Then and Now: Cataloging Aero Service Negatives using Google Maps

What I love about cataloging images is that it provides a chance to breathe life into seemingly static artifacts. Quality cataloging information is essential to facilitating access to images like those found in the Aero Service Corporation Negative Collection. This includes most generally information such as titles, creators, dates and physical characteristics of an image. But my role as cataloger is also to provide added value by identifying and adding information that enhances a photograph’s potential relevance within the wider context of LCP’s collections.

In order to include this kind of information in the catalog, it is necessary, of course, for me as the cataloger to understand exactly what I am looking at so that my descriptions orient the viewer spatially as well as historically. I might rely on any number of secondary sources to find information about the location depicted. But the most essential tool for understanding the Aero Service negatives is the ability to employ Google Maps to compare aerial views of what is pictured ca. 1920s-1930s versus what an area looks like currently. Aero Service images are often of something big and recognizable, such a bridge. But understanding these images also includes recognizing features such as the curve of a road or a bend in the river, to match those unchanging (or slower-changing) features of the land. It is this comparison of “then vs. now” that makes cataloging this collection interesting and relevant for any number of reasons.

Take a look at some of these then-and-now comparisons of Aero Service negatives showing construction of Philadelphia area bridges and try to identify what has changed in the past 90 years.