Thanks to everyone for your great suggestions!  I had several requests to
share the information I received, so here's a summary of the responses:

************************

We have done several things to promote the photographic collections as well
as the entire collection.  For one thing, we have allowed the local
newspaper as well as the TV stations to run old photos.  This may be in
stories or as a once a week identification item.  I have found that they
are valuable friends to have to help promote the collection.

Another thing we did (twice and I just had someone ask when we were going
to do it again):  we had a Picture Party.  We have a large collection of
photographs, mostly portraits, from the 1940-1980s with no
identification.  We invited people from the community to the party.  When
they arrived, we had white gloves, small post-it notes, and pencils.  We
had also stacked the photos in groups - men, women, children, groups,
etc.  If they could identify the person(s), they wrote it on the note in
pencil and stuck it to the back.  We had a place for identified photos.  It
was amazing how many they knew!  It was supposed to last 2 hours, but we
had to run people out after about 3 hours!  My favorite part was watching
ranchers, businessmen and others wearing white gloves telling stories and
identifying photos!  We won a lot of hearts over with those events.

We have helped nursing homes set up displays of old buildings and scenes
for the residents and local restaurants and other businesses around town
decorate with old photos.  It's a win-win situation.

************************

Have you considered creating MARC records for the various collections?
They can be up-loaded to OCLC.

************************

We are a small museum in a very small community.  Our local newspaper, the
TILLER AND TOILER, runs a daily feature called "A Peek at Pawnee County".
They print old photographs from anyone who brings them in and they have used
several of ours, including some which we want help identifying.  We also
provide historic photographs for their yearly special tabloid.  Having a
good working relationship with our local paper has proved beneficial to both
of us and has created interest in our collections outside the regular users.

************************

Have you thought about Arcadia Publishing? They do fabulous books!
Arcadia Publishing
580 Howard Street, Suite 302
San Francisco, CA 94105
415-543-4405

This is their new SF office, but they originated in NH.

************************

I have not yet completed my project, but I am scanning all of class
composite and group portraits. We don't have every single year, but the
dates range from 1895 to the present.  Later on, I also want to scan
pictures of faculty and the founders. My goal with the project is 3-fold: 1)
to increase awareness of the collection, 2) protect the pictures from
further harm by handling, and 3) have backup copies in the case of a
disaster. (Yes, we did actually have a disaster singce I have been here that
resulted in 2 pictures being severly damaged. We are going to have our
images hosted on the contentdm site. This is a lot cheaper than buying the
software, I learned when I went to an information sesssion for contentdm.
My hope, by doing all of this, is that our collection will become much more
visible to alumni, relatives of alumni, members of the college community,
and the general public. Our alumni office uses our collection a lot.  I
noticed someone else posted something about "unidentified people pictures",
which is something I have also thought about doing to get them identified.

************************

Although we are much smaller, and have
a smaller collection, we've found that running old photos in our newsletter
and local newspaper, holding public photo ID days, and publishing a book of
images (part of Arcadia's "Images of America" series) has helped to
publicize our photos. You might want to think about postcards featuring your
images - these could be popular not only in your gift shop, but in other
local museums and tourist sites.

If you are trying to tap into business clients who may want to decorate with
historic images, get in touch with the Chamber of Commerce. If you are a
member, they may allow you to purchase mailing labels for a one-time use and
you can prepare some kind of mailing to let them know about opportunities to
use your images. We've had corporate clients who come in to see us as a
result of seeing our images in other stores.

You may already know this, but all the local QFC stores are decorating with
local historic photos. If they haven't approached you yet, you may want to
talk to a regional manager.

************************

This will help: Go to Metafilter.com and investigate it a bit.
They sometimes post a link and two-sentence description
of resources just such as yours. If you like what you see
(including the archive, where you can find some of the
other photo troves that have previously been posted),
then have a friend who isn't associated with the museum
send in the posting. I think you have to be a member to
post, which is not a difficult thing to do.  The result should
be a 3-day swarming of new hits to your online database,
and some new sales.

************************

Re the query about promoting the photo collection, we are a very tiny
local-history museum, but we started an effort in that direction last year
when we began submitting a scan of a photo in our archives to our
once-a-week local paper. The paper is happy with the response from the
readers and it has generated information about particular photos and
interest in our collection.

************************


Julie Kerssen
Museum of History and Industry
206/324-1685 x17
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