The phenomenal growth of interest in family history research on the Internet will lead relatives from around the planet to named persons in your photographic archive, helping them discover detailed information that would have been unavailable a few years ago. The value of digital photograph collections Many people use historical photograph collections, and the use is rising. Traditionally, these collections have been of interest to historians studying architecture, environmental history, or social and political issues. Today, scholars are not the main audience for some collections. Such collections are used more heavily by publishers and film-makers, for documentary videos, coffee table books, and advertisements.
Individuals also get copies of photographs both for personal and aesthetic reasons.
Also, people are compiling extensive and detailed histories of their families, often searching out relatives remote from them in time and place. The Internet offers a way to serve the rising demand. For the most part, collections of historical photographs have been hard for researchers to access. The photographs themselves are unwieldy and fragile, the collections are often complex, and the catalogue information is scanty. Quite often, the catalogue offers collection level rather than item level information, so the researcher needs to pull each individual photograph to see what it is.