Goals
This project began in 1997 and is designed to locate, digitize, store, and
fully catalog air photos taken of Idaho before 1940.
Negatives for some photos taken before 1940 are located in the National Archives
— but most are not. Instead, prints used in this project have been located at
the offices of various federal agencies, especially the Forest Service. Most of
the photos scanned to date are vertical images at about 1:20,000 scale, but a
wide range of Washington National Guard oblique photos taken in 1933 and 1936
has also been included.
Geography
The project has focused initially on Idaho north of the Salmon River, and
began with 1927 photos of the Florence Basin on the Nez Perce National Forest.
Eventually, photos taken south of the Salmon will be included. Digital images of
1939 photos of Ada and Canyon counties are already included in the collection.
Standards
Prints have been scanned at 300 dpi, are saved as compressed TIFF files, and
have been recorded on CD-ROM discs under ISO 9660 standards. The average file
size of an image is about 6 MB. All scans have been done from black and white
prints. Images have not been georeferenced or rectified as orthophotos. All
images have been saved as artifacts and have not been improved or enhanced. If
an index could be located for a project, it has been scanned onto the last disc
of the project set.
Coverage
About 10% of north Idaho has oblique coverage, and close to 95% has some type
of vertical coverage. When the north Idaho portion is complete, the total file
size will be about 900 GB.
CD-ROM location
The CD-ROMs onto which these images are written are cataloged and are located
at the Circulation Desk, where all other CD-ROMs are also located. These discs
are circulated in the normal manner. The scans (but not the actual images) are
copyright by the University of Idaho Library.
Finding these images in the UI Library Catalog
A Library Catalog search for these air photo projects works for broad
geographic areas (e.g., Clearwater National Forest, St Joe River Valley, Latah
County, etc.), but is not usable for locating photos of specific places (e.g.,
Orofino, Fish Lake, etc.). In addition, entering search terms like "Idaho
air computer file" will be helpful. For example, a search like this will
produce useful results: "Clearwater air computer file."
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Pierce,
Idaho, shot in 1933 (detail).
Click for full image.
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