas Rowlandson, and Louis Léopold Boilly. The poster collection of approximately 12,000 items includes representative examples of historical and contemporary posters dealing with public health issues, such as AIDS, smoking, illicit drugs, and sexually transmitted diseases, as well as several hundred posters documenting activities at the National Institutes of Health."

See the NLM announcement here for more information.

Image: Hull, Edward. Death saw two players playing at cards.. 1827. From Images from the History of Medicine.