The Otis Historical Archives and the Field Museum

The Field Museum has an online photo archive, with it's primary focus illustrating "art, archaeology, science, and history." The Library's Photo Archives collection contains material as early as 1893 from the World's Columbian Expositio, and contains  over 300,000 images on subject matter such as Botany, Geology, Zoology, and Antrhopology

On the site, there are a couple options for searching through The Field Museum's collections.  One is by going first through their collection on Flickr:

The Flickr collection as I read, was to expand research and outreach from the Field Museum to it's users, and by using Flickr as a user friendly database to search for images in it's collection, I think it's great they expanded the collection. You can choose to search specifically for a photo within the collection by keyword terms, or can browse through the collections looking at things of interest. I checked out their Armour Botany Expedition collection:

Unfortunately if a user was searching for a very particular photo within this specific expedition, they would have to know a little about the expedition itself vs. the information on the photo. The information Flickr gives here contains the name of the expedition, participants, start and end dates of the expedition, the purpose, the name of the ship (which I found fascinating that this was included),  and the location. Regarding the photo above, it notes what type of photograph this is, and it's digital identifier.

 Back to the website, I looked at the collections that were available directly through the Field Museum's website. Though they did not have a full selections of their entire collections available, one could browse through their online site, and search for specific specimens in their database tools.:

The Otis Archives:

The Otis Archives Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, in Washington DC.  Described on their website, "The Otis Historical Archives (OHA) was established in 1968 to take custody of the National Museum of Health and Medicine's institutional records, historical manuscript collections, photographic collections, and rare books, which were previously held by the other four collections divisions. Thus, the Archives document the holdings of the other divisions not only as separate collections with unique specializations, but in a way that emphasizes the interconnectedness of records, artifacts, and specimens that makes the museum unique."

The Otis Archives does have visuals of their photographs online to see in their 'Galleries' tab, from Dental Artifacts to Cold War Photographs of the A-Bomb:

 Bikini Atoll, 1 July 1946 "Fireball on Able Day" (Atomic Bomb Collection, Box 8, Photo #218712-023-15)

Reeve 15943 Embarkation Camp, Bordeaux, France, View of Auto Carrying Soldier who Died from Influenza.

Though this gives a small sampling, what's extremely odd is that the Otis Historical Archives does not indicate ANYWHERE on their site, that they have a Flickr site with a much, much broader collection and in many cases, detailed information on the photographs such as photographer, description, year taken, location, etc.  The Flickr site is home for public domain photographs that appear in the Otis Historical Archives of the National Museum of Health and Medicine, in Washington DC, and originally started out as simply favorites from the museum's staff. I was able to find this through further Google searches to find out more about the Otis Historical Archives.

An example of some of the sets from the Otis Historical Archive, organzied by subject matter.

Baruch portable latrine. Fort Riley, Kansas. World War 1.

 In addition to hundreds of photographs, the Flickr collection also features postcards and cartoons
The material includes photographs from the Civil War,  and bodies such as United States Navy’s Bureau of Medicine and Surgery. Also found here are topical collections such as Mirrors which collects 61 images of wounded patients posing to display their scars or injuries; in each case, a mirror is being used to point to some aspect of the wound that might not otherwise be noticed or readily seen by the viewer of the photograph.

I'm hoping in the future that Flickr gets utilized to digitize much more of the Otis Historical Archive's collection, as well if they have the budget or staff help to focus on building better source and descriptive information for their photos. Looking in the collection, some photos have great detail and other's are lacking. Though the Otis Historical Archive does have a list of it's collections with finding aids, this really seems to just help researchers who are able to access the collections in their entirety on-site - though it does give further detailed information to the selection that is featured in their online gallery.