Researchers help Library of Congress

They're identified only as "Chicago players."

Members of the Pictorial History Committee of the Society of American Baseball Research (SABR) are pitching in to help the U.S. Library of Congress identify old time baseball players in its photo collection.

The Library of Congress has begun uploading photos from the early 20th Century Harris & Ewing Photo Collection to its web site. So far, it has about 3,600 photos from that collection on the web. Search on the keyword "baseball" and you will find 295 photos.

Trouble is, most of the people in the pictures are identified only as "baseball players." Putting names to faces is a huge undertaking. The Library of Congress possesses tens of thousands of photos from the Harris & Ewing Collection. It will upload additional batches of photos gradually, and hopes eventually to have the entire collection on-line.

Photographers Harris & Ewing, Inc. photographed people, events, and architecture, particularly in Washington, D.C., during the period 1905-1945. Harris & Ewing gave its collection of negatives to the Library of Congress in 1955.

SABR researchers previously worked to improve the captions of the Bain Collection of photos on the Library of Congress web site.

Was this the mascot, or the lawn mower?