Resources - Online Digital Photo Archives

 

Tips for searching:

 Search by county - such as "Lycoming",  "Northumberland", etc

Always search towns as town, PA and then also as town, Pennsylvania

Add the word "postcard" to a google image search 

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ONLINE DIGITAL PHOTO ARCHIVES
A List
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Find an Index to the Facebook Photo Albums on my Valley Girl Views Page, here:

https://susquehannavalley.blogspot.com/2026/04/resources-facebook-photo-albums.html

Postcard Sites:

• https://www.oldpostcards.com/

• https://www.marylmartin.com/

• https://www.hippostcard.com/

• https://www.cardcow.com/

• https://www.postcardarcheology.com/

On My Page:

• Dallin Aerial Surveys
• Town Indexes
• Facebook Photo Albums

Archives:

• https://digitalarchives.powerlibrary.org/papd/

• https://padigital.org/formats/

• https://www.loc.gov/pictures/

• https://www.digitalcommonwealth.org/

•  https://libraries.psu.edu/about/collections/penn-state-university-archives-photograph-collection

• https://www.flickr.com/

• www.ebay.com

• Facebook.com

• https://www.jstor.org/images

• https://www.jstor.org/site/bucknell/

• https://www.jstor.org/site/upenn/universityarchives/?so=item_title_str_asc&searchkey=1775417690940

• https://powerlibrary.org/collections/

• https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

• https://search.getty.edu/gateway/search

• https://www.ancestry.com/search/collections/1093/

• https://umarch.lycoming.edu/databases.html

• https://umarch.lycoming.edu/postcards/counties.htm

• https://www.lycoming.edu/library/archives/

• https://www.lookandlearn.com/history-images/index.php

• https://libwww.freelibrary.org/digital/

• https://digitalcollections.statelibrary.pa.gov/

• https://www.carnegielibrary.org/digital-collections/

• https://communityhistoryarchives.com/

• https://www.portal.hsp.org/collections

• Life Magazine Digital Archives

• https://digital.library.temple.edu/digital/collection/p16002coll26/

• https://www.si.edu/openaccess

• https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/

• https://sites.google.com/site/statearchives/home

• https://catalog.archives.gov/search

• https://digitalcollections.frick.org/digico/

• https://siarchives.si.edu/

• https://librarycompany.org/using-the-library/resources/#/

• https://www.thehenryford.org/search?Tab=collections

• https://www.penn.museum/collections/

• http://bdhp.moravian.edu/home/home.html

• https://digital.library.pitt.edu/

More: College Libraries often have digital archives - and sometimes college libraries in other states have images from our area.  For instance, some of our local maps are found in the University of Texas Archives.  The same is true of public libraries in other states. 

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ABOUT MY OWN ARCHIVES

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Folders by town, on my external hard drive

Hands down the question I get asked most often is "Where did I find these photos".    When I don't answer, or tell you I don't know - I am not trying to be difficult.  I really don't remember where most of them came from.  

Folders By Theme, on my external hard drive

Often the answer is "A folder on my hard drive.".   That's not helpful, I know. It's hard enough to keep track of what the photos are of, let alone where they came from.  

Often what you see on facebook is the process of me sorting photos from my flash drives and cdroms onto my external hard drive.  I typically pull a folder or two over to my laptop, then sort them into the external drive by town and or theme.  

In addition to all of that, I have a folder on my laptop labeled "VGV WORK".  That's where the projects I am currently working on are stored.  And that's where I save all of the random things I find while researching something else - because of all the ways I collect photos, I collect the most while researching something unrelated.  I'll be searching for one thing, find something else, and save it to my work folder. Then I try to sort that work folder out once a week, "or so".  

Some of the other places I have found photos:

• libraries and historical societies.
• buildings /Restaurants with historical photos on the walls.
• old books

I am a genealogist, and decades ago, I was one of the first in our "circle" of acquaintances with a portable handheld scanner - before cell phones.  People would ask me to come to their homes and scan photos for them, and I would take the opportunity to scan anything they had of local interest, that they were willing to let me scan. 

After writing this blog for years now, people regularly send me photos and papers.  There's a small group of elderly women who get together regularly (for another purpose) and they talk about my posts.  Over time, one of the women learned how to contact me, and now the others bring her things to send to me.  I have never met any of these women, but I love them, and when they send me a question, I can guarantee you I put answering their question as near to the top of my list as  I possibly can.  :-)

Then there are postcard sites, ebay listings, auction listings, photos shared on facebook..  AND there are dozens of photo archive sites.  

I usually cannot tell you where a photo came from.  But I can give you a list of sites I would recommend checking, if you are looking for photos of a certain town or event - those are the sites I have listed above.