Wisconsin Historical Images | Discover the WHS Visual Materials Collections!

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WISCONSIN HISTORICAL IMAGES | Over three million photographs, negatives, cartoons, lithographs and posters

Discover the Wisconsin Historical Society's Online Image Collections

The Visual Materials in the WHS Archives collections document many aspects of the social, economic and political history of Wisconsin and the Upper Midwest. In addition to holdings in regional history, our collections emphasize a national focus in the areas of nineteenth-century exploration, Native Americans, mass communications, and social action movements, including labor and civil rights. Currently, 32,000 images, less than 2% of our total visual materials collections are available online, but we continue to add hundreds of new items to our image database each month.

Interested in learning more about the online image collections at the Wisconsin Historical Society? Subscribe to our monthly email newsletter and tune in to our featured gallery exhibits and special image highlights today.

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BROWSE THE COLLECTIONS | More than 30,000 digitized visual materials in our online image database

Subscribe to WHS Images Email Updates »

The WHS Images Update is an email newsletter produced by the Wisconsin Historical Society digital lab. Each monthly update features gallery exhibits drawn from the visual materials collections as well as new additions to Wisconsin Historical Images, our online image database. To join our mailing list, see our newsletter sign up page or click the link below.

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About the WHS Online Collections »

WHI provides a rich pictorial view of Wisconsin and United States history. Our collection consists of 19th and 20th century posters, paintings, photographs and ephemera. Each featured gallery focuses on a selection of images from our online database and provides an introduction to image research at the WHS Archives.

Purchase Prints from the Archives »

The WHS Digital Lab produces quality giclée print reproductions made from high resolution scans of original source material from our holdings. Custom orders are printed on matte or semigloss papers using large format printers and archival pigmented inks. All print sale proceeds directly benefit the acquisition, preservation and maintenance of the physical and online collections.

Commercial Image Reproductions »

WHS Images licenses custom digital file reproductions for commercial use in traditional print, editorial and advertising as well as for multimedia projects like films, videos, websites, CD-ROMs and podcasts. Our digital lab delivers high resolution TIF and JPG files via email, FTP, CD or DVD within 48 hours of an order's placement.

STANDARDS FOR IMAGE QUALITY

Most images in our online collections have been digitized on a flatbed scanner at 400 ppi at 8 x 10 inches. Oversized items are scanned with a digital back mounted to a 4 x 5 camera. Scans are color corrected in the Adobe RGB 1998 color working space with levels, curve and saturation adjustments. For additional information about WHS image reproductions, see our Frequently Asked Questions page.

The WHS Images Update is a monthly email newsletter that features gallery exhibits drawn from the Wisconsin Historical Society's visual materials archives as well as highlighting collections in our online image database. To join our mailing list, check out our newsletter sign up page. You may unsubscribe from our email updates at any time by clicking here.

Subscribe to the WHS Images RSS Feed for daily updates to the online collections.

Available online | www.wisconsinhistory.org/whi/