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Digital Collection of World War I Posters Available on IMCPL Website
May 23, 2008
Images of over 200 posters encouraging public support of World War One can be seen on the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library's website.
The posters promote a range of patriotic activity, such as enlistment in the armed forces, conservation, industrial mobilization and subscription to Liberty Loans.
When the United States entered World War One in April, 1917, a means of communication was needed to generate public support. President Woodrow Wilson established the Committee on Public Information and its offshoot, the Division of Pictorial Publicity. Director George Creel and artist Charles Dana Gibson enlisted some of the era's finest artists to create posters to spread the patriotic message. These included Howard Chandler Christy, James Montgomery Flagg, Haskell Coffin, Joseph Christian Leyendecker, and Indiana native Gaar Williams.
The Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library obtained the majority of the posters in 1922 when Miss Elizabeth Hench, a teacher at Charles E. Emmerich Manual Training High School in Indianapolis, donated them to the Library for safekeeping.
The posters were recently digitized by the Digital Library Team at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). The project was made possible by a $2,900 grant from the federal Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA).
The images can be accessed from the "Digital Library" link in the left column on IMCPL's website, or directly at http://digitallibrary.imcpl.org/wwi.php.
The World War One poster collection is the latest offering in the Library's digital collection. The others are the 1912 recordings of Hoosier poet James Whitcomb Riley, the late 19th and early 20th century correspondence of leading Indianapolis citizen May Wright Sewall, and nearly 1,000 artifacts found in the collection of The Children's Museum of Indianapolis.
