CHOOSE A VIEWER
for the collection.

Insight® Browser
No download necessary. This is a simplified subset of the JAVA client and does not require any plug-ins.
Log on is automatic.

or

Download & Install Insight® Java Client

This client software installs on a user's computer. It provides a full tool set. Users working with high-resolution images can perform searches, organize and group content, create presentations, and view related text data.

Click to Download & Install:

After installation, at the log on screen, type the username and password:

Click on “John Carter Brown Library.”
Click on “select.”

The Archive of Early American Images Group Window will open showing all available images.

INSTRUCTIONS
for using Insight® to access the collection. (These are printable documents.)

HTML

PDF document (152K)

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The Library allows downloading of up to 384 pixels-per-inch images from the Archive of Early American Images site. The low resolution of these images makes them unsuitable for use in Powerpoint presentations in classrooms and elsewhere. If you require higher resolution files for classroom presentation, we require that you request that they be sent to you on a CD-ROM and that you agree to use them only for the stated purpose. A nominal fee will be charged for this service. If the image is to be publicly distributed in any form or medium – print, photocopy, digital, video, etc. – special permission fees will apply, and the John Carter Brown Library must be formally and prominently credited.

For information about permissions, contact:

Imaging Services
and Permissions
John Carter Brown Library
Box 1894,
Providence, RI 02912

Telephone: (401) 863-1557
Fax: (401) 863-3477
E-Mail: Susan_Danforth@Brown.edu

The Archive of Early American Images is drawn entirely from the holdings of the John Carter Brown Library, an independently funded and administered institution for advanced research in history and the humanities, founded in 1846, and located at Brown University since 1901. The Library houses one of the world’s outstanding collections of books, maps, and manuscripts relating to the colonial period of the Americas, North and South, from 1492 to ca. 1825.

The Library wishes to express its gratitude to the Ahmanson Foundation for its initial generous support of the project, and to the Getty Foundation for subsequent funding.

THE ARCHIVE OF EARLY AMERICAN IMAGES database is intended to assist historians in their quest for contemporary images to illustrate their research findings and to facilitate the study of historical images in their own right and in proper context. It is also intended to be a unique resource for picture researchers, documentary filmmakers, and others looking for material for commercial use. The database, still in the process of compilation, will have ultimately about 6,000 images.

The vast majority of these images come from relatively obscure books printed in Europe in the early modern period that have in them material related to the Americas. Many of these pictures have never before been reproduced in any form. Thus, the appearance of these images in this database is the first time they have been exposed to general view outside of the book in which the image was first printed centuries ago. The books themselves are in more than a dozen languages, but predominantly in Spanish, Portuguese, French, Dutch, English, German, Italian, and Latin and all printed before ca. 1825.

Every image in this database is accompanied by extensive bibliographical and descriptive information. Accessing the image alone, without the associated data, is to leave out half the usefulness of the database. When you select an image in the database, be sure to click "data" on the menu to the left of the screen to view the associated information.

THE SCANNING OF THE ORIGINAL woodcuts, copper engravings, and paintings (on paper and vellum) has been accomplished by use of professional equipment in the Library at resolutions equivalent to the finest film photography. Images may be purchased for reproduction in accordance with the Library’s standard conditions, which may be found at www.JCBL.org.

THE DATABASE IS ACCESSIBLE by means of more than thirty different fields, and is also searchable by any of the substantive words used in the title of the image or used in the Library’s descriptive cataloguing of each image. Images thus may be found by entering exact information pertaining to the particular piece – such as its name, the creator of the image, the place and date of its making – or by browsing through selected major categories of time, place, and subject.

As with all such electronic databases, the rules for searching are strict and unforgiving. If your search does pertain to an American object or subject, the chances are extremely high you will find a related image in the Archive. Hence, when a search seems to result in a negative finding— "no image located"— please re-examine your procedure. For example, if you enter "alligators," in the plural, you will find only a few images; if you enter "alligator," in the singular, you will find many more.

If you are looking for a Native American artifact, such as a "cradle," no image will be found; but if you enter "cradleboard," there are several images. Although the early Americas were awash in religion, both Christian and other, you will find few images associated with abstractions, like "salvation." To get to associated pictures, you may have to look for something concrete that is related, such as the word "missionaries." The Archive is a database of graphic representations, not of texts. Hence, although the JCB owns dozens of catechisms in many languages, a search under that word is unlikely to be productive.

If you are frustrated in a search, please do not hesitate to send an e-mail query to the Library's imaging department, in particular to
Heather_Jespersen@brown.edu
or to Leslie_Tobias-Olsen@brown.edu.

The selected major broad categories are:

TIME divided as follows: 1492 to 1600; 1601 to 1650; 1651 to 1700; 1701 to 1750; 1751 to 1800; 1801 to 1850.

GEOGRAPHICAL AREA divided as follows: North America, Spanish America, Brazil, Caribbean Islands, the Guianas, the Arctic, as well as specific local placenames (e.g., Lima; Florida; Narragansett Bay).

SUBJECTS divided as follows: Indigenous peoples; flora and fauna; artifacts, industry, and human activities; geography, maps, city views and plans; portraits; other.

By entering different categories in combination – e.g., 1650–1700; Caribbean; artifacts, industry, and human activities – in accordance with the search rules for combining elements, the researcher will find relevant images, including engravings of sugar mills. But one may also easily enter: Rochefort, or “Le figure des Moulins à sucre,” or Histoire naturelle et morale des iles Antilles de l’Amerique, and find the specific image of a sugar mill in Charles de Rochefort’s book printed in Rotterdam in 1665. Or one may enter “sugar mill” and find every depiction of a sugar mill in the entire database. As noted, locations more specific than the broad geographical areas may be accessed, e.g, Florida; 1700–1750; Indigenous peoples, will show what images exist of Indians in Florida produced within the fifty year period.

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