DOWNTOWN : Library Photos to Be Accessed Digitally

The newly expanded Central Library will provide another state-of-the-art service to its patrons starting in the spring--a computerized photograph viewing and retrieval system.

The new system will allow patrons to call up photographs of historic Los Angeles from the library’s collection, view them on a computer screen and print copies. Patrons will have access to two computer terminals in the History/Genealogy department to search for photos by subject, date, location or other criteria.

The system is expected to ease public access to the library’s collection of photographs, which include 300,000 prints collected from donors and another 2.5 million photographs from the defunct Los Angeles Herald Examiner.

Currently, patrons seeking particular photographs must schedule a two-hour appointment with a photo librarian, who helps perform a tedious manual search. Patrons can then opt to get an immediate--but rather poor-quality--photocopy or pay an average of $10, and wait a week or two, to have the library’s contracted professional lab provide a print.

The new computerized system will be hooked to a printer that will provide copies of fairly good quality--suitable for reports or even framing--for about $1 or $2 each, said Jane Nowak, history/genealogy department manager. Patrons will continue to have the option of ordering prints from the lab.

Nowak and her staff are busy learning the system and entering the first set of photographs--roughly 5,000 images from the “Shades of L.A.” project, in which photographs were collected from family albums of local residents to be stored in the library’s archives.

Entering photos into the system will be an ongoing process for library staff--”sort of a never-ending project,” Nowak said.

The computer system will also help preserve original prints since they won’t be handled as much. The library will keep the originals in storage.

IBM Corp. designed and donated the software. Because the digitized photo images and the catalogue information require a large amount of computer memory, the Automobile Club of Southern California is donating the use of its mainframe computer in Costa Mesa to link up to the library’s system and store the images.