Welcome, everyone, and thank you for joining me today.

My name is Aaron and I am a reference librarian here at the National Library of Australia.

Now before we begin I have to start out by saying that I am not an expert in dating photographs

but this talk has been developed with the help of our special collection cataloguers

and I do have a lot of experience in hunting down the right information in our collections.

So what we’re going to be having a look at today, we’re going to have a look at

how you can date photographs that you might have in your own personal collections and

what clues the images might provide to tell you important details about your family history.

So these methods are similar to how research librarians here at the National Library go

about their daily work and some of the ways that you can find out information about the

photos are similar to how the National Library describes and dates photos in our own collections.

So we’ll be having a look at how you can not only find out a little bit about the photos

but we’ll be having a look at how you can find photos in the Library’s collection.

We have an extensive pictures collection and it could contain images perhaps of your family

history, your town’s history, something that’s relevant and interesting to you perhaps,

or some photos that could give you some context about a particular time or location.

So let’s begin, shall we?

First up what is the photo?

I’m going to assume that most of us have an old photo sitting at home somewhere, it

could be black and white, sepia, it could be of some family members or a location that’s

perhaps central to your family story outside in a garden, something like that but perhaps

you want to find out more about that photo.

Hopefully you know a little bit about the photo, perhaps who one of the people in a

group might be or how the photo even came to be in your possession.

Maybe it was from your mother’s family passed down through the generations or perhaps the

photos are in an album.

Knowing who owned that album is a great start to narrow down which side of the family it

is or what the events are likely of.

But that’s not always the case, I suppose.

Identifying individuals is one of the very basic ways that you can start to get an idea

of what the photo is and what it’s about.

Hopefully you know who they are as I said or even better the information has been written

on the photo, as you can see, this photo here.

Doesn’t actually tell us who the individuals are but there is a little bit of writing and

it might give us a starting point to find out where we’re starting from.

However if you don’t have any of that information that’s fine.

If the photographs you have are still a bit of a mystery, don’t worry.

I’m here today to show you a little bit about how to put your detective hat on and

how to discover some of the clues in those family photos you might have.

Alright so let’s begin.

What we might do is just do a little bit of a run-through the history of photography so

having an idea of what the photo is and what the likely age of the photo is going to be

is going to be useful to give us a date range.

So we’ll be mainly exploring 19th century photographs in this talk as they’re older

and they usually tend to be the source of most mystery in a lot of family albums where

the photographer and perhaps the subjects in the photo are no longer with us.

So photography was invented in the 1930s but it wasn’t very common until the 1860s.

Sorry, 1830s and common in the 1860s.

So this does of course mean that you are not likely to find images of your convict ancestors

as they came across in the first fleet but it does start providing us with a clear date

for dating photos.

So photography was common in the ‘60s but hugely expensive and it was largely restricted

to photography studios.

Even individuals who could afford to have a photo taken may have only ever had two or

three photos taken of them in their lifetime.

In the early 1900s the famous Kodak box brownie and celluloid film provided a more affordable

option and we start to see more personal, more intimate photos happening and then continuing

into the 20th century photos become more and more accessible and more popular.

Colour photography, while it’s been around since the ‘40s wasn’t really the norm

until the ‘60s or thereabouts.

So let’s have a look at different types of photos.

So you’ve all seen different types of old photos in different formats, we’ll go through

a couple of those.

This is by no mean an exhaustive list but it might give you an idea of the kind of thing

that we’re looking at.

So first up we have the daguerreotype so very early photographic process, one of the first.

They were first introduced in Europe in 1839 and remained popular for about 20 years.

The photo was usually made on thin copper plate and it gave them this distinct, almost

ghostly mirror-like appearance.

The photos seemed to float.

Being on thin copper surfaces actually meant that the photo and the negative themselves

were very fragile so some of them got easily damaged as you can see in this picture here,

we can just see this ghostly image staring back at us.

Daguerreotypes were usually housed in these hinged frames and they were very precious

things, very expensive things.

They cost around a week’s wage for the average labourer, about a guinea in those times so

something that only those of well-off means could actually afford.

So very precious, very looked after.

Next, moving on, the ambrotype, kind of the same process.

Ambrotypes are a photo on glass instead of copper.

The glass negative was backed in black which then gave us this positive image on the other

side of the glass.

Like the daguerreotypes they were also presented in small hinged cases as we can see here and

they tend to be a little clearer, a little – I don’t know, denser, I guess.

They don’t have that ghostly floating quality like the daguerreotype does.

One thing about ambrotypes, though, they only produced one copy, no duplicates could be

made so each ambrotype is a unique thing, it is an original and no more copies can be

made of it.

They are incredibly fragile.

Next up we have the carte de visite or CDV, they were introduced in 1859 and they became

one of the most common forms of photography in the 19th century and they cost around a

shilling a time.

You’d be very lucky if you had a daguerreotype or an ambrotype at home.

It’s more likely you probably have a carte de visite in your album somewhere.

They tend to be this sepia-toned image and have a fairly standard measurement so 2.5

inches by 4 inches, 6.3 by 10.5cm for those of us who are metric.

As I said they tend to be sepia-toned and they were mounted on thick paper.

They were traded between friends almost like calling cards or collecting cards, I guess.

It's possible to get an approximate date of the carte de visite from the quality and shape

of the card on which they’re mounted.

Early cartes from the 1860s or thereabouts are thin, poor quality and pretty bland in

detail but as the decades roll on they get more and more elaborate, the card gets thicker

and better quality and the borders become a bit fancier.

Carte de visite often include the photographer’s name or the studio in which they were created

which you can see here in this image but something to keep in mind, that if you do have some

carte de visite in your family albums, keep in mind that the subjects were not always

private individuals, it was very popular to collect cartes of famous people, famous actors,

singers, military people, generals, things like that.

So just because you have this image in your family album it doesn’t necessarily mean

that that person is related to you, it might pay to do a little bit of a delve into who

that person might be, especially if they’re wearing ostentatious clothing or high-ranking

military outfits, things like that.

Here are some more examples of some carte de visites, you can see the photographer studios

written on the left and right, most cards.

The one on the left is an example of a hand-coloured card, it’s not colour photography.

Charming but perhaps the hand-colouring could be a little heavy-handed in this instance

but still charming, nonetheless.

Next, similar to a carte de visite is the cabinet card.

Similar in that it’s printed on card but these tend to be larger, include extensive

logos and studio names, things like that.

These become common in the second half of the 1800s.

The cabinet card was large enough to be seen across the room and they were typically displayed

in cabinets or on mantlepieces, things like that.

Could be a bit of a talking point in a room as well.

I particularly like this image.

I have no idea what’s going on but I don’t know whether they’re acting a scene or something,

but it looks amusing anyway.

Moving on, going back to the daguerreotype style of photo here we have the tintype, also

known as the ferrotype and it was widely used during the 1860s and ‘70s.

It lost popularity when higher quality prints came along but did survive into the 20th century,

usually as a carnival novelty kind of thing.

It’s the cheapest photographic option of the time costing as little as three pence

a piece.

It started out in formal studios but later became popular with street and travelling

photographers as they could be ready in only a couple of minutes so we see people from

a broader sample of society being able to afford photos and less staged photos than

we would have seen in old-fashioned studio photography.

Instead of glass or card the image was printed on an iron plate hence the name ferrotype.

No tin was actually used ironically, and they had this characteristic dark, black appearance.

Next we have photo postcards so we’re in the 1900s now, introduced in 1903.

Basically it’s a photographic image printed on photocard stock.

A bit like you might visit somewhere today and pick up a postcard of a stock image this

was a way to personalise your postcard.

So you have the photo on the front of you standing in front of a famous landmark or

even your own house but on the back we’ve got this standard postcard infrastructure.

Perhaps you’ve got some of these in your album and you’re lucky enough to have a

personal message written on the back which is really nice to have and fill out the story

of that photo but it’s okay if you don’t.

So these were heavily, heavily collected, again trading cards or calling cards and were

used as we would call them today souvenirs.

So a few more examples here, the Mountain Grand Pleasure Resort in Warburton, Victoria,

a whole group posing in the garden but then you have another example here of the five

men standing outside the Pig and Whistle Hotel.

I don’t know where it is but looks like it would offer a rip-roaring time.

Again an example of the hand-coloured card here.

So in 1889 the earliest type of photographic film was introduced so film as we know it

today.

The first transparent plastic film was created in the late 1800s but it was very rare prior

to 1900 so the film was initially made from highly flammable nitrocellulose called nitrate

film.

Cellulose acetate or safety film was introduced in 1908 so it took a while to catch on because

the safety film was more expensive but it wasn’t flammable or as flammable so there’s

always a trade-off, I guess.

The first Kodak camera was introduced in 1888 but it wasn’t until 1900 when the box brownie

became available for five shillings that we see roll print really taking off and becoming

an affordable option.

Then of course not long after that the first world war and the following years saw a large

growth in the popularity of roll film.

The availability of cheaper photographic options, we see more amateur photographers.

Casual family photographs became common, again those more intimate family photos rather than

posed and staid-looking photos.

Continuing with the analysis of a photograph as an object, in addition to taking into consideration

the format of the photo it’s worth taking into account the information that can be found

perhaps in or around the photo.

So it could include handwritten text and dates.

So the image on the left here, we have three names of the three people in the photo which

is really handy.

The one on the left, we have information actually written on the photo, probably before it was

developed.

Not as aesthetically pleasing perhaps but it definitely does the job, tells us what

the photo is and where it’s at.

Could be written on the back, preferably and hopefully in a soft pencil and not a Biro.

But if it’s in an album it could be written underneath the photo or in the album as well

so it’s always great when you’ve got some written information.

Like this photo, full of information.

If you can read the handwriting well good luck to you but the information is there.

I’m going to say though with family photos, it’s natural to assume that the written

information is correct and it likely is but you should always be open to the possibility

that the information is incorrect.

Any of you who have even started to scratch the surface of your family history will know

that there is always that family story that’s been passed down as gospel but on a little

bit of closer inspection something just doesn’t add up, dates don’t match, people aren’t

in that place at that time.

It could just be misunderstood information, or someone’s got wires crossed somewhere

but it’s worth keeping that in mind.

So using supporting information that you can find in, on and around the photos, we can

help decipher whether that information is correct.

So some other ways that we can date photos, not just from the type of photo are things

like postal marks.

Perhaps you have one of those photographic postcards that were sent.

Postmarks are a great way so the franking mark on photos can give us an idea.

So we can see in this photo it’s going to George Street in Sydney but it’s been marked

by the post office in Goulburn in New South Wales.

You can also see where the stamp would be fixed there’s another stamp there.

It’s hard to read in this instance but on many of them it is easier to read.

I’m definitely not going to go into stamps right here because we do not have time but

there are many websites online dedicated to dating and deciphering stamps.

Also the Kodak Austral postcard can be dated off the text around where the stamp would

be affixed.

You can see in each example here the kind of format and layout is a little bit different.

The website that is listed down the bottom here, and it will be included in the link

of the YouTube video, it’s a whole forum dedicated to how to date these postcards just

by the writing of Kodak Austral around the edges so that’s another way that we can

get some information out.

Photographers’ imprints.

Now in early photography, being that little bit more expensive it tended to be the realm

of studio photographers.

People would have to go into the studio, sit for the photo, that kind of thing.

These photo studios were shameless advertisers and they more often than not included their

name and their business on their wares.

So we can get a lot from this information.

Unfortunately it doesn’t tell us anything about the sitter or usually doesn’t but

you can find information out about the studio name, the location and possibly a sitter number.

So if the image is sitter number 5 that would indicate it’s very early in this studio’s

career so you could perhaps run a Trove search for the studio name.

You might be able to find out when they opened, when they closed, find out a rough date range

of that studio and then be able to place that photo if you’ve got a sitter number, place

it somewhere in their business chronology.

So as I said doing a Trove search for something like Bond and Co like you can see on the left

here might turn up some interesting results.

So moving on let’s investigate the image.

We’ve looked at the photo as an object but now we’re going to have a look into the

image.

So photographic studios, we were just talking about them, let’s have a look at what they

can tell you.

So close examination of props and the way that subjects are standing can give us an

idea of the date of a photo and where it might have been taken.

Early photography required the subject to stand still for a number of seconds which

can get a little hard if you’re trying to stand there very still for a long time.

So early photographic studios used props so people could steady themselves.

On the left we see a very stiff and staid pose from the two in the photos.

Lady is sitting down, the gentleman is standing up but you can see he's bracing himself on

her chair so he doesn’t wobble all over the place.

Gentleman on the right perhaps taking a bit of a cavalier approach, standing by himself

reading a book but I think he’s doing a pretty good job there.

Studio backgrounds started with very plain backgrounds but with substantial furniture

props so you can see both of these are fairly plain in the background.

The gentleman on the left has a nice table there with barley sugar-turned legs there.

In the following decades however backdrops became more elaborate and the subjects took

on more of a casual pose as photography improved.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s we see more ornate backgrounds so the little girl on the

right here as a kind of Grecian, I don’t know an Etruscan kind of temple in the background,

very fancy.

The gentleman on the left I guess are trying to portray that they’re outdoors.

We can see that there’s grass around them, upping the game of studio photography backdrops.

Now outfits, clothing.

Hopefully everyone in your photo are wearing clothes and dating outfits is a fun way that

we can use to help us date a photo.

It’s not as accurate as some other methods but it can be pretty fun.

Those with a keen eye for detail can accurately pinpoint 19th century and early 20th century

clothing down to within five or 10 years by recognising different components or a particular

look that was in Vogue.

Perhaps the photos you have are of well to-do ancestors who had the means to be able to

keep up with the latest fashions and you have them in their most glamourous attire there,

haute couture.

Photographs during this period were special affairs so the subjects often wore their best

outfits however only those with a good income could keep up with the latest fashion.

Those who were of less well-off means tended to dress less fashionably because they just

didn’t have the money to be constantly updating their wardrobes, they made their own clothes

or when buying new clothes they prioritised practicality over fashion.

Older people in photos were slower to change fashion and tended to hang onto clothes and

it’s also worth noting that if the photograph took place in Australia they may have been

several years behind the fashions of Europe.

But using the fashion of subjects to date photos can provide us with the earliest date

that a photograph might have been taken so let’s have a quick whizz through some fashion

styles and we’ll see if we can spot some of the information we can pick up.

So men’s outfits, it’s only dateable to about a decade or so.

Male modes of dress reflected a more subtle shift.

It usually was things like a subtle shift in tailor, slow-changing features such as

neckwear, fashions in facial hair, that kind of thing and the appearance or loss of certain

garments.

So looking at the gentlemen in the photo they're wearing the same kind of suits you might see

out today with a few tailoring alterations but looking at men’s clothes, look for things

like the cravats, the bowties, the ties even, fob watches, those things tended to come in

and out of fashion and change and are more accurate ways of dating male fashion because

these were easier to update rather than buying a whole suit.

Dating female attire is a little easier because women’s dress went through a succession

of more distinct changes and more dateable styles through the 19th and early 20th centuries,

especially around things like the changing silhouette formed by corsets, bustles, crinolines,

those kinds of things.

In addition to the silhouette things like sleeves, dress length, they can give us another

place to start our dating process.

For 20th century dress length most importantly and I will say always judge dating the fashion

in a photo by the younger women in a photo if possible.

Older people as I said tended to be more conservative, they tended to hang onto things for longer

and the younger people, if they could afford it, tended to be more on top of what was fashionable

at the time.

Children’s dress echoed adult clothing for the most part but it did follow some of its

own conventions but it can be a little more difficult to pinpoint precisely.

That being said it’s still possible to gain a reasonable date range from a photo, especially

combined with other dating methods.

Keep in mind though that up until the early 1920s dresses were still the standard uniform

for young boys and girls alike so if you have a photo that you think might be from that

period of a younger person you may not automatically be able to presume gender just by the fact

that they’re wearing a dress.

So very quickly I’m going to run through a couple of decades starting in the 1850s

to see how fashion evolved and pick up on some of the key styles that you might be able

to find to help you pinpoint a date and therefore be able to perhaps put a person in a particular

photo at a particular time.

So for gentlemen take note of things like neck wear, facial hair, width of lapels, buttons.

For female fashion take note of the silhouette, if they’re wearing crinolines, bustles,

the sleeve shape, the waist height, hair length and the skirt length as well.

So 1850s for gentlemen facial hair was generally in, definitely for older gentlemen.

The man on the right is a little bit younger.

But you can see these big boxy coats, they’re both wearing a very similar style of coat,

very popular in the 1850s for gentlemen.

For women crinoline so the hooped skirts creating that big full Victorian look, very common.

So too was this over the shoulder shawl-looking style.

1860s, whiskers very much the fashion, clean-shaven faces very, very rare.

This big bushy look was very much in.

You can see also the ladies here wearing their crinoline skirts as well.

So the 1860s for women, the crinoline again still very dominant, the style hasn’t changed

much from the 1850s.

Moving on for gentlemen, side whiskers become shorter but the mutton chop was still very

much in.

The gentlemen on the left a little bit older with mighty mutton chops.

The gentleman on the right here, bit younger but you can still see he’s got that style

happening as well.

For the ladies, more elaborate ornamentation started appearing on dresses.

This coincided with the introduction of the sewing machine, making it more economical

to introduce more elaborate designs into these dresses.

The 1880s, whiskers again dropping in popularity.

The gentleman on the left clean-shaven but the gentleman on the right still with this

big bushy beard.

Would not look out of place perhaps in Melbourne or Sydney these days, that look, I don’t

think.

In the 1880s for women the bustle was very popular, that padded undergarment that gave

the dress that very distinct flow out the back.

That was very much the style at the time.

So the 1890s, many men embraced the walrus moustache.

You can see here both walrus moustaches in varying degrees of evolution but you can see

the neck tie they’re wearing, almost a cravat, almost a very widely tied tie and their mode

of dress is very similar despite the obvious age gap we have here.

In the 1890s for women hourglass-shape silhouettes start to emerge with corsets becoming more

and more popular.

1900s, collars very, very high.

At the beginning of the 1900s collars were very high but as the decade progressed collars

got lower and lower.

For women the 1900s, very early 1900s are more – I don’t know, perhaps a more feminine

style with more lace and floral and things like that start to appear.

1910s so just before the war, clean-shaven faces were back in fashion and especially

post-war clean-shaven faces definitely in fashion.

Hair very short, very neatly trimmed.

For women in the 1910s more elaborate outfits so the early 1910s we’re talking the Titanic,

that kind of era, lace flowing but as the decade progressed and of course the war and

after the war, dresses became plainer, very much practical during and after the war.

In the 1920s men’s fashion started to relax, suits still very much the go but fashion relaxing,

hair still short and we start to see this introduction of the fedora look, the classic

1920s look.

For women outfits became less fitted and we start seeing shorter hair in women as well

and skirts getting shorter as well.

The 1930s, fedora hats definitely the hat of choice, hair still very neatly cropped

but the tie is now very much more aligned with how we would wear ties these days, smaller

knot, more conservative, I guess.

The 1930s for women so skirts become longer again and the waistline returning to a normal

waist position.

We also see the kind of iconic cloche hat here very much coming into style at that time.

So that’s a very, very quick visual journey from 1850 through to 1930, it is not a comprehensive

overview of fashions at that time but hopefully it might give you a little bit of an example

on how you can start dating fashion.

Something else so we’ve got the fashion but of course hairstyles.

With gentlemen facial hair tended to come in and out of fashion so you could date it

by that.

For women the hairstyle changes were much more noticeable so there are a number of resources

both in the Library and on the wider internet to put a chronological order on different

types of hairstyles throughout Australia, Britain, United States, things like that so

have a look online for those and you can try and match sample styles to a hairstyle you

might see.

Age is another way that we can date photos so not the age of the photo but the age of

people within the photo so you can usually distinguish different generations in a photo,

grandparents, parents, children and oftentimes the children are arranged in age order which

is sometimes the height order but I’m sure you might know in your own family that’s

not necessarily the case.

So determining the age can be difficult just by going off the subjects’ appearance alone.

Also keep in mind depending on the time period we’re looking at and keeping in mind the

family’s income and their I guess we would say societal position, I guess, people of

less well-off means may look a lot older than they were, having to work in factories and

in the fields rather than people who were more well off and didn’t have that quite

as the manual labour side of things so that’s something to take into account as well.

Also if you know an individual in the photo and you know their - even a vague age range,

perhaps when they died or how old they are now you can count back to what approximate

age they might have been in that photo as well.

Weddings, who doesn’t love a wedding?

Weddings are popular occasions for photos, were and still are, of course and they are

a real treasure to have in the family photo album.

Wedding photos can help us identify individuals or refine a date range, especially if you’ve

delved into your family history research and are kind of aware of who may have got married,

when and where.

In the mid-1800s the royal brides popularised the white wedding dress which would go on

to become the staple in wedding photos.

It also became a bit of an indicator of the class in inverted commas of the bride in question,

how fancy was it?

How close to the actual royal wedding dress was it?

As we get into the later 19th century women tended to get married – those who couldn’t

afford a white wedding dress tended to get married in their best dress which could be

of any colour, it could be something that could be repurposed for their Sunday best,

other parties, things like that.

It wasn’t uncommon for women to get married in their going away outfits so they could

have the wedding and leave straight away on their honeymoon.

So having a look at these images you can see very different, we have a black dress on the

left, a white dress on the right but you can date things like bouquets, veils, what flowers

were in fashion when so these photos are a little bit later.

As I said wedding dresses were very much informed by inverted commas high society, the royal

brides so if you have a photo you think is from around a particular area have a look

to see which royal brides got married, see if a dress matches that and you might be able

to place a broad date.

Military.

I am not going into depth about military uniforms and insignia, do not have time for that today,

unfortunately but we do have other webinars here at the Library that do go into that a

little bit more but dating military photos can have fairly precise results.

So determining which armed conflict can help narrow down a date range and then by extension

which family relations were likely to have served in that particular conflict and who

that particular subject might be.

So the colourful uniforms of the colonial forces so the red coat look were replaced

in 1903 or thereabouts with the standardised pattern khaki, the drab olive, and new badges

and buttons were used to distinguish regiments and corps and of course the iconic slouch

that was included as head gear as well.

The Australian War Memorial has some great blogs on dating features of uniforms including

nurses’ uniforms from different periods and we’ll include the links to those blogs

beneath the YouTube video of today’s recording as well.

So while fashion will not provide you with a definitive date it is another important

clue to establishing a realistic timeframe of when a photo might be taken.

So that’s the people in the photo.

What else is in the image?

So having covered what the subjects in the image are wearing let’s turn our attention

to what’s in the background so there are tons of details you can get from the background

of the photo.

So perhaps you’ve got a series of photos in albums taken at the same place or of the

same family.

You will get to know certain locations, perhaps it’s a garden, perhaps it’s a family estate

that’s changed or been added to or burnt down and rebuilt, things like that, gardens,

trees, you can get a lot from that.

So let’s look at the buildings in the photo so building architecture.

So looking at the exterior of a house can give us clues to when it was built, of course.

So on this slide is a very broad overview of the kind of architectural periods in Australia.

There are a range of useful resources around architecture, again the National Library has

webinars online devoted to dating your house and other buildings.

But comparing when the building might have been built can again give us that earliest

date a photo might have been taken.

There is a link included in this slide, it will be included in YouTube as well.

Wikipedia gets a lot of bad press but this particular page has quite an exhaustive list

of architectural styles and substyles throughout Australian history for both private residential

dwellings and public buildings as well, it is a very useful resource.

Motor vehicles.

So getting a car was a source of pride for many families and often a good excuse to take

some family photos next to the brand new car.

It’s still a thing today.

So identifying the model of car, the year of the car can give us a good starting point

for when the photo might have been taken.

It might also give you some interesting insights in your family as well, how much did this

car cost?

Is it bought new?

Is it likely second-hand?

Was it a common item at the time or perhaps your family was the first family in town to

get a motor car.

Now that would have been exciting.

So not only identifying the model of car, the type of car but also the number plate

of a car as well.

So to confirm the date, if you can make out the number plate you can find out which state

it was registered in and what the style was at the time for those number plates.

So there’s a number of online resources so this is Wikipedia again, it shows you examples

of all the states’ different historic number plates, the current ones, the Victorian number

plates.

I remember them being green when I was a kid, now they’re blue.

New South Wales yellow, now they’re black or you can get all different types of styles.

Knowing those types of things can help you pinpoint when that car might have been bought

or the photo taken.

Alright, building signs.

So we’ve had a look at the private spaces, we’ve looked at houses, family albums, things

like that but chances are some of your family albums might include snapshots of town or

a street, things like that.

So moving into that public sphere we can get a bit of an idea of the times again.

So most streets, high streets might include building signs, billboards, things like that

so it can not only help identify a particular town if that’s in question but a date as

well.

So building and business signs will indicate which businesses were operating when and where

at the time of the photo so what you can do is search for a business name in Trove, do

a wider Trove search or perhaps do a Trove search for digital newspapers and help you

find advertisements from that business in a particular timeframe or perhaps you’ll

find a business that the photo’s taken in one part of town but you might find that in

1920 the business moved to another part of town so you can gauge your photo’s date

range from there as well.

Now the next thing, telegraph poles.

Now this was something completely new to me before I was looking at this webinar.

It’s a unique dating method but again one that shocked me.

Poles and wires can give us a bit of an idea of when a photo was taken so Australia used

a number of different telegraph poles throughout history so their value is greatest from the

period from 1880 through to about 1920.

Since before 1880 wires were rare and after the 1920s cars tend to be a better dating

guide.

So the first step in dating a pole is to identify the route it took and what service it most

likely provided.

So wires were erected at different times for telegraphs, telephones, electrical distribution,

high-voltage transmission and tram rounds.

In the case of telegraph routes the styles changed significantly, you can see here on

the left.

But once erected the pole routes changed very little so only an earliest possible date can

be established on these.

Let's go back and have a look at the broader streetscapes here so we’ve got building

signs, we’ve got telegraph poles here, we’ve got vehicles so knowing specific town or street

will provide of course the most accurate results but I’ve got a quick example here of how

we can see the changes throughout the decades that we can pick up on through different photos

from different eras.

So this is a range of photos showing Elizabeth Street in Sydney so the first one is from

1911 so that’s the one we have on the screen here.

We’ve got horse and carts, we have tramlines - you can just see a tram way up in the back

distance but there’s not many - telegraph poles everywhere and you can even tell by

the style of dress about what time period we’re looking at here.

If we move thorough to the next image we have Elizabeth Street but in the 1930s so we still

have tram tracks but there are many, many more trams here, there are motorcars where

there were none before.

You can just see turning around the corner about midway in the image we have horse and

cart so it’s still around but not nearly as much as the image we were looking at just

before.

So of course it’s a long street so we’re going to have some different perspectives

but same street, different styles.

So let’s move on another 20 years in the 1950s.

So motorcars very much the go here, you can see a double-decker bus up the back, no horse

and carts, no trams but it’s also very easy to see female fashion in this image as well

so again going back to dating photos by fashion are going to come into play here as well.

Let's jump forward a large amount to 1986 so colour photography, whacko.

So it is in colour so popular in the ‘60s and thereafter, many more cars so again you

can see number plates very clearly here.

Building signs.

You might just be able to make out on the Davis Armstrong sign top middle, you can see

a telephone number.

So knowing when telephone numbers changed into longer digits can also be a useful way

to date the age of a photograph.

So I know that was a big jump but we can see how the same street has changed very much

over time.

So other less common things you could use to date photos would be things like railways

and trains, did that line run through there at that time?

Is that line now closed?

What type of engine is it?

Railway gauge even, things like that.

Ships, style of ships change, I guess so we have ferries here, the wharf in Hobart, we

have a cat picture here.

You can’t get on the internet without seeing a picture of a cat.

But you have a zoomed-in image here showing this trading vessel here with the decorative

bow on it with the little tender next to it, can give us an idea of the time we’re looking

at here.

Different events are also going to be helpful so the one on the left is the Sydney Harbour

Bridge opening ceremony so if there’s a picture of that in an album you could date

the photos around it in that same era.

We have images of crowds greeting the Queen when she arrived in 1954 so using images of

public figures can be useful so we’ve got a young-looking Queen Elizabeth here so public

figures will have many portraits of them so you can gauge how old they are in your photo

to what year that might have been in their life perhaps.

Cricket matches, who was playing, who was playing for a particular team at that time,

and major national events as well.

So I have talked about dating the photos that you already have but perhaps what you might

want to do is you might want to have a look for a particular photo, see if a particular

photo exists of your ancestor or your hometown, something like that so I’m going to run

through a crash course on how to find those things using the resources we have here at

the National Library.

So I’m going to jump through to the National Library of Australia’s homepage which is

NLA.gov.au.

It’s very simple, if you just Google NLA or National Library of Australia we will be

the first result.

So this is our homepage.

If you scroll down you will have our search our collection catalogue bar here so this

is your gateway into the National Library’s collection.

So all you need to do is use keywords so whether it’s your hometown, whether it’s your

family name even or a business just type that in.

We do have a large collection here, we have over a million photos here at the National

Library of Australia but the fact of the matter is we may not have a photo of your great-grandfather

or your great-great-grandfather, it may not happen but what we will have are photographs

from the area that they are from and from the time period in which they lived.

So I'm going to use a personal example so I grew up in Victoria, my home town is Ballarat

so I know that in the catalogue there is not a photo of my great-grandfather but I do know

he lived in Ballarat in the 1930s.

So let’s type in Ballarat as a search example, hit the enter key or the search button, you

will see that in the National Library’s catalogue we have 4,353 results for Ballarat.

I don’t have time to go through all of those as much as I would like but I’m looking

for photographs about what my family’s life might have been like.

Using the narrow search field down on the right-hand side we’re going to narrow down

our results by all online.

This means it doesn’t matter where you are in Australia or overseas you can still access

these things because they have been digitised and I’m also looking for pictures so I’m

going to click the picture button here.

So you can see we’ve gone down to 459.

Still a lot but a bit more manageable.

As I said my great-grandad was living in Ballarat in the 1930s so let’s narrow it down to

that as well.

You can see here narrow search, we’ve narrowed it down to all pictures from the 1930s that

are online on the National Library’s catalogue.

We’ve got 34, I’m okay with 34 pictures.

So you can see the most common result here is from a collection by Frank Hurley, photos

taken between 1910 and 1962 so all of these images are quite familiar to me.

So I can look through.

If we click on the thumbnail which is the image here it will take you directly to the

image in our Trove viewer.

So for those of you familiar with Trove you will know how this works.

For those of you who are not, Trove, you can move the photo around, you can zoom in, the

photos are usually in very high definition so you can zoom in and out.

So this is a photo of Sturt Street looking up to the Ballarat Town Hall here some time

I’d say the late ‘30s perhaps.

So you can date by - I know that some of these buildings are still here, some of them are

very much not.

This building is now a 1960s style bank so I know it’s definitely not after the ‘60s.

You can also download an image from Trove using the functions down here, you can download

a jpeg which is your standard image file and download it directly to your computer which

is very, very useful, hit the back button and then you can continue on through the results

that you’ve got as well.

So that’s one example.

The search results come up because these photos have been tagged with the word Ballarat or

the word Melbourne or the word Sydney.

There will be images that will slip through the search of course so it can help to start

out very, very broad.

So for example you can use the word portrait.

If you use the inverted commas here it will look for things specifically tagged with that

word so 94,000 results for portrait, narrow things down to online and then narrow things

down to picture.

You’re going to get everything that’s tagged with the word portrait.

You can use the narrow down functions to narrow down your area further so perhaps you only

want portraits of actors, narrow it down through there.

So start broad and then narrow it down one by one.

Don’t launch straight in using very specific terms because it’s not likely to yield a

whole lot.

Something that we do have at the National Library that is very useful is the Fairfax

photo collection so there’s about 17,000 negatives documenting newsworthy and historical

events so this is the Fairfax newspaper negative collection.

So a quick search of Fairfax here, we can scroll down again online and then you can

see under series just down the side here we have the Fairfax archive of glass plate negatives

and it's making a liar out of me because we actually have 18,003.

So if we click on the series it will only give you the results that are included in

that series so these are all digitised so we can click through and then we can view

so just for those again who may not have seen that.

So you can click through an image so Don Bradman, click.

In theory, if it wants to work.

There we go.

If we scroll down again, right down the bottom, National Library digitised item and that will

open up for us again when the internet’s going to work.

It’s being a bit slow today.

It will open up into that Trove viewer that we were looking at before.

This is very odd but I guess not that odd for the internet.

So I apologise for that, you cannot always trust the computer.

Try one more time.

Perhaps that’s not going to work.

So searching in our National Library catalogue you can find a lot of things but there are

things that you just may not be able to find.

If you can’t find something in particular in our catalogue broaden your search, the

resources you are using so I would suggest jumping back to our homepage here and then

under the catalogue search bar you can go to Trove.

Again for those of you who are familiar with Trove you know about it, you know that it

is a brilliant resource.

Let’s type in again Ballarat just because why not?

Trove will give you results, not just photos whereas in the National Library’s catalogue

we had about 4,500 we have about 100,000 results here.

Again it’s worth noting to click this available online button here, just run your search again.

This means again that if you are not in the National Library or you’re not where a particular

photo is stored you can still access it.

But you can see here our search for Ballarat online images has returned 3.2 million articles,

84,000 objects, 49,000 photographs, that’s all included in here as well but of course

newspapers, 3.1 million digitised newspapers which is huge.

Again for those of you who know Trove you can click through, you can read individual

newspapers, you can browse different newspapers, things like that.

I won’t get into that, there are many National Library recorded webinars where you can learn

the basics of using Trove and things like digital newspapers as well.

So I’m going to jump back to my PowerPoint and I'm going to call it a day as far as I'm

concerned but are there any questions from anyone?

RENEE: Actually we had many, many questions, Aaron, and really this has been such an engaged

audience.

I’d like to thank everyone who shared their tips and even offered recommendations on resources.

We have a lot of eagle-eyed people among our attendees today who said that they were spotting

other possibilities for identifying the clues in photos including things like street lights,

verandas on houses and many, many things and also the details they saw in ads.

So we have so many detectives in our audience, it’s been an absolute pleasure to answer

your questions.

One question that came up was quite a good one.

It seems that maybe the people aren’t as used to using Trove as usual so thank you

very much for doing that good demonstration.

If you have any more questions about using Trove you can always send us an ask a librarian

enquiry and that goes for any of the questions, any questions that might have popped up for

you today that you’d like a bit more information about.

There is one I’d like to answer before we move to the end, I know that we’re really

pressed for time but I’d just like to go back into the Library’s catalogue and the

question was how can you tell if an image is in copyright or not?

So I’m going to do a search for a portrait, one that I know exists.

I’m just going to start very broadly as Aaron did and these are my results.

They actually should all be digitised materials so what I can do is I can actually click on

any of these.

I think the internet is being very slow, I apologise for that because all of these should

have a thumbnail appear next to the image but for our purposes I can still show you

how to tell if an image is in copyright or not.

We simply click on the title, we go down to the bottom of the catalogue record.

We look at the copyright status tab which is really, really useful and it shows based

on the metrics of the expected creation date that can give a broad guideline on whether

it’s out of copyright or not.

Copyright’s quite a complex legal issue so what we would say is this is an indication

that it is out of copyright but almost all of the images that Aaron has featured today

are out of copyright.

When you view the recording of the webinar if you’d like to do that on Friday you’ll

be able to look at all of the links of the images and find them again in our catalogue.

Alright so let’s now go back to our presentation.

Questions, okay so we’ve mentioned ask a librarian.

This is a time when we always encourage you to ask questions.

You can Google NLA Ask a Librarian and we’ll be happy to get back to you by email.

Also thank you again for joining us today, as I said it’s been a really engaged group.

You might like to join us for upcoming webinars and we have one coming up on Canberra family

history on the 29th of April but in this webinar we’ll also feature techniques for searching

about family history clues in your location really wherever you are in Australia.

In May we have Tracing the History of your House so you can jump online onto the NLA

What’s on page and register for those right now.

Aaron mentioned that we have many previous webinar recordings and these are all ready

for you to watch wherever you are.

You can just Google NLA YouTube and you’ll be able to find our learning playlist.

So thank you again so much for joining us, it’s been a pleasure and until next time

happy researching.