Before Google Reflection

Text used: The Pictoral History of the United States from the discovery of the American Continent to Present Time (1877) For my Before Google project reflection, I went to the Woodruff Library and tried to find a book that contained information that would be hard to come across on Google. One interesting book that popped up while perusing the different floors of the library was titled, The Pictoral History of the United States from the Discovery of the American Continent to Present Time. When I tried to google search for landscapes and scenery from the early to late 1800s, it was nearly impossible. The camera was not invented until the mid 1800’s, and so this makes digital results on google hard to find. This book is interesting because it has very detailed drawings of several landscapes as well as important scenes of a pre-camera United States. The latest year that this book details is 1877, which is the year it was published. I took images of some of the landscapes that I found interesting while flipping through the pages and reading excerpts of the book. For example, there is a detailed image that shows the burning of Chicago in 1871. This is an important event in the history of the Midwestern United States, and yet google results are limited. Even more importantly, its hard to find any results on google for general illustrations of the United States unless you are looking for a specific event. If you were to google today, “Midwestern America”, or “New York City”, you would get millions of pictures of what the landscapes look like today. You cannot google “Midwestern American 1850” and receive landscape pictures, but rather, your search result will give up pictures of maps, or states, instead. Overall, I think that resources like these are quite valuable and shows that books serve as important recordkeeping assets some of which are not found on the web.