Bob Bailey Collection Updates/Possible Crowdsourcing Project

[amyb]

Hi all,

 

Just wanted to update the forum on a few recent updates to the Bob Bailey Studio archive at the Briscoe Center Center American History.  All boxes in the archive are now on the collection finding aid at: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/taro/utcah/00451/cah-00451.html. The main difference from before is that the finding aid originally just had Bailey's "select" images--these were negatives that the studio had picked out and arranged by subject.  The finding aid now also includes the boxes that were "non-selects"--they're arranged by the studio's job number.  For these non-selects, we've typed out all of the ledger entries up to 1950--you can email me if you'd like a copy of this file (in Excel).  I'm slowly trying to increase the number of images we've got online by sending batches over to UT's library school for digitization each semester, but so far only about 1,000 of these non-selects have been scanned and posted to our image database.

 

We've also digitized all of the Bailey films we received in the donation.  See: http://av.cah.utexas.edu/index.php?title=Category:Bob_Bailey_Studios_Photographic_Archive&gsearch=bob%20bailey 

 

Besides these updates, I'm writing today to see if any forum members are interested in helping out with a project to link digitized photos from Bailey to their street locations on HistoryPin--see an example of this here: http://www.historypin.com/map/#!/geo:29.739863,-95.364073/zoom:14/dialog:124517/tab:streetview/.  If so, write me at my work email: a.bowman@austin.utexas.edu.  

 

I think I've written this before, but I know the locations of some Bailey photos may be misidentified--please write me if you ever find any of these.  Also, please let me know if there are any topics/businesses, etc. that you'd like to see digitized and I'll try to send these over to the students for digitization.

 

Thanks all!

Amy

 

Amy Bowman, Photo Archivist

Dolph Briscoe Center for American History

a.bowman@austin.utexas.edu

 

[Amsterdam]

In 1988, I was at the height of my Houston movie theater fanaticism. I discovered Bailey Studios and purchased about a dozen b&w 8x10's of various old theaters. I kept them to myself until the mid 90's and the internet craze hit. So I created a little web page that featured my Bailey photos. Shortly thereafter, I heard some chatter from Al Zarzana (owner of the old Garden Oaks Theater) that the Bailey's were a bit angry over "somebody" putting their pics up on the internet. I never understood this because I did credit Bailey for the photos, I wasn't charging any money to view them (free website) and the Bailey Collection was on it's way to Austin to sit on a shelf and collect dust. Shortly after hearing this, I took the website down (it was more of a webpage learning endeavor). Now that I'm older and wiser, I understand the sensitivity of copyrights and ownership. But I'm glad the collection is available for all to enjoy. My apologies to the Bailey Family for being a bit misguided in my enthusiasm for the old movie theaters of Houston.