Photographs
Photographs are important sources of information for any business firm, as they visualize printed or written descriptions and make an accurate and unchangeable record which does not permit of any misunderstanding, as is sometimes the case in reading a printed account. Every industry should have a photograph file illustrating the various aspects of its products or the installations and construction for which it is responsible and which may be supplemented by any photographs which can be obtained on similar work done by firms other than its own.
Banks and investment houses should have photographs of all tangible properties on which they issue securities, as they have been found to be of great aid in making a stock and bond offering concrete in the mind of possible customers.
Photographs are best filed by mounting singly or in groups on a standard size photo-mount board 11 by 14 inches and put into architectural size vertical file drawers. A dry mount process by the use of gum tissue and a hot iron is much to be preferred to the ordinary method of mounting, as photographs expand when wet and shrink in drying, thus subjecting the mounting board to more or less warping unless heavy pressure is used.
A photo-mount board 11 by 14 inches in size. The title of the photograph with date when taken is lettered across the top and the classification number is shown in the upper left hand corner.
Photographs for business purposes may be filed geographically or by subjects, according to the use which is to be made of them. An engineering firm building structures in different parts of the country file their construction photographs under the name of the state and city in which the work is done; all the cities of a single state are arranged in alphabetical order under the state name. The individual photograph boards are numbered in accession order which makes the photograph of latest date the highest number under each city.
Form of entry on the index card to a photograph file
In order to avoid writing the name of the state and the name of the town on the corner of each photograph, this particular library uses on each board the Dewey Decimal Classification history number for each state with the first letter of the name of the city below this decimal number, to which is added the accession number of the photograph. This combined number is used on the corner of the index card on which is also entered the name of the city followed by the accession number of each board and the title of the photograph with the date on which the photograph was taken.
Each photograph may be cataloged on a separate card if desired and subject cards can also be made to any photographs and filed alphabetically with the geographical index cards.
When subject filing of photographs is desired the Dewey Decimal Classification subject number, or a modification of that system, or the name of the subject written out in full or the Cutter symbol for it (which is described in Chapter VI), can be substituted in place of the geographical classification number.