Hidden Views: Salvaging Historic Images at the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences

The Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences (BSNS) has a long, rich history of documenting people, places, global cultures, educational approaches, natural history, and the scientific world through photography. In an effort to make these images more accessible to everyone, the Buffalo Museum of Science applied for and was awarded several grants to digitize historic negatives from our collection that were being held in cold storage. These negatives consist of a diverse array of subject matter that document the early 20th century across several academic disciplines. Included in the collection are images illustrating the history of Buffalo, the history of the Buffalo Society of Natural Sciences and the Buffalo Museum of Science, photographic history of Western New York, and the history of general science, natural and physical life, and culture. By making these images available as a public resource through digitization and dissemination we hope to inspire curiosity about the sciences, the humanities, and the past, and to broaden knowledge and stimulate interest in all of these fields of study.

The Buffalo Museum of Science partnered with Chicago Albumen Works of Housatonic, Massachusetts to safely digitize the negatives.