Inventory registers of the DAI Rome photo archive
Until the late 1990s inventory registers of the roman department's photo collection were used to manage the institute's own negatives, those acquired from other institutions or those obtained through donations. Generally there are two types of inventory books: books with no annual inventory figures from the period of 1885 - 1927 and inventory books with a chronological year value from 1928 to 1998. Additionally, in the course of the project funded by the Volkswagen Foundation three separate inventory books were created as well as one register for the image archive of Tatjana Warscher.
The inventory books contains lists composed of nine columns which include the following information (from left to right):
- Photo No.
- Date of Inventory
- Negative Format
- Photographer
- a short description of the object
- Repository at the time of admission
- Comments (e.g. dimensions, references, etc.)
- Slide No.
- Negative No.
The entire stock of the institution's inventory registers was digitized in recent years and made accessible in the database Arachne for online research in collaboration with the Cologne Digital Archaeology Laboratory. The iDAI.Bookbrowser of Arachne can now used to access the entire inventory of the photo collection in Rome. Here all inventory books can be retrieved in chronological order. Unique inventory books can be found through a search for "Inventarbuch" plus the year or - in the case of the registers without assigned year - with a query for the first and the last negative number of the volume (e.g. "Inventarbuch 1956" or "Inventarbuch 1076 1500"). Individual negative numbers can also be used to display the corresponding inventory book page (e.g. "76.2006").
Besides the ability to browse the registers the iDAI.Bookbrowser also offers the possibility to see digital images from the stock photo library of the DAI Rome if they have already been digitised. By selecting the "images / objects" tab in the top bar one can examine the images in Arachne that described on the shown page. In order to enlarge pictures, to order them directly or to show the record of the corresponding object, please click the photo or the object.
