Digital image collection

The Folger's Digital Image Collection offers online access to over 75,000 images from the Folger Shakespeare Library collection, including books, theater memorabilia, manuscripts, art, and more. Images are available in high resolution and users can show multiple images side-by-side, zoom in and out to see fine detail, view cataloging information when available, export thumbnails, and construct permanent URLs linking back to their favorite items or searches.

About the collection

You may use your web browser to access the collection through a convenient interface called LUNA.

Through the Digital Image Collection you can:

• Compare 19th-century productions of Shakespeare with today's through historic photographs and promptbooks
• Look at letters written by Queen Elizabeth I
• Examine rare paintings in "up close and personal" detail
• Read diary entries from over 200 years ago
• And much more

Features

The Folger digital image collection contains high resolution images requested for research, publication, and the web. Also included are items chosen for digitization by Curators, Conservators, and Reading Room Staff; or created for special projects, e.g., pre-1640 quarto editions of Shakespeare.

Some images are accompanied by Hamnet descriptions of the entire item, but in most cases only abbreviated information exists.

Features include:

• The ability to create a shortened URL for sharing content (zoomable images, search results, slideshows, etc.) with standard tools like Facebook, Twitter, Google, Delicious, etc. For example, follow this durable URL to a zoomable version of a Hamlet title page. Zoom in and read the full inscription about Shakespeare, copied in a late seventeenth-century hand from a book by Dryden! Or, follow this link to retrieve Hamlet-related search results images in your browser. Learn more about linking and embedding in LUNA here.
• The ability to create a "Web Widget" to embed into other applications your search results, slideshows, presentations or other LUNA views. This feature is available in LUNA. Refer to the link above to learn more about linking and embedding in LUNA.
• Register an online user ID in LUNA. You can save multiple sets of images for later reference, along with private annotations you can make about the images you've selected. Follow this link for more about LUNA Registration and User Settings.
• Access images in our Quartos and other cover-to-cover, page-by-page collections, which include digitized copies of 218 of the Folger Shakespeare Library's pre-1640 Shakespeare texts, including poems, plays, and "apocryphal" editions now known to have been written by someone else.
• The ability to create and save groups of images for later reference. Follow this link for more on creating "Media Groups" in LUNA.

Fields

Basic keyword searching may be the best place for you to start searching the Folger digital image collection, for two reasons. First, a basic keyword search will find terms anywhere within whatever information accompanies an image. Second, our image databases are very much works in progress and some fields therefore are empty at the moment. To learn more about browsing and searching by keyword, refer to Quick Search Tips below.

But use of the Advanced search feature can also be helpful in many cases, e.g. when searching for known items or when creating a persistent hyperlink for a specific subject, name, or boolean keyword search. This list of database fields is intended to help with Advanced searches, and with testing your Advanced search results. To learn more about these types of advanced searches, refer to Digital Image Collection How-Tos below.

Image details

Image title: a brief description of the image.

Image producer name(s): where available, names of those associated with creation of the image (e.g., artists and engravers).

Transcribed information: transcription of printed or engraved captioning or title or title-like information.

Image details: may include details about cropping, exact location within a larger work, etc.

Image subject term(s): subject indexing of cultural and conceptual illustrative content.

Image IconClass number(s): iconographic classification codes (combinations of numbers and letters) assigned from the IconClass index.

Image bibliographical reference(s): citations to relevant reference works.

Image order: provides details about the order of appearance, when multiple images occur within a larger work.

Page height: a measurement in millimeters.

Page width: a measurement in millimeters.

Event title: a brief description of a Folger event where the photo was taken.

Event date: the date of a Folger event where the photo was taken.

Source details and administrative metadata

Source creator: an author or other personal or corporate name associated with creation of the source in which the image appears.

Source title: title of the source in which the image appears.

Source created or published: imprint -- or sometimes date only -- of the source in which the image appears.

Physical description: details of pagination / foliation, and/or extent of illustration, and/or height in centimeters of the source in which the image appears.

Copyright information: may contain rights information crediting individual photographers.

Source call number: the designated shelf location for the the source in which the image appears.

Digital image file name: a unique numeric ID for the image file.

Digital image type: a field containing one of four possible values: FSL building, FLS collection, FSL event, or Theatre production.

Hamnet catalog link: a hyperlink to the Hamnet bibliographic description (when available).

ESTC catalog link: a hyperlink to the English Short Title Catalog bibliographic description (when available).

Hamnet bib ID: a unique numeric ID for a relevant Hamnet bibliographic description.

Hamnet holdings ID: a unique numeric ID for a relevant Hamnet copy-specific description.

Multiple page sort order: a non-displaying field that can be used in post-search sorting. Primarily used in sorting image sets for bound items digitized cover-to-cover.

Hamnet catalog record

Some images in the Folger digital image collection are accompanied only by abbreviated data records, with fields of the sort described above. However, other image descriptions are supplemented with bibliographic data pulled in from Hamnet.

Some of these Hamnet records may provide additional details that do not appear in "Image" or "Source" fields. Other Hamnet records may describe an entire source item, but may not fully describe the specific portion photographed.

The following fields from Hamnet records may appear in the Luna digital image database descriptions:

Creator (Hamnet)

Uniform title (Hamnet)

Title (Hamnet)

Alt. title (Hamnet)

Edition (Hamnet)

Place of creation or publ. (Hamnet)

Creator or publisher (Hamnet)

Date of creation or publ. (Hamnet)

Physical description (Hamnet)

Folger holdings notes (Hamnet)

Notes (Hamnet)

Citations (Hamnet)

Subject (Hamnet)

Associated name (Hamnet)

In (Hamnet)

Call number (Hamnet)

Quick Tips

The following tips and suggestions can help you get the results you are looking for when browsing the Digital Collection.

Some images are accompanied by Hamnet records which describe the entire item, not the specific portion photographed. In many cases only abbreviated data records are provided. Thumbnail browsing can be a great way to explore our content without having to enter search terms. In LUNA, you have the option of browsing through up to 250 thumbnails at a time. You can also narrow any browse or search results by selecting a What, Where, Who or When Category from the "Narrow Search" lists displayed on each screen of thumbnails. Follow this link for more about browsing in LUNA on the web.