Postcard Tag

Research

About the project

Numbering more than 2 million items, the Newberry Library's postcard collection is one of the largest in the United States. As we move the collection online, please help scholars, genealogists, and other researchers search and browse the content by adding subject tags and transcribing text. Your work will be used to enhance metadata records for the publicly-accessible Newberry Postcards digital collection. Identifying the subjects, dates, and text of postcards will make the collections significantly more searchable and accessible for everyone.

About the currently featured collections

Right now, our main classification workflow features a variety of different subjects and time periods by using two of our most diverse collections. They are drawn from:

John I. Monroe collection of general postcards. These cards depict a wide range of topics and span the 20th century. Common themes include holidays, sight-seeing, and postcard collecting.
Bryan L. Bossier postcard collection. These cards range from the 1880s to the 1920s and are often photographs. Common themes include religion (particularly Christmas), suffragettes, and photographs of people from all walks of life. Please be aware that this collection includes photographs of graphic violence that are not included in Postcard Tag; proceed with caution if you would like to explore the complete collection.

The transcribe challenging handwriting workflow features cards from the above collections, as well as:

John I. Monroe collection of artist-signed postcards. These cards have a great variety of paintings and drawings from the late 19th to the early 20th century, commonly depicting women and whimsical scenes.
James R. Powell Route 66 postcard collection. These cards are both printed and real photograph postcards from the mid-1920s through the 1960s, documenting the highway and roadside attractions.
Bill Lende collection of tall tale postcards and John I. Monroe collection of fantasy postcards. Both collections feature fantastical images and proto-Photoshop editing.

The regular transcribe workflow features cards from the John I. Monroe collection of sports postcards, which include depictions of a wide variety of sports and games.

Our current challenge workflow is from our collection of “trade cards” from the 19th and 20th centuries. These cards are something between business cards and advertisements, and often feature perplexing visuals used to advertise everyday products. You can learn more about these cards at this blog post.

About the Newberry

Newberry Library, Chicago, 1908

A world-renowned independent research library in Chicago, the Newberry builds, preserves, and makes accessible an extensive collection of rare books, maps, music, manuscripts, and other material spanning more than six centuries. More information.

About the Newberry's postcard collections

The Newberry's postcard holdings provide a rich visual record for many of the library's areas of focus: Chicago and the Midwest; local and family history; travel and tourism; fairs and expositions; the growth of cities; and printing, graphic design, and advertising. You can read more about this collection here.

Items in these collections represent language, ideas, and prejudices of the time they were created. In some cases they are offensive. The content has been provided for research and educational purposes. For more information, please see the Newberry’s full statement on potentially offensive materials and descriptions.

Newberry Postcard Sender -- Browse featured postcards from our collections and send them to your friends through text or email
Newberry Postcards Digital Collection -- Search or browse 50,000 digitized postcards, with cataloging data provided by online volunteers like you
Newberry Digital Collections -- Search or browse tens of thousands of manuscripts, maps, photographs, and more from the Newberry's ever-growing digital collections
Newberry Transcribe -- Transcribe historic letters and diaries from our Midwest Manuscripts collections