Hello! The Fortepan Iowa project is an online public photo archive located at https://fortepan.us. The project is based at the University of Northern Iowa.
Uploading photos: We are looking for volunteers to help us upload magical historical photos that we curate into the Fortepan IA platform. For example, we are currently working on an incredible collection from the Cattle Congress and also the town of Coon Rapids, IA. We will soon be working on a collection from Waterloo. In the process of uploading, we add descriptive tags so that the images are more easily findable for the general public.
Dating photos: Sometimes we don't know the date of the photograph. We have a small team that has become quite good at figuring out the dates (they look at the make of a car, the style of clothing, etc). If you like to help us investigate dates, it's really fun and we would love some help.
We have a great lab space in the third floor of Seerley Hall, within the Department of History. You are welcome to come hang out in the lab any time. We have regular meetings on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.
