Rick,
In the Free Library of Philadelphia they have a section just for photographs. I just went through every photo they have even remotely golf-related. Several things to help you. First, they have many more photographs than they realize. They are contained in a general file cabinet simply titled "Golf."
They are almost exclusively of players, professional and otherwise taken in and around the Philly area with a rather surprising number from national and PGA Tourneys. There are almost no photos of golf courses per se. There should be more than enough for several books of the type you seek to publish.
As far as copying then or scanning for use in publications go, I was told that their policy is as follows. First they view them as separate issues. You can copy any and all photos they have unless they are in the "rare" photo collection. Fortunately not a single one of their golf photos are. They have a copy machine there that will reproduce in black and white and quite poorly. You will have to pay for this privilege and bring either quarters or many dollar bills. There is a change machine for this purpose in the public corridor.
If you want to have the photos scanned for publication purposes they will do this for you. Unfortunately they need lead time and it is quite expensive. They will allow you to BRING your OWN SCANNER for this purpose! You just need to obtain prior permission but it isn't any problem to get. I would suggest that you visit and go through the collection first and see if it is worth the time and effort and there are enough quality photos of the type you are seeking and proceed from there.
Finally, they expect that if any of the photos have a possible copyright issue that you identify the photo(s) you want and then seek and get permission from the owner before they will scan them for you. Fortunately, I don't believe there are any photos that fall into this category.
Hope this helps a bit!