The Allen County Public Library has struck up a first-of-its-kind partnership to bring an aerial photography database to patrons through the Genealogy Center.
In a partnership with Vintage Aerial and the Allen County Genealogical Society of Indiana, the new database will allow users to access millions of aerial photographs from across the county, with more than 50 thousand from Allen County alone.
Vintage Aerial is a Toledo-based company working to preserve aerial photography from the 20th century and share it with anyone who’s interested. President Fritz Byers said the goal is to make the photos available to anyone.
“And that’s what we are doing today. We are launching a library edition that is specifically tailored to your needs, to create a highly utilizable site," he said. "This is really truly a dream of ours.”
The photos in the database were taken by pilots flying overhead in small planes throughout the years. They were originally intended to then be sold as prints to the owners of the land, but the practice went out of style at the end of the 20th century. Vintage Aerial has acquired and begun to catalog the photos that remain.
The database, which is accessible with additional features on the ACPL internet, gives users the opportunity to search for specific areas and find aerial imagery from those places, using the flight logs of pilots.
Users will also be able to help the database by tagging photos to their exact address or location on a map, assisting future users looking for the same photos.
Those on the library's internet will be able to see photos without a watermark and have access to an extra magnifier tool. As users add information to stories, they'll earn points on the website that can be redeemed for high quality prints.
