1. NOBLE Local History Roundtable Notes
Elizabeth B. Thomsen, Member Services Manager,
et@noblenet.org
Local History Projects and Sources of Information
MACRIS: Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System
http://mhc-macris.net/
Database of the Massachusetts Historical Commission “...including but not limited to,
the Inventory of Historic Assets of the Commonwealth, National Register of Historic
Places nominations, State Register of Historic Places listings, and local historic district
study reports.”
HistoryPin: A global community collaborating around history
http://www.historypin.org/
Primary focus is pinning images to a map, Integrates with Google Streetview
Both organizations and individuals
Upload images individually or batch
Historical Marker Database
http://www.hmdb.org/
Extensive, well-organized, crowdsourced database of historical marker information
Geocoded, subject categories
Field Trip: Google mobile app
http://support.google.com/fieldtrip/
Shows nearby places and events from a variety of geocoded sources, including images
and descriptions from many of the Arcadia books, the Historical Marker Database, Open
Buildings and other sites of historic interest, as well as dining, shopping and
entertainment sources. (You can configure which sources you want to see.)
Internet Archive

2. http://archive.org/
Adding images from Metropolitan Museum
New project: images extracted from Internet Archive books, currently being loaded on
Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/internetarchivebookimages/
Wikimedia Commons
“a database of 25,084,428 freely usable media files to which anyone can contribute”
http://commons.wikimedia.org/
Photographs (and other files) contributed by individuals and organizations including
Peabody Essex Museum
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Elihu_Thomson_Administration_Building.jpg
Google Book Search
http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search
Limit search by time, publisher, etc.
If you use My Library, you can just search within those titles
Google Image Search
http://images.google.com/
Search by image (URL or upload)
Good for checking for more information about an image you want to use
Image Management Tools
Embedded metadata in image files includes both technical information recorded by the camera
(geographic coordinates, date, time, settings) and descriptive information (title, description,
photographer, copyright)
Geosetter
http://www.geosetter.de/en/
Free program that allows batch editing of image metadata using templates
Picasa
http://picasa.google.com
Easy image organization and editing
Doesn’t touch your original files, allows you to back out of changes
Reads and embeds metadata in image files
Facial recognition feature