Yale database of Depression-era photographs

"Taking the Mother Road" - DUST BOWL GLIMPSES series

Today I learned something that literally gave me goosebumps! Thanks to a $50,000 National Endowment for the Humanities grant, Yale Professor Laura Wexler and her team will "construct an innovative online archive of government-owned photographs taken during the Great Depression....with server capacity to support the 160,000 images in the archive of the United States Office of Digital Humanities." Simply extraordinary!

"The website will eventually benefit researchers, historians and students as young as middle-schoolers, Wexler said. The digital humanities widen what were previously areas of rarified scholarship, she said — rather than simply providing academics and students the raw photographs, tools such as the geographic overlay and corresponding census data kick-start engagement with the material."

As you know, this subject is near and dear to my heart. I spent the past year researching and working on my new Dust Bowl Glimpses paintings, scouring library shelves, Web sites, and more. My daughters joined me on this journey, and to think they will have access to an even-richer historical experience brings me great joy--I cannot wait.

For more on the Yale project, please follow this link to Eliza Brooke's story in today's Yale Daily News, Government Photos Take New Form Online .