CROSS-POSTED; APOLOGIES FOR DUPLICATION

After a highly successful 15-year project to conserve and catalog the landscape design firm's 139,000 historic plans & drawings collection, the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site, a unit of the National Park Service (www.nps.gov/frla) has launched an ambitious effort to increase the visibility of and the access to these materials, while at the same time decreasing their handling and, in turn, preserving them for generations to come.

In 2000, while completing the conservation and cataloging effort, Olmsted NHS partnered with the National Association for Olmsted Parks (NAOP) and, with funding from the National Center for Preservation Technology & Training (NCPTT), created an online textual database as a comprehensive research tool to the complete Olmsted body of work. This includes a "Master List" search for Olmsted projects, as well as an archival search for plans & drawings, photo albums, correspondence and planting lists, located at both Olmsted NHS and the Library of Congress. This database, the Olmsted Research Guide Online (ORGO, available at www.rediscov.com/olmsted) remains the comprehensive search tool for Olmsted project-based research. Additional finding aids for the firm's diverse historical manuscript collections can be found at the Site's archival collections website at https://www.nps.gov/frla/olmstedarchives.htm.

As technologies have evolved, so have users' demands. Increasingly, as new media and the digital revolution have required the turn towards electronic access, Olmsted NHS began developing a digital repository of its images by creating a vast collection of digitized records that more easily fulfilled researcher requests. We began by comprehensively digitizing the collection of historic photo albums, and responding to researcher requests for digital copies from the plans & drawings collection of oversize materials.

After exploring a number of options and in consultation with local and national experts, including NPS colleagues in Washington DC, it was decided to begin with a familiar off-the-shelf product – Flickr – due to its popularity and ability to serve as a portal to our digital collections for the general public. A more robust and NPS-integrated solution is being investigated utilizing the native database required of all Department of the Interior units for collections accountability. While the ORGO database website remains THE comprehensive research tool for the broadest inquiry into the Olmsted work, this easy-to-use and recognizable product promises the most accessible means of delivery possible. Our Flickr collections can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/olmsted_archives/collections.

Now, just weeks after the National Park Service celebrated the centennial of its founding, we are proud to announce that we have uploaded our 100,000th image! This includes the entire historic photograph album collection (with a small number of exceptions) and a sizable portion of the oversized plans & drawings collection. We have recently embarked on another ambitious project to comprehensively digitize the collection of Plans & Drawings. With the recent allocation of internal NPS project monies from a nationwide "Recreation Fee" fund and administrative assistance once again from NAOP, we have engaged a funded two-year Archivist / Digital Project Manager to shepherd the process. Those monies also support the purchase of an oversized digital scanner onsite as well as offsite digital photography of materials too large and/or too fragile to be handled in-house.

We look forward to building on recent successes while creating a more robust program of digital assets and a working template for other repositories of large-format materials, both inside the NPS and outside. Primarily, we look forward to serving all manner of researchers and curious browsers from around the world, while saving these fragile, historic materials from being handled. As we advance both preservation and access, we look forward to the addition of our next 100,000 images.

Please feel free to pass this message along to colleagues and other interested parties, and to share our collections and to "Follow" us on Flickr; hundreds of new items are being loaded every week. Feel free to contact our staff at [log in to unmask] for any questions about the ORGO website or database, or about our Flickr collection (specific reference requests, meanwhile, can be sent to [log in to unmask]ov).

Anthony Reed, Archivist

Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site

99 Warren St.

Brookline, Massachusetts 02445

http://www.nps.gov/frla/olmstedarchives.htm

The Olmsted Research Guide Online (ORGO): http://www.rediscov.com/olmsted

Like us on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/OlmstedNHS

And check out our Flickr page here: https://www.flickr.com/photos/olmsted_archives/collections

BACKGROUND

FREDERICK LAW OLMSTED NATIONAL HISTORIC SITE

Frederick Law Olmsted (1822-1903) is widely recognized as the founder of the profession of landscape architecture in the United States and the nation's foremost parkmaker. The historic, three-story brick vault at the Frederick Law Olmsted National Historic Site in Brookline, Massachusetts, houses thousands of original plans and drawings detailing the most treasured public spaces and landscapes in America including the United States Capitol Grounds, the White House, and the Jefferson Memorial; West Point Military Academy; Great Smoky Mountains National Park; Niagara Falls Reservation; Yosemite Valley, and New York's Central Park.

The Olmsted Archives is one of the most heavily researched museum collections in the National Park Service. Every year park and city planners from across the United States use these documents to rehabilitate and rebuild many of our most nationally significant and beloved public spaces. The Olmsted Archives contains records for nearly 5,000 projects including national, state and city parks; metropolitan park systems; planned residential communities; school and college campuses; arboretums and reservations; institutional grounds, and private estates. Plans for parks in Seattle, Chicago, Baltimore, Buffalo, and Louisville, to name but a few of the park systems designed by the Olmsteds, have been key to tens of millions of dollars of recent public and private renovations and repairs.

In Brookline, Frederick Law Olmsted established a full-scale professional office that expanded and perpetuated his landscape design ideals, philosophy, and influence over the course of a century. The Olmsted home and office were designated a National Historic Landmark in 1963 and became part of the National Park System in 1979. Most of the archival records were rapidly deteriorating and largely inaccessible to the public when the National Park Service took possession. Park Service staff are currently in the midst of a concerted effort to inventory, conserve, and make accessible nearly 1,000,000 records dating from the 1860s, including an estimated 139,000 landscape architectural plans and drawings and thousands of photographic prints and negatives, planting lists, lithographs, letters, financial records, and reports.

Visitors have the unique opportunity to tour a century-old, professional design office that remains virtually unchanged from the days when the Olmsted firm's activity was at its height. The surrounding grounds, which may well be the most significant historic designed landscape in the National Park Service, continue to reflect Olmsted's design ideals, craftsmanship, and use of plant material.

The Olmsted Office also played an influential role in the creation of the National Park Service. Writing from his desk in Brookline, Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. crafted the words that were to serve as a "statement of purpose" for legislation establishing the National Park Service in 1916:

"To conserve the scenery and the natural and historic objects and the wildlife therein and to provide for the enjoyment of the same in such manner and by such means as will leave them unimpaired for the enjoyment of future generations."

To visit Olmsted National Historic Site: https://www.nps.gov/frla/planyourvisit/hours.htm