Report Photo Retrieval Program

About the Program

Category: Libraries (Best in Category)

Year: 2018

The Flood Control District of Maricopa County (District) has a large number of project studies, reports, reference materials and other related books in our library. Many excellent photographs exist in the studies and reports, illustrating past projects, historical flooding, storm damage, maintenance issues and other information beneficial to engineers and planners for developing and managing flood control projects. This documentation of past history is invaluable to a successful future. The problem has been that these photographs are not readily available – they are tucked away in reports that are dozens or hundreds of pages long. When needing to review historic photographs, no one wants to look through shelves of reports – even if the photographs would be very helpful – it is mind-numbing and time consuming. The library reports, themselves, had already been scanned as PDFs and cataloged in a database for easy retrieval. A system was needed to catalog the photographs within the reports to make them similarly accessible. A new database has been created to house approximately 10,000 photographs and an efficient search tool has been developed which allows a person to quickly search for important historic photographs located in the District’s studies and reports.