Presents

An Index to the Burgert Brothers Photography Collection

at the

Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System

There are three ways given below to view the 14,000 plus Burgert Brothers collection of Tampa photos.  Below that are some comments about the collection.

1. Search or Browse the collection with the aid of thumbnails of the images. Here you can use a text search to help locate images of interest.
2. View a Random Slide Show of the images with descriptions.  This application requires Microsoft Silverlight to be installed on your computer.  If that is not the case, you will automatically be prompted to do that.
3. Browse the files where they are sorted into dated intervals presented below.

The data

Some Comments

The Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System has done yeoman service in digitizing many of the photographs taken by Burgert Brothers from the 1890's into the 1960's in Tampa, Florida and the surrounding area.  They make note of this collection at http://www.hcplc.org/hcplc/liblocales/jfg/H&G/burgert/, give information about the collection, and allow you to search the collection.

Originally this was a Telnet link for those of us accessing the catalog via the Internet, and it gave you a glimpse of what the Internet was like before the World Wide Web came along. Since I love old photographs, I wanted a better way to browse an index of these files, where, with the click of my mouse, I could then view the photograph.  I put my programming skills to work, and the Search with thumbnails at the first link above or links by date below that will demonstrate the results.

The library now has moved into the modern age with a new search feature for their catalog.  Go to http://www.hcplc.org/ and click on the Catalog link.  Or go to the specific Burgert search page at http://www.hcplc.org/hcplc/liblocales/jfg/H&G/burgert/

There are now 14,234 photos in the index as of May 21, 2009. There were 13,222 photos in the index as of January, 2005,  8,578 photos in the index as of July 1, 2002, and when I first compiled this listing in December, 1999, there were 4,458.

As in any large database, there are errors. As you browse the collection, you most probably will find a very small number of  instances where a file is listed, but no picture is produced when you click on it.  In another type of error the picture does not match the Title. Considering the size of the database, such problems are understandable.

I welcome comments and ideas at William LaMartin.  Have fun.

Since creating this site, the library has changed its policy as regards the photos.  They originally had the following statement as to the use of the photos:

Copies of prints may be used in exhibits, displays and publications, providing a credit line stating: Courtesy, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System accompanies each print.

That statement is still there, but they have put "watermarks" on many of the Burgert photos available online. Since this watermark--similar to what is displayed below--situated in the center of the photo pretty well defaces the photos, they have lost a lot of their appeal for casual browsing. I suppose the purpose of the watermark is to discourage the printing of the images--which, in my opinion, wouldn't print out all that well anyway due to their low resolution.   The library is certainly entitled to do whatever it desires, but we can hope that at some point they may reconsider the watermark and replace the watermarked photos with the original ones.