About

CATABLOG:  a site created with blogging software that provides short descriptions of collections via blog posts.  Posts can be easily tagged, categorized and updated, and may contain image and media files.

With more than 500,000 items, the Visual Studies Collection at the Library of Virginia provides an astonishing visual account of the commonwealth—from its beginnings to the present—through single items, such as one-of-a-kind daguerreotypes, to sprawling collections with many thousands of photos and related documentation, and everything in between: 19th- and 20th-century family albums, posters, scrapbooks, mixed ephemera, bookplates, postcards, lithographs, etchings, engravings, drawings, all manner of photographic prints, film and glass-plate negatives, 35mm slides, and images digitally inscribed onto compact discs.

Multiple Exposure: Catablog of the Visual Studies Collection @ the Library of Virginia— is an attempt to bring greater visibility to our prints and photographs holdings, by necessity protected from the literal light of day and, therefore, mistakenly considered inaccessible or sacrosanct by even the most experienced researchers.

Each blog entry will describe one collection or file, giving a sense of how the items hold together as a collection, historically or aesthetically, and how it relates to other collections.

Each will include a small visual sampling, the collection’s formal title (ex: “O. L. Schwencke Cigar Box Label Collection”), catalog designation (ex: C1:004), the inclusive dates covered or represented by the collection (ca.1890–1895), and a brief physical description (74 chromolithographs in original bound volume, 6.5 x 10 inches), as well as notes on provenance, arrangement, and related Library resources.