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John Johnson Collection for Local Historians: Finding images

Finding images: general

To find out which sections of the John Johnson Collection have been catalogued and digitised, you should refer to the online table: Digitised sections of the Collection and our Introduction to Finding Images.

We currently have c. 118,000 records online, with 183,000 images.

All images are on our own website except: Ballads, the Toyota Project (transport, including a few images of carriages and coaches) and the ProQuest project:  The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera. This (our largest) project. contains 65,000 items, with over 170,000 images) It covers:

  • Popular Prints
  • Advertising
  • 19th century Entertainment
  • Crime, Murders and Executions
  • Booktrade

The ProQuest project, can be cross-searched with other collections through its main platform.

Political Cartoons and Trades and Professions Prints can be browsed and searched in the Visual Arts Data Service (VADS). To browse the images, click on Images next to the project title.   VADS, in turn, can be cross-searched through Culture Grid.

18th century Entertainment, Board Games and Wriiting Blanks are online through Digital Bodleian

 

Finding images of places

In the ProQuest project, the Place index is all-embracing.  You can search the Place box and limit the results to those with illustrations. However, the illustrations will not necessarily relate to the Place.  You can also limit by Type of material, printing process, etc.

If you use Search (rather than Browse) in our online catalogue and set one of the two scrollbars to Places or to Shelfmarks (and input Trade Cards) you can add a Subject/Trades/Product search for Premises.

 

Iconographic indexing

We  index the images too.  We use: Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials and Iconclass.

In The John Johnson Collection: an archive of printed ephemera (ProQuest) always use 'select from a list' to check that your search term is the best one.

Print Shop

Print titled Very slippy weather indeed, showing Hannah Humphrey's print shop with prints in the window, and with a gentleman slipping up outside

(C) Trade in Prints and Scraps 8 (74)