Unknown Places

One of the more amazing collections available through the Tulsa City-County Library is the Beryl Ford Collection. Ford collected thousands of images of Tulsa right up to his death in 2009. The Rotary Club of Tulsa purchased the collection and, with the help of the Tulsa City-County Library and the Tulsa Historical Society, began the monumental task of preserving and digitizing the collection.

An unidentified bathing beauty, just one
of hundreds of unknown images from the
Beryl Ford Collection.

Today you can browse the Beryl Ford Collection online, search the database and even purchase prints. It's a fascinating peak into our city's past.
But many of the photographs in the massive collection are not identified. People and places are depicted but little or no information is included. To solicit public input the Library has posted many of these images on Flickr hoping people like you might help. According to the Library's blog:

"We want to encourage user participation in the identification of the images and to make our resources more available, discoverable, and useful. We hope that both known and unknown audiences will want to comment, share, and engage in community conversations about our shared history."

Unidentified people and places are now posted and your input is invited. Even if you don't recognize anyone it's a lot of fun trolling through the photos.After all, Beryl did a dandy job saving all this local history. Helping identify some prints is the least we can do to honor his memory.

TCCL Special Collections on Flickr

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The Recent Past

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Oklahoma Modern

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