A data management project for the Photo Postcard Image Collection of Colonial Korea was recently completed June of 2018.  This collaborative project was completed after seven years when each of the seven institutions in North America (Chicago, Columbia, Harvard, University of Michigan, Duke, University of Toronto, and UCLA) all acquired a copy of the scanned images of the Collection from a South Korean publisher in 2010.  The seven institutions then formed a working group and collaboratively worked for meta-data development including creating Korean Romanization, verifying Chinese and Japanese characters and adding Enflish Keyword search terms for each of the 8,000 postcards.

The Collection includes postcard images of cultural, industrial and technological status of Korea from the first half of the 20th century.  The Collection is a valuable visual resource for Korean studies at the University and will be a significant primary source for research.

The University of Chicago’s copy of the Collection is currently stored at the LUNA program in the Visual Resources Center. 

Special thanks is given to Bridget Madden, Associate Director at the Visual Resources Center for handling non-roman characters for the duration of this project, also to Nanju Kwon, Korea Foundation Visiting Librarian Intern (2016-2017) who reviewed and corrected each of the 8,000 entries for verification.  

To read more about this collection, click here.

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