Featured Image: Illinois State Prison Library, Joliet, Ill.: CARLI Digital Collections

From Postcard Collection (Lewis University) in CARLI Digital Collections Postcards are trophies of travel. It was interesting to explore this digital collection that includes primarily postcards of Joliet, Illinois, a place not far from my own home. Browsing the collection, I came to the realization that the Illinois State Prison was (is?) a tourist destination for visitors to Joliet. As a librarian I found this 1921 postcard of uniformed inmates using the prison library particularly compelling. Its colorized quality; the long tables, bookcases, and wooden floor planks all angling dramatically toward a vanishing point; and the stats listed along the top edge (“22,600 volumes, 1,200 issued weekly”) captivated me further. It is inscribed with a rather unexpected message: “Arrived here all right saw such lovely places.” The home page for the collection explains how a postcard can be roughly dated by the location of spaces for messages and the presence or absence of a border around the picture. Written by Mary Rose, Metadata Librarian at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville. To learn more about becoming part of CARLI Digital Collections and using CONTENTdm, see http://www.carli.illinois.edu/index.php?page=contentdm and http://wiki.carli.illinois.edu/index.php/Portal:CONTENTdm.