New toy for L.A. buffs

UCLA's Department of Special Collections owns about three million news photos from the original Los Angeles Daily News and the L.A. Times, covering more than seventy years. Now some 5,700 of the images have been selected by researchers and put online at a searchable, browsable new website. It was unveiled yesterday to a campus audience that was wowed by the range and beauty of the images, mostly from the days when newspapers did not publish or even record photographer credits. Some of the photos will be familiar to local history buffs, but many haven't been seen since they ran in the papers in the 1920s or '30s. The oldest, of World War I-era soldiers arriving at a downtown train terminal, is from circa 1914 (above, or here it is bigger and full frame. Go to the UCLA site for the metadata.) Click the jump for a small selection of others I liked, or just head over to the UCLA page and poke around. Warning: set aside some time...