Limit search to graphics
Select "graphic collections" in "collection to search" or by selecting "visual materials" as a “Format” qualifier.
Locate photographs
The Library Company does not use the genre term "photograph" to describe its photographic images. The overwhelming majority of photographs are catalogued under the term "albumen prints" – the most common type of 19th-century photographic print. Additional headings are assigned describing the typical cardboard mounts to which these images are attached – stereographs, cabinet photographs, and cartes de visite. Other frequently used genre headings for photographic images in our holdings include daguerreotypes, ambrotypes, salted paper prints, gelatin silver prints, and platinum prints. Genre terms may be searched by entering the term as "Form/Genre" in "Field to search."
Locate prints
The Library Company does not use the genre term "print" to describe relief, intaglio or lithographic prints. The most commonly used genre terms are woodcuts, wood engravings, engravings, etchings, lithographs and chromolithographs. Genre terms may be searched by entering the term as "Form/Genre" in "Field to search."
Locate images of a specific location in Philadelphia
The Library Company attempts to index street locations in the city of Philadelphia as geographic subjects. Locations indexed as subjects are always given as post-consolidation addresses (i.e., the renumbered addresses first used in 1858 city directories following the consolidation of the city in 1854) with historical addresses appearing in other fields. Whenever possible the Library Company uses authorized addresses established by the Philadelphia Architects and Buildings Project. Images focusing on more than one building are generally indexed using the number of the block rather than the exact street numbers. Some records may index two streets indicating the corner depicted.
Examples:
Broad Street (Philadelphia, Pa.) – North – 200 block
Locust Street (Philadelphia, Pa.) – 1300 block.
Chestnut Street (Philadelphia, Pa.) – 512.
The ? icon in the upper right corner of each web page provides searching tips relevant to the page displayed. The phrases recommended for locating prints, photographs, and locations in WolfPAC also apply to ImPAC in “a word or phrase.”
“A word or phrase” searched as “contains” and using a Boolean search will provide the most comprehensive results, particularly for locations and date spans (by year).
For example:
320 Broad Street 320 and Broad Street
1851-1853 1851 or 1852 or 1853
Advanced search fields “All Fields” and “Metadata Only” should be used for keyword searches.
Philadelphia on Stone numbers should be searched as “Exact,” free of periods, and with a space between the POS designation and number.
For example, POS 35 and POS 1322 (i.e., POS 132.2).
Graphics records follow descriptive standards set forth in the second edition of Anglo-American Cataloging Rules (AACR2, 2002 rev.) informed by Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections (GIHC) and Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS), except for records migrated from our old card catalog as part of retrospective conversion. Subject and name headings are assigned using the Library of Congress’s name and subject authority files with additional subject and genre headings for graphics selected from Thesaurus for Graphic Materials.
British Museum. Dept. of Prints & Drawings. Catalogue of Political and Personal Satires Preserved in the Department of Prints and Drawings in the British Museum. London Trustees of the British Museum, 1870-1954.
Cresswell, Donald. The American Revolution in Drawings and Prints: A Checklist of 1765-1790 Graphics in the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1975.
Cresswell, Donald H. and Christopher Lane. Prints of Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Print Shop featuring the Wohl Collection. Philadelphia: Philadelphia Print Shop, 1990.
Deak, Gilda Gloria. Picturing America, 1497-1899: Prints, Maps, Drawings Bearing on the New World Discoveries and on the Development of the Territory that is now the United States. Princeton: Princeton University, 1988.
Fowble, E. McSherry. Two Centuries of Prints in America, 1680-1880: A Selective Catalogue of the Winterthur Museum Collection. Charlottesville: Published for the Henry Francis Du Pont Winterthur Museum by the University Press of Virginia, 1987.
Murrell, William. A History of American Graphic Humor. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1933. 2 vols.
Nevins, Allan and Frank Weitenkampf. A Century of Political Cartoons: Caricature in the United States from 1800 to 1900. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1944.
Phillips, P. Lee. A Descriptive List of Maps and Views of Philadelphia in the Library of Congress 1683-1865. Philadelphia, 1926.
Reilly, Bernard. American Political Prints, 1766-1876: A Catalog of the Collections in the Library of Congress. Washington, D.C.: Library of Congress, 1991.
Reps, John W. Views and Viewmakers of Urban America : Lithographs of Towns and Cities in the United States and Canada, Notes on the Artists and Publishers, and a Union Catalog of their Work, 1825-1925. Columbia : University of Missouri Press, 1984.
Snyder, Martin P. City of Independence: Views of Philadelphia before 1800. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975.
Snyder, Martin P. Mirror of America: The Developing Life of Philadelphia Seen in Engravings 1801-1876. Gladwyne, Pa.: M.P. Snyder, 1996.
Wainwright, Nicholas B. Philadelphia in the Romantic Age of Lithography: An Illustrated history of early lithography in Philadelphia with a descriptive list of Philadelphia scenes made by Philadelphia lithographers before 1860. Philadelphia: The Historical Society of Pennsylvania, 1958.
Weitenkampf, Frank. Political Caricature in the United States in Separately Published Cartoons. New York: The New York Public Library, 1953.
Wheat, James Clement and Brun, Christian F. Maps and Charts Published in America Before 1800: A Bibliography. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1969.