Attached Link: Shorpy

Example: someone thought a 1920 kitchen was really a 'retro'
reconstruction because a roll of paper towels was above the sink.
Another contributor proved via newspaper advertisements that paper
towels were available, though fairly uncommon.

WOW !!!
Just Wow!

Thanks for posting, ock.

cheers,
dr geep
;=]

Amazing!

I love old "slice of life" photographs.  They can give you real insights into how people lived in the past.  And these hi-res plates have so much detail you can almost walk into them.

Thanks!

Wow! Thank you very much for this link. :)

Attached Link: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/catalog.html

Although it's very hard to find books with graphics in Google Books, there is a wealth of interesting books that can be downloaded in their entirety:

http://books.google.com/advanced_book_search

Click the Search radial for Full View Only and a search will provide only books that can be completely downloaded.

There's a history of the Revolutionary War written in 1794.
http://books.google.com/books?id=bmQFAAAAQAAJ

Or a book discussing how the Constitution was written by James Wilson in 1792 (one of the writers):
http://books.google.com/books?id=q00O1m2c-h4C

Or a London Travel Guide written in 1586
http://books.google.com/books?id=0poHAAAAQAAJ

A 1914 edition of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland with illustrations
http://books.google.com/books?id=NP8VAAAAYAAJ&rview=1

History of the Civil Wars of France form 1678
http://books.google.com/books?id=tEsvAAAAMAAJ

Pictorial history of England from 1849
http://books.google.com/books?id=tEsvAAAAMAAJ

Yup, Google Books is a godsend.  Before it came along, the only way to reach some
of those books was through Inter-Library Loan, which is a chancy and expensive
procedure, and wouldn't access the really rare ones anyway.

Most states, major universities and some cities have their own photo
archives similar to LOC.

My favorite is
http://66.213.36.25/
the Toledo Public Library "Images in Time" collection, which has a nice
tag-based search.  It also includes photos of every house and building
in town as of 1937, done for the property tax collector.  Sort of like an
early Google Street View.

The one thing that is desperately mising from Google Books is categorization.

I've been surprised that I haven't found anyplace on the web that's pointing out some of the more interesting books.

Oddly, although Google has created categories for the books, there does not seem to be any way to find out what the categories are. There are a few on the front page, but it's not all of them.

Sounds like somebody needs to do a site for Google Books
similar to Shorpy for archival pictures.

A lot of the books come from libraries, which already have them well cataloged, so it's a shame that existing catalogs, helping to lend order to the books, isn't transferring to Google. 

Here's a nice book on uncommon birds with many color plates inside:
http://books.google.com/books?id=L2sFAAAAQAAJ