Are you in need of that perfect Utah photo for your library website? Did you know that U.S. Federal government agencies offer some of the richest collections of photos relating to Utah? If you rely on Google Images for finding photos of Utah, you’re missing the big picture. The Bureau of Land Management, for example, has recently launched an enhanced version of their BLM Photo Library, http://www.blm.gov/wo/st/en/bpd.html, that contains 60,000 digital photographs in the public domain of landscapes and historical images that primarily of public lands in 12 Western state including Utah. The Utah photos include those of arches, rock formations, scenery, rangeland, wild mustangs, cowboys, Indian rock art, and oil and mineral extraction. The collection cannot be browsed and retrieving images using the search is dicey because search terms have to match those in the limited metadata associated with each photo. Searches for features and places seem to retrieve the best results. Because the photos are in the public domain, this may be a great resource for teachers, webmasters, local governments, and those needing photos for tourism and related needs. A shopping cart feature allows users to collect several images and then download them in a compressed folder.
Some other federal government agencies that have large public collections of photographs of scenes in Utah include:
- Digital Image Archives: http://photo.itc.nps.gov/storage/images/index.html
- Historic Photos Collection: http://home.nps.gov/applications/hafe/hfc/npsphoto2.cfm
- Fire Photos: http://www.nps.gov/fire/public/pub_photogalleries.cfm
Department of the Interior
- Photo Library: http://www.doi.gov/photos/gallery.html
U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service
- Gateway to Digital Media: http://images.fws.gov/
Bureau of Reclamation
- Managing Water in the West: http://www.usbr.gov/history/photos.html
National Biological Information Infrstructure
- Digital Image Library: http://images.nbii.gov/
U.S. Geological Survey
- National Parks Gallery: http://3dparks.wr.usgs.gov/
- Earthquake Photo Collections: http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/photos.php
USDA Forest Service
- Find-a-Photo: https://wwwnotes.fs.fed.us/wo/wfrp/find_a_photo.nsf/
NOAA
- Photo Library: http://www.photolib.noaa.gov/
NASA
- Visible Earth Images – Bingham Copper Mine: http://visibleearth.nasa.gov/view_set.php?categoryID=4175
Library of Congress
Search/Browse all Collections: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/
- American Environmental Photographs: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/ecology/
- Landscape and Architectural Design: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/landscape/
- Panoramic Photographs: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/panoramic_photo/
- Trails to Utah and the Pacific: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award99/upbhtml/overhome.html
- Great Depression Photographs (black-and-white): http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsahtml/fahome.html
- Historic Buildings Survey: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/habs_haer/
- History of the American West: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/award97/codhtml/hawphome.html
- Evolution of the Conservation Movement: http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/amrvhtml/conshome.html
- Local Legacies : Utah: http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/legacies/UT/index.html
Enjoy!
Ray Matthews
National Park Service
