UT iSchool :: Survey of Digitization, Fall 2008

Yunmeng Du Blog 10: Indianapolis City Directory Collection

2008-12-03T23:18:00.000-08:00

Indianapolis City Directory Collection is a collaboration between IUPUI University Library, the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library (IMCPL) and the Indiana State Library. This project was made possible by a grant from the Indianapolis Foundation.

Collection Principles

This collection consists of 14 Indianapolis city directories ranging from 1858-1980. Books within this collection tell a great deal about the city history or people’s past by including the names and information about residents as well as businesses in Indianapolis through the years. Inside this collection, visitors will find addresses and occupations of householders, complete business directories, and much more.

Metadata

The metadata for this collection has been development very well. Pages from each book have been scanned and sorted by different categories deprived directly from the table of content. Such categories include ad, blank, illustration, titlepage, versotitlepage, contents, etc. The search engine is not only for this particular collection but also for other online collections supported by IUPUI University Library. The text for each page has been captured by OCR in order to make all search functions activate, in other words, a free-text search box is available to search through all the collection just like Google Book does. The whole site is powered by ContentDM. As is, the interface of this collection is just like other sites powered by ContentDM.

Object Characteristics

Advanced search is available for people to conduct targeted searches. “Preferences” tab is used to customize the display of results. “My favorite” part allows visitors to build their own library or collection to access a set of items they feel interested in. For each page of the city directory, a display function has been designed with plenty of fields to choose. You can easily zoom in or zoom out, move to different parts of each page, choose three options of resolution, rotate or hide/show thumbnails, etc. a list of labels placed above each page shows more options for users including “add document to favorites”, “add page to favorites” and “reference url”. The search box is put on the left side of screen but you can simply turn it on or off by clicking the button “menu off”.

Intended Audience

City directories contain a wealth of information for genealogists, historical researchers, and everyday history enthusiasts. When I went through the whole site, I kept thinking if Austin History Center could have such an online searchable collection, it would save much more time to do the building research or any other related research, which needs the primary documents such as city directories.

Hannah Norton Blog 10: Herbert Simon Collection, Carnegie Mellon Libraries

2008-12-03T14:54:00.000-08:00

Herbert Simon was a Nobel Prize winning economist whose work also incorporated aspects of computer science and cognitive psychology and helped develop the field of artificial intelligence. The Herbert Simon Collection at Carnegie Mellon is a full-text digital archive of his papers including his personal papers, lectures and talks, materials relevant to his schoolwork and work at the Illinois Institute of Technology and Carnegie Mellon University, his professional publications, and awards.

Collection Principles
The Carnegie Mellon Libraries own the physical archive of Herbert Simon, which was presumably provided to the university directly by him or his family. The digital collection was brought into being through funding from an early IMLS grant (the copyright on the “about” web page is from 2001) in order to create a “Smart Web Exhibit” in conjunction with the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. According to this page it includes 100,000 digital images (ie. PDFs).

Object Characteristics
Objects are primarily scans of written documents including Simon’s publications, course schedules, bibliographies, etc. Both an image and text are available. The image is a PDF of the document, which has not undergone OCR. The text is complete but littered with miscellaneous metadata. For example, the “text” of a bibliography contains this type of information at the division between each page of the original document:
..CLPAGE: 3
..PageImage: [image/tiff;00000003.tif]
[text/xdoc;00000003.xdc]
..OrigQlty: good
..OCRQlty: good
..ScanQlty: good
..OCR:
Apparently, this text represents uncorrected OCR, given statements such as “`Now at Slanford Univeraity.” This sort of thing is explained by the fact this is a relatively old digitization project. Nonetheless, the “text” version is difficult to read through and browse, while the image is impossible to search – not exactly an ideal situation.

Metadata
In the text version of each document a number of metadata elements are available, including document type, location in the physical archive (quite useful), title, and date. The elements mentioned above that are visible throughout the document indicate that data on the effectiveness of the scan was collected throughout the scanning process and that master scans are tiff files.

Intended Audience
The intended audience is clearly scholars of economics, computer science, and/or psychology. In fact, in the description of the collection’s contents, the following statement appears at the bottom of the page: “A working knowledge of economic studies, artificial intelligence, computer science, and cognitive psychology would assist in understanding the collection.”

Like other digital collections we’ve discussed in class, this digital archive was most likely quite an accomplishment at the time that it was produced, but is now outdated. Scholars with an interest in Herbert Simon (of whom there are probably many, since he is a Nobel laureate) will most likely find these documents useful, even in their current condition, but it is a shame that nothing has been done to update the interface to this collection.

Elizabeth S.: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec - Au fil des mots

2008-12-03T13:00:00.000-08:00

Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec - Au fil des mots

This digital collections culminates a project aimed at documenting contemporary quebequois poets.

Collection Properties
Each 25-minute video captures the poets in their own words as they describe how they go about their creative work, and especially how their works reflect and draw from the culture of Quebec. Some also read exerpts or full poems.

Object Characteristics
The videos are in Realplayer and Windows Media Player format. There are two resolutions available, Low (320x240) for slow connections, and High (640x480) for faster connections. An audio-only version in .asx format is also available.

Metadata
There is very limited metada, only the name and birthdate of the poet. There is a link, however, to works by the author available in the BAnQ via the IRIS catalogue.

Intended Audience
The style is meant to be casual and non-intimidating, ostensibly to appeal to those who might not neccessarily be interested or aware of poetry books or formal readings. Broadly, it appeals to those interested in quebecquois literature and culture.

Kempleel blog 10: The E. Azalia Hackley Collection

2008-12-03T12:44:00.000-08:00

The E. Azalia Hackley Collection consists of more than 600 pieces of sheet music published between 1799and 1922, in the collection of the Detroit Public Library. What makes the collection unique is that it was one of the first in the country to specifically archive the contributions of African American musicians to the preforming arts.
Collection Principles: The digital collection was began in 2003, and is the result of an Ameritech Foundation grant. The Hackley collection has been in the library's possession for years, and was chosen because of it's unique historical significance. Initially they scanned only music before 1900, as it was in the public domain, but later the decision was to add music published through 1922. Future copyright status change may enable them to add additional twentieth century works. Further information about all aspects of the project can be found on the "Project Info" page.

Object Characteristics: Uses Greenstone, so this project has a very familiar interface. You can search the entire collection or go directly to those parts of it known to be by African American composers or those sheets published in Detroit. You can also browse the entire collection by titles, lyrics, composers, contributors, subjects and dates. Objects consist of high resolution color jpeg scans of entire music pamphlets, sheets of books, but do not come in more than one size. The scans open in a separate tab or window and preserve not only the music, but also it's attendant packaging, art work, and even advertisements. Also included on the site are a handful of audio files for some of the music, but they are sadly in annoying and outdated midi format.

Metadata: Yay, good metadata! Extensive metadata is provided, including dates, places, authors and publishers, some or all of the lyrics, a detailed description of the physical object, and both it's digital and OCLC catalogue ID numbers.

Intended Audience: Music lovers and historians, students of history and sociology, the general public and lovers of the obscure!

karyn j blog 10; Prigmore Family History Collection

2008-12-03T10:41:00.000-08:00

Prigmore Family History Collection

Collection Principles

Dr. George T. Prigmore donated the primary research on his family history to Texas Tech University. The collection includes his family tree, photographs of Cleburne, Texas, and photographs of the Prigmore and related families. There is no about the collection page that supplies information about restrictions, when the collection was donated, or where the physical pieces are located. CONTENTdm is the digital asset management system used for this collection.

Object Characteristics

Each item has a thumbnail of the image with a title and description next to it. By clicking on the thumbnail or the image you will be able to view the image. You then have the option of zooming in or out. You can also have the image at maximum resolution, fit it to window or width, or rotate it. To the right of the enlarged image, a thumbnail with a movable red box allows you to select a small portion of the photograph to view.

Metadata

The metadata is sparse. The fields are title, description, and sometimes the date the photograph was taken. There is not enough metadata to provide the user with additional information.

Intended Audience

There is no mention of an intended audience, but genealogists would be interested in this collection. By looking at the family tree, they would get an idea of how to build their own or conduct research. This collection would also be interesting to the casual browser.

Overall, the website for this collection is not very good. The images are great, but there is not nearly enough information to go along with or describe anything in the collection. If i could suggest one thing, it would be more information!

Jesse Saunders Blog #10: America on the Move

2008-12-03T07:58:00.000-08:00

America on the Move | Home Page

The "American On The Move" exhibit of digitized materials is hosted by, and is largely assembled with materials from, the National Museum of American History. This exhibit depicts the history of American transportation; and while it focuses largely on the effect of the automobile, there are also discussion of 19th century transportation, as well as modern container shipping and air travel.

Selection Decisions
The exhibit website does not contain an implicit information regarding how materials were selected to be digitized; however, given that this was an installed exhibit at the museum, and the inclusion of a broken link at the bottom of each page leading the viewer to "Buy The Book", it would appear that the materials in this exhibit were selected due to their inclusion in the exhibit and book (both money making prospects), with the web exhibit being a side-project.

Metadata
Although the number of objects contained in the collection is quite large, there is relatively little metadata for each image. The amount of metatdata assembled for each image depends largely on the contents of that image. Print materials, photographs, etc. appear to generally contain information regarding date, location, format, original holding repository, etc. However, photographs of physical objects, particularly museum exhibits, contain only information regarding year of production and producer. In addition to standard metadata, each image page also contains links to the sections of the exhibit in which they are used, as well as links to 'suggested' items which may also be of interest.

Object Characteristics
The images in this collection are displayed using jpg images with medium resolution on their individual pages. There appears to be no way to download high-res copies of the images. The mateirals used in the exhibition itself was produced with Flash, and therefore cannot be saved or used in any way offline by users of the site.

Intended Audience
The intended audience for this exhibit would most likely be largely culled from recent or future visitors to the exhibit. The exhibit could be used by teachers in the area of American or technological history as the museum does provide several learning resources for families/teachers/etc.

Jonny Grass Blog 10, DigiBarn Computer Museum

2008-11-30T17:35:00.000-08:00

The DigiBarn is a museum based in northern California aimed at documenting the history of personal computers and the technological progress of their development. It is managed and curated by Bruce Damer, and it presents images of computers, patents, manuals, and other documentation on the history of personal computing since 1975.

Collection Principles

The collection has been assembled by Bruce Damer, the collection’s curator. Damer has procured each collection item through purchase of his own at various sales of vintage and recycled goods. Since he has amassed these items as a personal collection, his collection principles are determined by his familiarity with various items; furthermore, since he is attending various sales to purchase collection items, which items he obtains are dependent on which items are available wherever he goes. While there does not seem to be a specific unifying theme besides the theme of computer history the collection attempts to explore, Damer has attempted to organize and curate the collections, acknowledging: “It takes more than this to create a museum and we invite you to explore our collections and other parts of this site so lovingly created for your nerdly history pleasure.”

Object Characteristics

Images of computer systems have been scanned and made available as JPEGs. Images are presented as thumbnails that can be clicked on to provide a larger JPEG in its own page. These larger JPEGs can be zoomed in once, but not more than that. Sometimes manuals, patents, and other materials have also been scanned as JPEGs, and can similarly be zoomed in upon once.

Metadata

Metadata for this collection does not seem to be very well organized. Collection images of computers or machines are organized on separate pages based on the company who created them. Each page provides historical information on that company, its designs, and its development; however, item-level metadata does not seem to be present. Other collection items include manuals, patents, and other types of written documentation that could possibly be relevant to the images of computers; unfortunately, since these written documents have not been transcribed and the information provided in them has not been written on the website, they do not appear to be particularly helpful to the web site visitor.

Intended Audience

The site states that the museum “constitute[s] a kind of ‘memory palace’ for the nerd-inclined,” suggesting that the intended audience is the public in general, though specifically people interested in the history of personal computer technology. The site also differentiates the museum’s mission from the Computer History Museum, identifying the fact that it allows visitors to physically operate the computers in the collection as one of its strengths. Therefore, the web site and its digital collection is largely intended to pique the interest of site visitors in order to encourage them to visit the physical museum.

Yunmeng Du Blog 9: ArchNet Digital Library

2008-11-29T01:32:00.000-08:00

Collection Principles

ArchNet is an exciting project being developed at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning with the full support of The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture is a private, non-denominational, international development agency with programmes dedicated to the improvement of built environments in societies where Muslims have a significant presence. The goal of ArchNet is to create a community of architects, planners, educators, and students. The community can help each other by sharing expertise, local experience, resources, and dialogue. Members are urged to take on a pro-active role in the community. Imagine the wealth of knowledge and history created in the various schools of architecture around the world. ArchNet hopes to tap that knowledge and provide a mechanism by which these valuable tools can be disseminated. The ArchNet Digital Library is part of ArchNet website containing the documents, images and other documents collected.

Metadata

The metadata has been well designed and employed. Since this collection developed for architecture, such metadata are set to be variant name, street address, location, date, style/period, century, building type, building usage and keywords. Also, the image for each building goes with notes as a short history and description. ArchNet also has publications and other documents with metadata encompassing citation, author/editor, book title, publication date, copyright, language, document type, keywords, file type and size as well as description. It also allows users to download the files from this site. You can search by clicking through the subject terms under book title and keywords fields. There are portfolios from the contributors in this association with metadata like author/creator, year, file type, format, copyright, source, file size, and description. They are also downloadable. The references resources are given within this digital library and another gallery view is available for users to browse all the images.

Object Characteristics

A navigation bar seems to be adopted by every exhibition I found and always on the left side of the screen. Under the Digital Library tab, there are five sub-categories under these section- images, publications, portfolio, reference and gallery. Starting from the images, I got a full index in this section. All the words in the index have been sorted alphabetically and you can view the content by collection, country, building type, building style, building usage, century, decade and site name. Publications have been sorted under special collections, document type, language, author name, title and articles related to building type or country and keywords. In a word, the entire index is based on the metadata created for this collection. Other sub-titles followed the similar way of exhibiting their content.

Members can contribute by adding their individual image collections and files in their personal workspace. They can add events to the Digital Calander, post a topic or a response in the Discussion Forum, create a Group Workspace with other members from around the globe, work with their institution to create an Institution Workspace to make student work and faculty research available to the larger community, and add to the academic directory or link to web resources in the Reference Section of the Digital Library.

Intended Audience

ArchNet set its goal to become an international online community for architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, conservationists, and scholars, with a focus on Muslim cultures and civilizations. The objective of ArchNet is to create a community of architects, planners, educators, and students. The community can help each other by sharing expertise, local experience, resources, and dialogue.

John G. Blog #10: Heavens Above: Art and Actuality

2008-11-28T12:26:00.000-08:00

Heavens Above: Art and Actuality

"Heavens Above: Art and Actuality" is an online digital exhibition through The Science, Industry, and Business division of the New York Public Library. This is an exhibition contrasting the 19th century art and Science of Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827 - 1895) with the contemporary photographic images of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The exhibit was on display at the SIBL in New York in 2001.

Collection Principles

I thought that this website/online exhibit was interesting because it compared and contrasted art from history with contemporary photographs. The exhibition focused on the art and Science of E.L. Trouvelot who was a French-born artist and amateur astronomer. He worked in the U.S. at several prestigious observatories and universities and was known for his astronomical drawings from various telescopes. His chromolithographs and other works from "Trouvelot: From Moths to Mars" are featured in this exhibition.

Object Characteristics

The objects in this exhibitions are Trouvelot's chromolithographs and photography from NASA. Although the exhibition presents a variety of images, when viewers click on the image, they are redirected to the NYPL.org website to learn about the rights and permissions associated with the images.

Metadata

Brief descriptions of Trouvelot's images are included on each page, but I was unable to locate any detailed metadata from these descriptions. Images from NASA, however, include image metadata information on the attached links. Information about the name, type, dimensions, and size (bytes) are included for each image.

Intended Audience

It appears that the intended audience for this exhibition is scholars, artists, and astronomers. I thought that it was very interesting to showcase historic art and images about objects in space and contrast them with contemporary photography. After reviewing all of the other digital exhibitions and collections this semester, I can tell that this online exhibition was created in the early 2000's. Metadata was limited and the functions and capabilities of the website were very limited and not very attractive or user friendly.

Tami Blog #10: HistoryBuff.com

2008-11-28T09:31:00.000-08:00

HistoryBuff.com is a nonprofit organization that provides online primary source material concerned primarily with major and not so major events and how they were reported in the newspapers. It also contains information about the presses and technology used to produce newspapers over the past 400 years, state trivia, panoramas of U.S. historical sites, transcripts of news articles about major events, and interactive quizzes. The site also provides info for those interested in collecting and selling historic newspapers.

Collection Principles

There is a plethora of information on this site. However, for the purposes of this blog, I am mostly concerned with its online newspaper archives.

The newspaper archives is arranged chronologically, dated from 1700 – 2004. While the chronological arrangement is quite helpful, the grouping of the newspapers is rather strange. For example, one folder contains items dated from 1700 – 1739, the next from 1740 – 1769, and a third from 1770 – 1799. The grouping appears to be arbitrary, based on no perceived logic. Why not group all the newspapers for that century in one folder dated 1700 – 1799?

Object Characteristics

The site has done a good job of digitizing the newspapers and making them available online. While I could not discern the format of the objects, the newspapers can be enlarged to a very high degree of clarity. One complaint is that only the first page of each newspaper has been digitized. The information offered would be much more valuable if the complete newspapers were online. In addition, an index of some kind would allow users to see the headlines without having to click into each folder containing the newspaper groupings.

Metadata

The metadata is very good. It lists the date, name of the newspaper, and headline for that date. However, you do not have the capabilities to search the newspapers.

Intended Audience

The site states this collection was placed online for “students, teachers, and history buffs.” I agree with this and also believe that this site would be useful – although in a very limited capacity – to researchers needing to see historic front pages of major events. Some of the more interesting newspapers provided digitally on this site are:

• The New York Herald, 4-13-1861, “Civil War Begun!”

• The Daily Cleveland Herald, 4-28-1865, “John Wilkes Booth Captured and Killed”

• Chicago Daily News, 9-10-1900, “Galveston Texas Hurricane”

• Milwaukee Daily News, 4-15-1912, “Titanic Sinks”

Some of the other sections of this site contain useful and/or interesting information as well and are worth a view, such as the panoramic views of historic sites, the state facts, and the quizzes, although you have to log-in to interact with the latter.

A State of Convenience: The Creation of West Virginia

2008-11-26T22:50:00.001-08:00

Since I am moving here next year, I decided I would blog about an online exhibition at the state archives in West Virginia. There are a few online exhibitions on the West Virginia State Archive's website. All of them have a layout similar to this one about the creation of West Virginia as a unified state.

Collection Principles

"This exhibit offers historians, students, and others interested in West Virginia's statehood period the opportunity to read the actual words of the participants themselves. Through transcriptions of the proceedings of the First and Second Wheeling conventions, President Lincoln's opinion on the admission of West Virginia, and other primary-source documents, individuals will learn about the process by which West Virginia became the thirty-fifth state in the Union. Illustrations of participants in the process, as well as secondary resource materials, are also available as part of the online exhibit. "

This website is stated to be a work in progress and additional materials will be added in the coming months. There is no date indicating when this website was first added or when it was updated last.

Object Characteristics

The website is divided into sixteen chapters telling the tale of how West Virginia became a state. The table of contents page lists the titles of each of the chapters. In each of the chapters there are documents and photographs illustrating the narrative that is being told on the site. Some of the images allow you to enlarge them by clicking on them while others do not. The enlarged images are jpeg files.

There are 3 other sections titled primary documents, images and other sources that provide a list and links of the documents and images found on this site. On the images page there is a brief description of the image. The images are divided into sections alphabetically.

Primary documents are listed in the chapters that pertain to the topic such as particular conventions.

Metadata

The metadata for the images and documents varies from image to image. Some include the title, provenance, artist, author, date etc...

I wish there was more information regarding the location of these documents within the archives themselves.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this website is anyone interested in the history behind how West Virginia became one of the 50 states of the US. I know funding for the archives is very sparse so it is hard for me to criticize their online exhibitions when I am surprised they have any at all. The site was very easy to navigate and interesting from a historical perspective despite the simplicity of the layout and design.

Jesse Saunders Blog #9: Old Sturbridge Village Graphics Database

2008-11-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

The Old Sturbridge Village Graphics Database contains a collection of over 1,400 scans done by the living history museum of materials within their collection. This online exhibit is maintained separately from the museum's collection of images of 3 dimensional objects. Old Sturbridge Village is a living history museum in Sturbridge, MA which portrays life in a rural New England town in the 1830's. The museum was born from the artifact collections and history interest of the Well's family of Southbridge, MA, who were vital in initiating the work of the museum in its early years.

Collection Principles
The images exhibited on the OSV Graphics Database are a portion of the museum's total archival image collection. However, there is no indication in the brief information on the website about how the images were selected to be scanned and exhibited. While information on selection is lacking, the images are sectioned into 35 categories ranging from "Agriculture and Horticulture" to "Youth/Courtship & Marriage", many containing fewer than 50 images, yet one holding over 200. The collection was most likely built from the collections of materials from the museums founders, based on the categories previously mentioned, which portray many of the values and activities espoused by the museum.

Object Characteristics
While browsing through the image collection, or on the search results page, images are displayed with thumbnails in sections of 10 per page. After clicking on a particular image, the user is taken to a new window, which displays a slightly larger version of the image, along with the metadata and a link to a tool which allows the users to display the image in a variety of sizes and with various sharpening/editing tools. This page also contains the option to download the full-size image, which is delivered in .jpg format. The downloaded images are quite high-res and the several scans I viewed appeared to be very well done. There is no information on the OSV website regarding how or on what equipment the scans are done or what software was used to do any correction/modification to the images.

Metadata
Each image contains basic, but useful metadata for each image. The metadata fields include: description (generally one sentence), keywords, title, author, publisher, where published, publication year, page, and call number. For letters and business papers, data regarding sender/recipient and date of authorship are also included. In the case of letters, transcripts are generally provided as well.

Intended Audience
As with most of the information on www.osv.org, the image collection would largely be of interest to visitors, or potential visitors, to the museum. Yet with the high profile of OSV in the museum community and the Wells' brothers large collections of 19th century materials, individuals interested in that era would certainly find the collection quite useful, though it is difficult to know how easy a time researchers would have finding the collection if they did not explicitly know of its existence.

Hannah Norton Blog 9: Virtual Landscapes of Texas

2008-11-26T13:22:00.000-08:00

Virtual Landscapes of Texas is a digital collection of public domain documents related to the early geologic exploration of Texas. The documents were selected from the holdings of the Walter Geology Library at the University of Texas and the project funded in part by a TexTreasures grant.

Collection Principles
The introductory letter by the Geology Librarian on the collection’s homepage does a good job of clarifying the purpose of the collection and what kinds of information it contains. According to this short narrative, the collection is designed to give a historical look at how Texans handled issues of energy, water, public safety, transportation, and economic development, issues that certainly remain relevant in the current day. To this effect, the documents are all in the public domain and include both primary documents and secondary reviews of early Texas geologic exploration. Presumably, objects were chosen directly by the Geology Librarian. Thus, once you get to document, it is relatively easy to use, but it is difficult to determine whether the document you have found is relevant until you look at its content.

Object Characteristics
Objects primarily consist of government documents from U.S. Geologic surveys to guidebooks to publications of the Texas Board of Water Engineers. Many documents are presented solely as PDFs for download (a disadvantage when browsing), while others are available for browsing. They are presented as text with images from the original document inserted into this text with a linked table of contents available for easier browsing. If desired, the user can also view the page scan itself. These documents also have an option to be formatted for printing.

Metadata
Not much metadata is readily apparent to the user of this collection, although I’m relatively certain that it is there somewhere, having heard a talk by someone who worked on this digitization project in which she was specifically discussing metadata standards. The alphabetical listing of publications shows the name of the publication and authors, and a list of search results includes only the title (and, where relevant, the page number within that publication where your particular search term was found). Information about publication date, size and format of file, method of digitization, and subject matter are not available in an aggregated format. The use of title only for browsing is somewhat redeemed by the fact that these geologic documents have quite detailed titles that provide relevant information about their subject matter.

Intended Audience
This resource is clearly intended for scholars and students with a particular interest in geologic history. Documents are text-heavy and often developed by governmental agencies and are thus not particularly accessible to non-academics.

Although I think the resources in this site are likely helpful and interesting to the geology community, the web site itself and method of accessing the resources would benefit from some updating.

Katie R - Blog 10 - The Willard Suitcase Exhibition Online

2008-11-26T11:57:00.000-08:00

This exhibit, The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic, chronicles the lives of patients in a New York mental institution through their old belongings. While an extremely interesting and thought-provoking concept, the online interpretation is clunky and barely engaging.

Collection Principles:
I have no idea. While this exhibit is also a traveling show with an accompanying book, on the website I can find no information about why certain patients were chosen to highlight, as 427 suitcases were originally found in the attic when Willard closed in 1995. I know legal constraints would not allow the use of full names, so perhaps not all of the patients could be included because of legal reasons. The book appears to delve into 10 people's lives.

Object Characteristics:
The site runs on Flash, which is incredibly frustrating. There is only one way to scroll down the text; little arrows at the bottom must be clicked. The images next to the text also must be browsed by arrow clicking. As a person with who must newly work with only my non-dominant hand, I would stop looking at the site because of the difficulty getting around and scrolling. The 'drop-down' menu options at the bottom of the site are also annoying, as there is no index page for each topic. You can't go to the "Suitcases" page, just to each name separately. The images are probably jpegs. There are streaming sound files, as well, but I don't know what file they are.

Metadata:
There is no visible upfront metadata with the images. The images don not even have captions with them. I don't even know how much administrative metadata there is behind the scenes. There are no search capabilities. All in all, poorly done.

Intended Audience:
Originally an exhibit at the New York State Museum in 2004, the audience would be the general public. Online, it seems quite basic, almost for school children.

John G. Blog #9: The Warhol: Time Capsule 21

2008-11-26T10:31:00.000-08:00

The Warhol: Time Capsule 21

The Warhol: Time Capsule 21 is a cool online exhibition from 2005 that showcases one example of the artists' collection of "time capsules" that contain a wide variety of items that he chose himself. According to the information on the website, there were 600 time capsules that Warhol created, but this online exhibition contains the items of only one time capsule, "Time Capsule 21."

Collection Principles

This online exhibition/collection showcases the items contained in "time capsule 21." The items range in date from the 1950's to the 1970's. They present a window into the artist's art, life, and socio-cultural aspects of his life. The items are part of the "Andy Warhol's Time Capsules" exhibition in the Andy Warhol Museum which is part of the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Object Characteristics

There are over 50 items in Time Capsule 21 that include: photobooth photos, source material for his paintings, business records, personal notes and cards, record albums, and newspaper reports and photos related to the June 3, 1968 attack on his life. The items are displayed on the website using Adobe Flashplayer 9.

Metadata

Overall, there is a significant amount of data associated with the items in this collection. This exhibition was organized by the Andy Warhol Museum (Carnegie Museum) and the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Germany, so the art is cataloged in a very detailed manner. The website offers a "Complete Inventory of Time Capsule 21" page that provides all of the metadata associated with the items in the exhibition. The metadata includes: the item number, title, description, materials used, dimensions, and the condition of the item. You can also sort the items on the "Selection of the Time Capsule 21 Contents" page by category or item type. There are also zoom capabilities and related links so that viewers can learn additional info about the items.

Intended Audience

According to the website, the intended audience is curators, scholars, and the general public and the hope is that the exhibition provides viewers with "important information about Warhol's life and his work and artistic practice." I thought that the items were very interesting and presented in an appealing manner and I learned some new things about the artist.

Meghan C. Blog 10: Treasures in Full Caxton's Chaucer

2008-11-25T12:18:00.000-08:00

This Treasures in Full collection is composed of The Canterbury Tales which were begun in 1387 by Early British writer Chaucer, the Two editions of are on display in this digital collection of the British Library. The two editions were created by a printer by the name of William Caxton in 1476 and 1483, less then a quarter of a century after Gutenberg invents the printing press. The acquisition of the first and second editions happened over a long period of time after passing through the hands of certain prominent owners, such as George III. The books were digitized in 2002 Keio University for the British Library.

Collection Principles

Although this is a relatively small digitization project consisting of only two of the British Library's best copies of the first and second editions, it is extremely well documented. The purpose of this collection is to allow users to view the two editions side by side and compare the characteristics of each according to style of text and changes in the text itself. Apparently the second edition was created after Caxton became familiar with a document that was very similar to the original Canterbury Tales. These pieces are irreplaceable to the British Library and to Great Britain. The library is very selective in choosing who is permitted to view the books, but in order to increase use of these books the library chose to digitize them. Creating both high and low resolutions for all pages in both books.

Object Characteristics

The images were captured using a very high end camera at Keio University in Japan. Each image is 4000x4000 pixels at 12 bit RGB. The books had a maximum opening space and needed a special platform for them to prevent access wear and tear on the over 500 years old books. There are two options for viewing the editions. You can view them one at a time or side by side for comparisons sake. You can only zoom in once to view the detailed lettering and ornate decorations in the beginning of each chapter. Once you have zoomed in, you can click to view the transcripts which are very helpful, at least for me. Some of the words do not seem to relate to any English that I am familiar with, but I am not sure if this is a result of the OCR or the old English in which the books were written in.

Metadata

As this is a library, an institution based on information, I thought it safe to assume that there would be provided a wealth of metadata on each of the objects digitized. Unfortunately I was not able to locate this information. There is quite a lot on Chaucer and Caxton and the printing press, but it is uncertain where the library holds the editions and in what why they index them, or these images. It was a bit disappointing. There is even a reference page provided for users who wish to know more.

Intended Audience

The collection was obviously intended for intensive scholars of both the Canterbury Tales and Caxton, they make this very explicit. That is not to say that this site does not contain information that other users may find helpful. It is a digital connection to the past, a representation of what used to be viewable but now viewing it would bring about its demise. The Internet opens many doors, but its curators must learn to make them available properly.

Jonny Grass Blog 9

2008-11-22T14:18:00.000-08:00

The Paradise Possessed Exhibition features digital surrogates of items in The Rex Nan Kivell collection, which is among the holdings of the National Library of Australia. Rex Nan Kivell was a collector of documentation in various forms of the European exploration and colonization of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific. The exhibit commemorates the centenary of Rex Nan Kivell birth, and is divided into six thematically distinct sections. Each section of the exhibit presents 5 images that can be browsed and looked at with accompanying metadata, but there does not seem to be a search function.

Collection Principles

The total collection comprises over 14,000 items of various media, including paintings, drawings, etchings, manuscripts, books, pamphlets, objects, and maps. These items were collected by Rex Nan Kivell himself in order to document the exploration and colonization of Australia and its neighboring areas. Since the library collection is based on a personal collection, the collection strategies seem to represent the collector’s personal interests, though no explicit collection principles are stated.

Object Characteristics

Digital objects in this collection are images, though the format is not stated. The objects represented vary in type, from maps to photographs to manuscripts, among others. The digital images cannot be viewed in a separate window, zoomed, or otherwise manipulated for better viewing. The size of digital objects varies, but a significant portion of digital images are small or thumbnail size and very difficult to see.

Metadata

Metadata for each physical collection item consists of object type, title, author, relevant dates, size, materials, and collection number. However, metadata about the digital objects or about the process of digitization and its goals is not readily available. The digital exhibition does provide background information in the introduction and in the main page of each section.

Intended Audience

Since it is an exhibition, the intended audience seems to be the general public. As mentioned earlier, many of the items cannot be seen in enough detail to use for research; detailed examination of items does not seem to be a consideration.

Yunmeng Du Blog 8: July 1942: United We Stand

2008-11-21T18:29:00.000-08:00

This is another online exhibition I found through the National Museum of American History. July 1942: United We Stand presents covers of magazines nationwide with American flags during July 1942, seven months after the United States entered World War II. It was a way for magazine publishers to prove their value to the war effort.

Collection Principles

The National Museum of American History put this virtual exhibition online in order to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the United We Stand campaign. The collection presented here demonstrates how some of the past is saved. Many of the covers were collected in the summer of 1942 by Marguerite Jacquette Storm and then acquired by Peter Gwillim Kreitler in 1999. As the home of the Star-Spangled Banner, the National Museum of American History is a place to explore the history of the national symbol and the ideals for which it stands.

Metadata

Each cover of a magazine has been assigned rich metadata such as magazine title, artist, publisher, date and credit, which means the collection where a particular magazine cover has been selected. All of the images for covers have been classified under different categories or sub-categories including themes, magazine subjects, etc. A powerful search engine embedded into this collection provides a free-text search box as well as a set of advanced search options on the same page, which allows visitors to search by title, theme, magazine subject and type of prize the cover design earned.

Object Characteristics

It is obviously that this collection of magazine covers has been well analyzed and organized. As a result, the corresponding virtual exhibition encompasses rich educational content, plenty of view options as well as helpful search functions. The navigation bar standing on the left side of each web page is served just like the table of content of a book for this collection. By clicking through the labels on the navigation bar, it gives me a feel of reading through a pamphlet or a book about this exhibition. Each theme as well as its sub-titles has been fully discussed along with respective images derived from the collection. This exhibition serves as a very good example of teaching and educating visitors with knowledge of the role of magazine publishing community during World War II around 1942.

Intended Audience

As it is stated on the introduction page of this exhibition, the National Museum of American History provides this exhibition in order to let the visitors “enjoy touring the virtual exhibition, and we also invite you to visite the Museum, where nearly one hundred original flag covers will be on view from March 22 to October 27, 2002”. July 1942: United We Stand is an extension of an onsite exhibition in the museum. All visitors who are either planning to visit the museum or browsing its website are intended audience for this exhibition.

Claire B. Blog 10: The Encyclopedia of Life

2008-11-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an extensive project to organize and make available via the Internet "virtually all information about life present on Earth." At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species—that provide the entry points to a range of biodiversity information about that species, including taxonomy, geographic distribution, collections, genetics, evolutionary history, morphology, behavior, ecological relationships, and importance for human well being. The species sites provide lots of general information, but they also provide links to researcher data.

The EOL has only about 20 full-time employees - scientists and other professionals working from museums and research institutions around the world. The project currently has 20 full time employees, but it has over $12 million in grant money, technical partners who handle cataloging etc, and "technology partners" like Adobe and Microsoft that are building tools that the site incorporates.

Collection Principles

While this is not a typical digital library, it is a collection of visual and textual information about a specific subject, i.e. all living species on earth. It aims to gather, organize, and make accessible "all information about life present on earth." Pretty ambitious, but pretty well-done, I believe. All source information is linked, allowing viewers to explore in-depth (and also lending credibility to the site so it doesn't become a wikipedia-gone-
wild of animal fanatics or plant nuts).

Object Characteristics

Images are JPEGs, mostly photos but some drawings as well, and there is a sliding tool that allows viewers to see more or less detail on images. Each species has a map page behind its intro page that highlights areas of the world where the species is found, and the level of occurrence.

Metadata

Searching is available by subject or species. Users can browse through a text or graphical version of the species classification visible on every species or linking page, choosing which level of classification to browse. There is also a rotating assortment of images that appear on the home page.

It seems like the EOL forum is used pretty heavily as a searching tool as well, where people ask how to find a specific species as opposed to searching the site themselves. Pages that have minimal metadata requests that interested viewers contact them to become contributors (of text or images) or curators to help EOL seek out and display more information.

The current version is available in English, French, German, Russian, and Ukrainian, but EOL aims to expand to offer viewing in more languages. Users can bookmark pages, and a login offers saved searching and (maybe?) enhanced access. (Not sure - I didn't create an account)

Intended Audience

The site aims to be a primary research resource for a wide audience, including scientists, natural resource managers, conservationists, teachers, and students. Video tutorials on using the site and an extensive FAQ page make it much more navigable and less intimidating for the neophyte explorer, like myself. There are some interesting participatory features that expand the site's use and utility well beyond formal scientists, like and EOL Flickr group where people can upload images to be incorporated into species sites and a curator forum (the Curator Network idea is still under development, and raises interesting ideas about who is an expert and whose input is worthy).

EOL is very adamant about the project's potential impact on science (its ability to be a "macroscope for discerning patterns in large amounts of information" as well as a "microscope for zooming in on the small") and society. EOL is making digitally available millions of pages of biological information previously only available in texts in a limited number of institutions: "Now, no one will have to travel to these libraries to gain access to this information. The information found on EOL is free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." I'd be interested to hear how it's received across scientific communities...

Elizabeth S. Blog #7: NASA Images

2008-11-19T14:34:00.000-08:00

NASA Images (nasaimages.org)
This online digital collection gathers together images from various NASA agencies. The website itself is not part of or funded by NASA itself. Instead, it is offered by Internet Archive (www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections.

Collection Principles
NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.

Object Characteristics
The site is powered by Luna Imaging, and takes advantage of the new version (introduced June 13, 2008). Luna offers many neat, Web 2.0 features, making it a fantastic resource for education. In addition to viewing and zooming seamlessly over the internet, users are allowed to download hi-res zipped jpeg files (for images).

Metadata
The images I looked at all had extremely rich descriptive metadata, including titles, description, filenames, dates, location, which agency generated the image and how many light years away the particular object is.

Intended Audience
According to the "about" section of the website, its goal is to "benefit humanity." That's a pretty big audience. It seems to have a very broad appeal. It is easy to use, unless java is a problem for one's browser.

Jesse Saunders Blog #8: The Massachusetts Historical Society: Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts

2008-11-19T14:31:00.000-08:00

The Massachusetts Historical Society | Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts

This exhibit by the Massachusetts Historical Society displays images and digitized renderings of a variety of mediums including: artifacts, broadsides, engravings/prints, manuscripts, covers (envelopes), photographs, portraits, and sculptures. A majority of the images are portraits and sculptures of individuals active in the abolitionist movement, however there are also a large number of other material and object in the collection which are not usually encompassed by a digitization project. The exhibition begins with a page describing the collection and a brief scope of the materials, which leads the user to a "browse by format" page which offers individual links to the materials highlighted and their related collections.

Selection Decisions
Through the wording on the website, it appears as though all materials in the Massachusetts Historical Society's collection related to Anti-slavery movement have been digitized. On first glance at item list it appears that not all are available, as users are required to click through to the archival finding aid to gain access to all of the engravings, photographs, and portraits.

Metadata
Each individual item's page contains metadata regarding its creation (creator, city, date, etc - as much as is known), format, size, and a brief description. No data is given regarding the creation of the digital images, how or by whom the images were made, or on what equipment.

Object Characteristics
The objects are displayed on the Massachusetts Historical Society website in a fairly basic, html format, without ContentDM or any major organizational software. The images are in jpeg format, and can be viewed in either small or large (the large being very high-res) format depending on the needs of the user. All images are watermarked with a statement regarding ownership by the society and prohibiting reproduction.

Intended Audience
Due to the size of the collection (nearly 850 objects), these materials could be useful for anyone from a middle school social studies class to a serious researcher. For those on the younger end, it would be helpful for the historical society to develop some instructor materials to help teachers lead students through materials, particularly as some contain images and phrases, which while acceptable at in the context of the day, could be seen as offensive today.

Hannah Norton Blog 8: Everglades Digital Library

2008-11-19T13:01:00.000-08:00

The Everglades Digital Library is an effort of Florida International University Libraries to make Everglades research freely available over the internet. This portal provides access to three main collections: the Everglades Education Consortium, Everglades Online, and Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida’s Natural History, 1884 to 1934. A collaborative effort, the Everglades Digital Library contains documents from the Florida Center for Library Automation, Everglades National Park, the South Florida Natural Resources Center, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, the University of Miami, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Everglades Priority Ecosystems Science Initiative.

Collection Principles
Like other digital libraries that serve as portals to diverse collections, the Everglades Digital Library’s guiding objective seems to be the aggregation of as much information as possible related to this unique geographic region, in the form of quality research and primary documents. Determinations of the quality of individual resources is presumably made on the basis of the reputation and authority of their contributing institution. Although it is not explicitly stated on their website, it seems that the library is looking to continue expanding its collection (which currently includes about 470 items), given the fact that some resource types listed under the advanced search currently contain no items.

Object Characteristics
The Everglades Digital Library supports a broad range of resource types, from news and journal articles to maps and photographs, to letters and sheet music to lesson plans. A section of digitized books appears to be coming soon. When you select an item, you are taken to the website of the contributing collection in order to view it. The Reclaiming the Everglades collection, which contributes more documents than any other collection, provides both JPEG and PDF versions of most documents, with no zooming capacity.

Metadata
This digital library does a good job of providing ample bibliographic metadata. In addition to basic title, author, and date information, records also include audience level, format, rights information, language, subjects, resource type, a unique identifier, and, in some cases, a screenshot of the resource. The advanced search option allows users to search by many of these characteristics. As far as I was able to tell, no information is available on the website about how the various resources were digitized – presumably each contributing body had its own procedure.

Intended Audience
This resource is clearly intended for a research audience, but both formal academic research and informal research by the interested amateur can be supported. Any individual can register with the site and provide annotations and ratings for the various resources and then, as with Amazon, receive recommendations for other resources that may be of interest. This inclusion of user-generated content and interactivity seems designed to appeal specifically to the “general public” and not the scholarly research community. From my perusal of the site, it seemed that these features have not yet been taken advantage of to any great extent, but I was unable to determine how recently such capabilities had been added to the library.

Although it currently doesn’t contain quite the quantity of resources that would be desirable for such a portal (when I searched for alligator, I only found 3 documents), I think that as it grows the Everglades Digital Library has the potential to quite useful.

karyn j blog #9; Florida Slave Narratives

2008-11-19T07:48:00.000-08:00

Florida Slave Narratives

These interviews from the 20s and 30s depict the lives of former slaves during their childhood and teenage years as told by those who lived it.

Florida Slave Narratives

Collection Principles

The 40 written interviews in the collection were compiled from 1926-1936, but there is no information about how the University of South Florida digitized the materials. However, the interviews were digitized for students to understand on a more personal level the experiences of former slaves. The original typed documents are owned by the Florida Historical Society. Digitool is the digital asset management system and the website was made in 2005. There are terms of use for this collection, but someone failed to enter what they are.

Object Characteristics

The items are listed in alphabetical order by title, but can be changed to list by creator or subject. You can view the records in brief view, table view, or full view. Next to each thumbnail (which is not a picture of the document, but the Adobe PDF symbol) is a description of the item which is a link to the full view of the record with metadata. By clicking on the thumbnail, a new window is opened and the document is opened as a PDF. All of the regular options for zoom and searching within the text are present. There are 2 metadata options: open metadata in new window or show/hide metadata (above the file). This metadata is different than the full view record because it is a MARC record. This option is handy and unique, but not easy to understand if you do not know what a MARC record is or how to read it.

Metadata

The metadata fields are: object, system number, title, imprint, date, etc., notes, subjects, other, contributor(s), related collections. The related collections field is somewhat useless because the options for the other collections are only those provided by USF, most of which are not even remotely related to slave or slavery. Also, it would be a good idea to provide the location of the physical piece.

Intended Audience

The site says the collection was intended to “give students the opportunity to experience history at a personal level.” While it is specifically aimed at students, the collection would also be useful for research by historians and the casual browser interested in experiences of slaves. Overall, the collection was not that impressive. It would be better if it had more background information, was more inviting, and if the introductory page was easier to access. The information the interviews hold is priceless, but the way the interviews are presented could be better. Sadly, the best thing about the collection is that you have the ability to change the size of the text!

Claire B. Blog 9: Children's Books of the Early Soviet Era

2008-11-18T11:38:00.000-08:00

Children's Books of the Early Soviet Era presents a (small) selection of book covers of over 350 Soviet children's books published in the 1920s and 30s now housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the McGill University Libraries.

Collection Principles

Among the many radical changes in the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution, the transformation of children's books offers a bold reminders of the vast ambitions of the new social order. Building simultaneously upon the progressive legacy of the 19th century Russian literature and upon the tradition of Russian Futurism, a linguistic, literary and artistic movement that galvanized Russian intellectuals in the early decades of this century, post-Revolutionary publishing for children evolved quickly. The site claims that in the first decade after the Revolution, general book production climbed from 26,000 to 44,000 titles a year; the number of copies published rose from 133 million to 190 million. Children's books naturally followed the mass trend and a first printing of 100,000 and up was common.

Certain state publishing houses were exclusively concerned with publishing for children. Propaganda for Communist education was one factor, along with the publications' serving as a creative outlet for authors and artists looking for an alternative publishing medium to books for adults. The books in this collection are written in a variety of languages. Since more than 100 nationalities live within the fifteen former republics of the USSR, Russian may have been the official language of the Union but children's books were published in Ukrainian, Uzbek, Tartar, Kazakh, Azerbaidzhani, Armenian, Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, lakutian, Nanaian and other languages are well.

The exhibition is organized in eight groups - thematic exhibitions within the site - meant to demonstrate the importance of Soviet literary production following the Revolution. The collection is organized in such a way that items are only viewable within their corresponding exhibitions. A short introduction clues viewers into certain design aspects to look for, and each exhibit has an introduction as well, but exploration is not really the purpose here (and is virtually impossible to someone who does not read the languages in which the books were written).

Object Characteristics

Within each exhibition, book covers appear as thumbnails and JPEGs.

Metadata

There is minimal metadata associated with each image, but the basics are there: title (in the language in which the book was written), author, description (i.e., size of book and number of pages), and occasional notes about illustrations in the book. This is great if you speak Lithuanian, Georgian, Nanaian, or what have you. Not so great if you don't. There are no call numbers or locations for the items in the exhibits if researchers wanted to find a specific title at McGill.

Intended Audience

I'm not too sure, frankly. The images are beautiful to look at, but only a handful have been digitized for each exhibit and information about each exhibit's purpose is somewhat limited. I learned more than I knew about the children's publishing industry in the early 20th century, but I can't imagine the site would be seen as authoritative for either history or literature researchers. Children probably are not the target audience, unlike a site like the International Children's Digital Library. I specifically searched for sites for children since digital libraries and collections seem to rarely target this audience, only to find a disappointing site. I imagine the intended audience is staff and faculty at McGill who are already familiar with this collection and were simply curious to see what the covers would look like online. The site seems like it has not been updated in a few years, so perhaps it was a one-time project to get a sample of a much larger in-house collection online and out to the public.

John G. Blog #8 On the Cutting Edge: Contemporary Japanese Prints

2008-11-17T14:27:00.000-08:00

On the Cutting Edge: Contemporary Japanese Prints from the 50th College Womens' Association of Japan Print Show

This digital collection exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the College Womens' Association of Japan (CWAJ) Print Show. This collection is part of the Library of Congress. This is another exhibition that is not a good example of what a thorough digital collection should look like. Although the art in the exhibit is lovely, the Library of Congress did not really put a lot of effort into providing detailed metadata for the objects in the collection.

Collection Principles

The CWAJ has become an internationally-renowned showcase for contemporary Japanese print art, known as hanga. In 2005, its fiftieth year, CWAJ received more than 800 prints for selection. From these, an international jury selected 221 outstanding examples, 212 of which were donated to the Library and are mounted in this exhibition. The prints represent a rich spectrum of styles and subjects, carrying forward many hanga traditions while embracing new cutting edge works by both master and emerging artists. This important acquisition brings a fresh infusion of visual art to the Library, updating its superb collection of Japanese prints from the Edo Period to the 21th century, as well as its extensive holdings of contemporary artist’s prints from around the world.

Object Characteristics

A wide variety of objects are included in this digital collection. Among the items are: woodblocks, etchings, silkscreens, lithographs, mezzotints, and sketchings. These 212 items were donated by the artists to the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, there is no "zoom" feature. When you click on a thumbnail of the items, only a full view picture is shown. Users are not able to take a very detailed and upclose view of the items. The website does offer an "object list" but you can't select the items for a full view from this page. Because users are unable to select a full view from this screen, the "object list" is not as useful.

Metadata

Although this exhibition is sponsored by the Library of Congress, there isn't much metadata associated with the objects in the collection. The only information provided is the title, artist, year, process, and size. The information included in the "about" section of the webpage takes you to the Library of Congress home page and describes the overall objectives for including metadata in their exhibitions. I think that because this exhibition was shown in 2005, the information included in the exhibition is not as thorough as it would be if it were shown today.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this exhibition are scholars, art enthusiasts, and members of the CWAJ. I was drawn to this collection because I am fascinated by Japanese and Asian art.

Yunmeng Du Blog 7: Pearls Exhibition--American Museum of Natural History

2008-11-16T14:32:00.000-08:00

Pearls Exhibition is hosted by the American Museum of National History and supported by Tasaki Shinju, the world’s largest vertically integrated pearl company in Japan. Through three years’ effort, Pearls Exhibition is the world’s first and perhaps the only exhibition of such scope and magnitude, showcasing invaluable pear specimens, objets d'art and jewelry from around the world and across the ages.

Collection Principles

Pearls exhibition was designed and produced by the Museum’s Department of Exhibition. The Exhibitions Department, in cooperation with other Museum staff members and scientific divisions, is responsible for both the design and construction of the Pearls exhibition. It is organized by the American Museum of Natural History in collaboration with The Field Museum, Chicago. It is created as an online exhibition for educational purpose rather than an integrated collection.

Metadata

There is no significant metadata given to this collection, but each image was assigned its title, date, and a short description. Images presented in this collection are jewelries decorated with pearls. A free-text search engine powered by Google is available throughout the whole website of American Museum of Natural History. I typed “pearl” into the search box and it gave me a list of hits with the word “pearl”.

Object Characteristics

As we talked about the differences between a library and a museum, this website gives me a very good example of how well a museum can form an online exhibition to attract people. Pearls Exhibition set its goal to educate people with knowledge of pearls from every aspect. Different types of pearls have been talked about depending on the source where they came from. Each type of pearls has its own story along with a piece of amazing jewelry they formed. The navigation bar is right on the top of each page allowing users to go through the whole site. The history of pearls and how to obtain pearls are also provided within this exhibition. It’s very easy to navigate through this site and each topic has been discussed thoroughly. It is the most typical exhibition I found designed specifically for education.

Intended Audience

Since visitor information has been given on the homepage, this exhibition is certainly becoming another appeal for visitors to American Museum of Natural History. Its intended audience includes kids and their parents, travelers from other locations or countries, etc.

Jessi Fishman Blog 10: Tall-Tale Postcards

2008-11-16T11:33:00.001-08:00

Yay postcards! I love this online exhibition. From the Wisconsin Historical Images site, home to nearly 35,000 images in a broad range of online collections comes the Tall-Tale Postcards exhibit, a gallery of over 80 postcards created from 1908 to about 1918 by photographer Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr., who "specialized in the tall-tale postcard, extolling Wisconsin's agricultural abundance through images of oversized produce and animals...[the] tall-tale postcards affirmed the American myth of abundance — a myth often at odds with reality."

Collection Principles
As previously stated, the Wisconsin Historical Images section of the Wisconsin Historical Society website has a broad range of digitized collections focusing on numerous aspects of Wisconsin history and culture. This particular collection is meant to convey an important part of pre-WWI midwestern history, specifically with the use of tall-tale postcards, which emerged around the turn of the 20th century, when postcards came to function as surrogates for travel. According to the site, "people soon realized that postcards could be used to create or sustain a certain utopian myth about a town or region, and crafty photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs. Nowhere did these modified images, or "tall-tale postcards" as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities that hoped to forge an identity as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and growth. Food sources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish — were the most common subjects."

This collection fits in well with the larger attempt at a unique view of Wisconsin history through digitized books, maps, text, images, and ephemera that the Historical Society page undertakes. It is easy to maneuver, and you can always get back to home, search other collections, find out where you are in the context of the site, and learn about privacy, intellectual property, how to purchase items, and where to learn more about Wisconsin.

Object Characteristics

This site does a good job of digitizing images, leading the user to believe that they really care about the persistence, availability, and usability of the items. The items are all named with the name of the collection (Tall-tale Postcard) followed by a colon (:) and the name of the image (this one is "Mammoth Strawberries") and the image number identifier. Also on each object page is information about how to purchase the item as an archival pigment print or digital file, a link to "share the object with a friend" (via e-mail), and a concise but appropriate intellectual property statement: "Credit: Wisconsin Historical Society.This image is issued by the Wisconsin Historical Society. Use of the image requires written permission from the staff of the Division of Library-Archives. It may not be sold or redistributed, copied or distributed as a photograph, electronic file, or any other media. The image should not be significantly altered through conventional or electronic means. Images altered beyond standard cropping and resizing require further negotiation with a staff member. The user is responsible for all issues of copyright."

Metadata

The metadata for each object is thorough and consistent, which lets you know even more how good a job the Wisconsin Historical Society is doing with their digitization efforts and making accessible online collections. Each object has a title, description, item number, creation date, creator name and location, collection name, genre, multiple linkable subject headings, and various image size options. The titles and descriptions do a good job of placing the items in context and the index terms allow for better discovery of related items and finding what interests you.

Intended Audience

I think anyone interested in or researching Wisconsin (or other midwestern) history would find this site extremely useful. The complete site, in which this online exhibition can be found, has numerous learning and teaching resources and lots to discover about Wisconsin, and I think can be seen as a good example for future digital libraries and online collections as well. Anyone studying pre-WWI history, especially with regard to ephemera and printed materials would find this site useful, and it is just a nice, easy site that is fun to look around, and I think many people would enjoy looking at it.

Yunmeng Du Blog 6: Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement

2008-11-12T22:20:00.000-08:00

This is the coolest exhibition as far as I found through the National Science Digital Library.
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement utilizes Flash for enhanced search features, cross referencing, and interactive images created with Zoomifyer which, in another way, sometimes takes longer time to load results. Its copy right is held by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and bioinformatics and a broad educational mission.

Collection Principles

This collection is developed primarily through materials from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910 to 1940. It allows people to experience the unfiltered story of American eugenics. With a vast of reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees that used to be considered scientific “facts” in the old days. The majority of eugenics work has been completely discredited.

Metadata

This collection does not encompass a lot of metadata to describe each image but have a lot of options for searching relevant information. The metadata include name of the image, accession number, date, source, and related topic(s). The “Explore additional images from:” feature offers quick search functions by the same period of time, the same source and the topic.

Object Characteristics

Since the whole exhibition is powered by Flash, a lot of mouse-over has been employed. For example, when you move your mouse to nine images on the homepage, each of them will link to a new page with a specific topic. You can view the topic by simply clicking through the smaller window on the web page. Each window has a close icon on the upper right corner performing the back button function. “Menu of virtual exhibits” is actually an index of this collection. Text or transcripts are attached to each exhibit or image. The search engine allows you to enter keywords or document ID number to conduct your own search through the database, or you can browse the categories placed below the search box including topics, object type, time period or archive. Again, mouseovers have been added to each category in order to give the users a brief description or search tips of the targeted category. Besides, the collection also has a HTML-only website for users with dial-up or lower level internet connections.

Intended Audience

I would say this collection doesn’t specify any intended audience as its mission. But from my own understanding, it tries to convey the ideas of how the eugenic description of human life reflected political and social prejudices rather than scientific facts. It keeps the lessons to be learned from thses materials and try to remind people with this particular issue.

Blog #10 - The Historic American Cookbook Project

2008-11-12T22:03:00.000-08:00

While The Historic American Cookbook Project is not perfect in terms of digital archives, I was very taken with the site. Initiated by Michigan State University, where a collection of about 7,000 cookbooks is housed, the site is still very small - with only 76 cookbooks, noted as "the most important and influential American cookbooks from the late 18th to the early 20th century." Despite its small size, the site is well organized, easy to navigate, and neat to look at.

Collection Principles

Unlike many sites I have looked at over the semester, the HACP clearly states why they have the number of digitized books they chose, and how this selection was made: "Seventy-five books to represent American culinary history may seem an arbitrary number. And, indeed, it is. However, the careful and informed selection of these 76 volumes from the comprehensive holdings of the MSU Libraries' Special Collections will enable a researcher to investigate any number of the varied and interdisciplinary aspects of that history."

Object Characteristics

Scans aren't great - the quality varies greatly, images are sometimes crooked, some are of poor quality. Also, the images cannot be zoomed in on. However, PDFs are available, as are XML and HTML transcripts. The main problem I had with the images was the inability jump ahead in page numbers. The only options are forward and back, so if you find an item of interest in the table of contents it is impossible to jump ahead to that point.

Metadata

While Author, Title, and collection topic keywords are included in the metadata information about the actual item location are not, which I fond annoying. To find the actual location of these books one must leave the site and go to MSU's Web site.

Audience

I think cooks and historians, as well as Human Ecology students (such as Nutrionists) woul all find this site of interest.

Kempleel blog 9: The Age of Natural History

2008-11-12T13:33:00.000-08:00

The Age of Natural History: as seen through the materials in possession of Kyoto University is a digitized collection of botany and zoology books covering the seventeenth through mid-nineteenth centuries. Engrishy flavor text aside, the site is remarkable for the high quality of the images and the motley collection of information included for each object.

Collection Principles: The collection currently consists of complete digitized books on various biological topics from the collection of Kyoto University, part of their special digital collections. Currently only 8 books are available online, but the university has plans to add several more. Metadata is available in English for about half of the books. Books themselves are in a variety of languages, Japanese, English, French, Latin, etc. Further information about the project was unavailable, at least in English.

Object Characteristics: The objects are impressive. Each book has it's own web portal, including each volume - and each web portal has a very different appearance, so my guess is that the pages were designed by disparate entities, though the book viewer works the same way for each.. Every part of the book has been scanned, including covers and endpapers, and is available on-line in very high-resolution color jpegs. It is possible to get a very high level of zoom, but navigating within the zoom is impossible. You can advance pages or choose things from an index of illustrations. I have no idea what kind of collection management software is being used, but it's very minimalistic. One caveat is that there is no search function whatsoever, the contents are presented only as a long list of links on a page for each volume.

Metadata: Sadly just okay. General citations are available and the information as to physical object holding is touched on ("Possession of Department of Botany, Faculty of Science, Kyoto University"). The individual book portals list a short blurb about each book, and a lot of information about how to view the book using their software. Perhaps more data is given in the Japanese versions but I have no way of checking that.

Intended Audience: Difficult to say. The books are not searchable in any practical way, so if this exhibit was intended for scholars, it's not doing a very good job. As a resource to the casually browsing public its excellent however, delivering beautiful pictures from rare resources.

Hannah Norton Blog 7: Civil Rights Digital Library

2008-11-12T13:05:00.000-08:00

The Civil Rights Digital Library (CRDL) brings together primary sources and educational materials on the civil rights from collections across the country. The library has three main focuses: presenting historic video footage from the University of Georgia’s television archives, serving as a portal to external collections, and providing lesson plans and other relevant materials to educators. The University of Georgia received an IMLS grant to support the project and has worked with a number of other government agencies, colleges, universities, and libraries within the state to develop the digital library. There are over 75 content partners whose materials can be accessed through the CRDL, including libraries, universities, broadcasting companies, and historical societies all over the nation.

Collection Principles
The CRDL is organized around a number of broad topics including: community organizing, the culture of the movement, particular organizations and people involved in the movement, white resistance, boycott and direct action, economic justice, legal strategies, mass protest, school desegregation, and voting rights. The digital video archive focuses on events taking place from 1955 to 1968. Beyond ensuring that information fits into this basic structure, the library seems to simply provide as much primary content as possible on the civil rights movement, in keeping with its role as a portal. Presumably, content partners were carefully selected with an eye to what types of materials they could offer to the overall collection.

The collection is searchable, of course, but also browsable in a number of different ways: by event (organized chronologically), place, person, topic, media type, contributing institution, and collection. There is also a separate section on educator resources.

Object Characteristics
Because they are drawn from such a wide variety of collections, the objects in Civil Rights Digital Library they are of many different types including sound recordings, video recordings, texts, websites, and other visual materials. In terms of content, they cover photographs, letters, political cartoons, television news broadcasts, documentaries, posters, pamphlets, reports, articles, books, interviews, and government records. Instructional materials include annotated bibliographies, quizzes, worksheets, timelines, teaching guides, slide shows, and lesson plans. When you browse by person or event, in addition to the list of collection materials, a short paragraph on background or a person’s biography is also shown.

Metadata
The CRDL does a great job of making metadata consistent across the collections to which they provide access (in fact, part of their IMLS grant money was specifically for supplementing the metadata provided by each institution). Some fields include creator, date, description of the object or abstract (sometimes including historical background information), types, subjects, contributors, online publisher, a physical description and brief citation of the original material, rights and usage.

For the digital video portion of the project, Dublin Core was used as a metadata standard and Archival Moving Image Materials, 2nd edition for descriptive standards. The grant proposal also indicates that administrative metadata follows the METS standard, although this information is not apparent from the web interface of the digital library.

Intended Audience
This digital library is clearly intended for learning and education. Its plethora of specifically designated educational resources makes it particularly helpful for teachers and school-age students, but beyond that it is useful to anyone with an interest in the civil rights movement. Because the collections from various institutions are so varied, a variety of uses for the information are supported.

Overall, I think the Civil Rights Digital Library is successful in presenting great breadth on the subject of the civil rights movement, particularly through its function as a portal which allows users to search both at the collection level and at the item level across over 75 collections. This is a great resource!

Jesse Saunders Blog #7: NYPL Digital Gallery | Detroit Publishing Company Postcards in the Leonard Lauder Postcard Collection

2008-11-12T09:55:00.000-08:00

NYPL Digital Gallery | Detroit Publishing Company Postcards in the Leonard Lauder Postcard Collection

This collection is a portion of the NYPL Digital Gallery project, which was begun to allow for free and open access to thousands of images from the library's holdings. The library holds many various collections, including this one of the Detroit Publishing Company's postcards which was donated to the NYPL in 1986 by Leonard Lauder. The postcards include, "North American landscapes and cityscapes, including views of well-known streets, buildings, historic monuments, natural scenery, industry, transportation, and daily life".

Selection Decisions:
All images in this exhibit come from the Detroit Publishing Company Postcards collection at the NYPL. The total collection includes 14,500 postcards, of which 5,780 have are included in the gallery. There is no clear information regarding how the digitization decisions were made or when the remainder will be digitized and made available.

Metadata:
Detailed metadata is included on the Image Details page for each image and includes: title, medium, material type, item/plate #, source, physical location, catalog number, digital and record ID, and dates when digital files were produced and updated. These metadata fields are used to return searches done within the system.

Object Characteristics:
Once images are selected, they are either scanned using a flatbed scanner, or photographed using a digital camera, with archival masters ranging from 300 to 1200 dpi. Derivitives are then made at thumbnail, detail, and full size, allowing for the different levels of viewing within the gallery. These images are available as jpg images, which can be downloaded and saved to a local computer. There is no clear information on either the general Digital Gallery or collection pages, however, it appears as though it was built in-house by the NYPL. There is a link on the top of the webpages of the database requesting user feedback on the interface. The search function is helpful in finding your way to precise images, yet the browsing function appears to be arranged based on the physcial locations of the postcards, yet without enough descriptive data to make finding your way through an effective means to finding useful images.

Intended Audience:
The audience for this collection would include users of the Digital Gallery systems, as well as users with either scholarly or recreational interest in postcards/Americana, etc. The size of the collection allows for people to find postcards on a wide variety of topics and from a number of lcoations, providing a wide base from which to conduct research or lazily search.

Lauren Blog 10 - The Empire That Was Russia

2008-11-11T19:15:00.000-08:00

The Empire That Was Russia is an online exhibit by the Library of Congress of the very early and vivid color photography of Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii, photographer to Tsar Nicholas II. Between 1909 and 1915, Prokudin-Gorskii completed surveys of eleven regions of Russia. He left Russia for Norway after the revolution and his glass plate negatives were purchased by the Library of Congress in 1948 from his heirs. The black and white negatives were created in threes using filters and projected in color using blue, green and red lights. Now the Library of Congress has used a method of image overlay called digichromatology to reproduce the images digitally with their brilliant color intact.

Collection Principles
Since Prokudin-Gorskii's work existed only as glass plate negatives the digitization serves two preservation purposes: recreating color images that reproduce how the negatives were projected using colored lights have been scanned and making the images available to the public, many of them for the first time. Although it isn't stated outright on the site, through searching the collection database, it seems that the collection of color plates, as well as Prokudin-Gorskii's albums of reference photographs, have been digitized and put online in their entirety. Some of these images have been cropped and are highlighted in this exhibition.

Object Characteristics
The glass plates have been scanned and converted to jpegs with a height of 704 pixels. The exhibition divides these images into categories by subject (architecture, ethnic diversity, transportation and people at work).

Metadata
Each image is accompanied by historical background information, title, date, a link to the holding department (which for all of the images is the prints and photographic division) and the LC id. There's also a section about the photographer and his work and a detailed section on how color images are created from three different black and white glass plate negatives (really cool!!). So there's lots of metadata about the glass plate and lots of information on how the digitization happened, but unfortunately no metadata about the digital object. Though this can all be found with minimal effort by searching the collection for an object of interest.

Intended Audience
People who have previously been unable to see these images as they were originally intended (a.k.a. everyone).

John G. Blog# 7: Picturing Words: The Power of Book Illustration

2008-11-11T16:23:00.001-08:00

Picturing Words: The Power of Book Illustration

I decided to blog about this digital exhibition because I am interested in the literature aspect of the library world. I thought it was an interesting collection and contained some very beautiful illustrations. I was also interested to see what illustrations would be selected to be included in this type of exhibition.

Collection Principles

According to the description of this digital exhibition, the collection showcases reproductions of some of the world's greatest pieces of illustration from the Smithsonian Libraries’ collection of rare books and documents. There were no specific date ranges or author/illustrator specifics included in the website's information page. It appears that items were selected that fit the exhibition's goal to educate how illustrations have evolved and how they have affected the world of literature.

Object Characteristics

The objects included in the collection are scanned reproductions from rare books and documents.

The collection itself into four categories: Inspiration, Information, Influence, and Process. The illustrations (and books) are organized by illustration type. For example, in the "Inspiration" section, the subtitle is "Inspiring Faith" and illustrations that have been used in religious manuscripts and documents are presented.

Metadata

Each digital reproduction includes a "Closer View" link which provides that viewer with a closer view of the item. Unfortunately, there isn't very much bibliographic information about the object included with the view. Only the title, brief description, illustration type, date of publication, and the collection/library/museum that it was borrowed from. The "About the Design Elements Used on this site" link was "under construction. The Smithsonian provides the contributors, credits, privacy statement, copyright, and permissions info in links on the website.

Intended Audience

The intended audience is most likely researchers, librarians, and historians. The individual panels vividly demonstrate how illustrations catch readers’ eyes, draw them into their reading material and make a more direct connection to the information.

karyn j #8; Franklin Automobile Photograph Collection

2008-11-11T16:01:00.000-08:00

Invented by John Wilkinson and manufactured by HH Franklin, the Franklin Motor Car was ahead of its time in numerous aspects. It was a luxury car, but did not survive the Great Depression and was no longer manufactured after 1934. This collection looks at the people who enjoyed this particular automobile and the different aspects of it. The car and the collection have one thing in common if nothing else, they are both antiques!

Collection Principles

This Franklin Automobile Photograph Collection consists of more than 150 photographs of Franklin cars, the factory and production process, and sales and advertising. These photographs were taken from the Franklin Automobile Collection at the Onondaga Historical Association. They were scanned and provided with metadata in the summer of 1997. This collection was digitized through the Central New York Library Resources Council with funds provided by a Library Services and Technology Grant from by IMLS. The website for this digital collection was created in August 1999. There is no mention of copyright or access to the collection, but it does mention that the physical collection can be viewed for research.

Object Characteristics

The objects in this collection are very different than what I am used to seeing in the others I have written about. There are no thumbnails of the images. To access the JPEG image, there is an image no. and it is linked to the scanned photograph. There is no zoom capability, but the scanned photographs are fairly decent if the lighting is right, if the person/people in the photograph are close enough to be seen, or if the photograph is not faded or have other marks on it. Some of the photographs are better than the others.

Metadata

The metadata for this collection is not very good. Each image has 5 metadata fields: description, date, photographer, print size, OHA no. These fields are not very helpful because a large number of the images do not have the name of a photographer and some do not have dates. The description, however, is fairly helpful in that it tells you exactly what you are viewing.

Intended Audience

One can assume that the intended audience for this collection is the causal browser who is interested in Franklin Automobiles. Perhaps, it would also provide historians with useful information about the manufacturing of this automobile. The website for this collection is very plain and generic and needs to be updated. However, I’m guessing when it was created it was considered modern.

Jonny Grass Blog 8, The Cuban Postcard Collection

2008-11-11T14:37:00.000-08:00

The Cuban Postcard Collection is a collection housed at the University of Miami Libraries, and is part of the Cuban Heritage Collection. The collection uses ContentDM, and is searchable by entering terms into a search field, or browsable by subject. Advanced searches also allow searching across collections, as well as combining terms and phrases for more effective retrieval.

Collection Principles

Postcards are continuously added to the collection by gifts and purchases. Several hundred postcards are added to the collection each year, and the collection has been growing for several decades. The collection contains postcards from Cuba or about “the Cuban exile experience” outside of Cuba from the turn of the 20^th century to the present.

Object Characteristics

Image formats are not listed in item level metadata. Moreover, description of the physical object is limited to “1 col. postcard“ in seemingly all cases. Images can be zoomed in or out for better viewing. Images are available as thumbnails and larger images, which can be rotated and fitted.

Metadata

Collection-level metadata is listed in a finding aid section of the website. This page explains the six sections of the collection and their scope, and provides information of the historical nature of postcards. Abundant rights metadata is also provided, both at the collection level and at the item level.

Item-level metadata is good. A title, physical description, and subject headings are available for each collection object, as well as a digital id number and information regarding the source collection. It would be easy to identify and locate each physical image the digital surrogates represent if a user wanted to do so.

Intended Audience

The collection is unrestricted and is aimed at the general public. It seems to be intended as a research resource, providing excellent structural metadata regarding the physical collection. However, the digital collection offers a great deal of contextual information, suggesting that the site was designed to address the interest of casual visitors as well.

Cschley Blog 10 Henry Ford Museum “A Colonial family and Community”

2008-11-11T09:35:00.000-08:00

Structured as an interactive investigation, “A Colonial Family and Community” exhibit invites the visitor to be a history detective, go back in time and investigate the daily lives of the Daggetts, a colonial family from northeastern Connecticut, collect clues to uncover answers to 7 questions about colonial life in the 1700s, and then prove your skills as a history detective by discovering "What's wrong with this picture?"

Collection Principles. This online exhibit is one of the SmartFun Online exhibits of The Henry Ford Museum of Detroit and is an interactive classroom resource for teachers, media specialists, and students using images, objects, and documents from the collections of The Henry Ford. Entering from a map of Connecticut, the Daggetts are described in text that includes links to maps and documents in the Museum’s collection. The 7 questions posed include excerpts from Samuel Daggett’s account book, pen and ink drawings, newspapers, broadsides, and links to video clips in Quicktime (with no audio), or links to images with only audio, and descriptive text in the correct answer to the posed question (an incorrect answer gently suggests that the user try again!). At the end of the answer, you are instructed to return to the original map for the subsequent questions. At the end of the series of questions and its accompanying text music plays while you are congratulated on being a super-sleuth while you are advised that “By investigating the Daggett family and the community in which they lived, you have connected with real people and places from colonial times. You've learned about people of the past in the same way that historians and museum curators do--by examining accounts from the time period through authentic documents, account books, newspapers and illustrations.”

Object Characteristics. The videos on each question page are presented in Quicktime which must be uploaded, but when the film is downloaded, the resulting window only shows the video in small, almost thumbnail size which is difficult to view. Only the newspaper, ads, and broadside image documents from the Museum’s collections can be opened for enlargement. They are in jpeg format only. No images of pages from the Daggett account book are accessible except for the initial description of the book on the site’s first welcoming page.

Metadata. Sadly, very little! Only the text portions on the initial welcoming page and the seven question and answering pages provide any descriptive information about the Daggett Colonial family and their life. There is no metadata other than a simple title description for each of the images provided, although the newspaper and broadside images are self explanatory by their title and date. There are links for further print and online resources for students and teachers and separate materials for teachers that include curriculum standards, but only when accessed by clicking on the link at the bottom of the page to Smart Fun Online. Other than a copyright notice for “The Henry Ford” and a disclaimer that it is a museum complex separate and unaffiliated with Ford Motor Company and the Ford Foundation, there is no administrative metadata or reference to rights with respect to the images or the documents they represent.

Intended Audience. This exhibit is geared to the elementary or middle school teacher and student. Although the introduction to the site mentions media specialists as having an interest in the site, the presentation of information is not particularly sophisticated in its video images without audio accompaniment and thus likely not of interest to most media specialists.

Katie R - Blog 9 - Picturing the Cayuse, Walla Walla, and Umatilla Tribes

2008-11-10T21:30:00.000-08:00

This collection of Thomas Moorhouse's photographs is owned by the University of Oregon, and working with the Tamástslikt Cultural Institute, some of the images have been digitized to create Picturing the Cayus e, Walla Walla, and Umatilla Tribes. The project was funded by the Northwest Academic Computing Consortium.

Collecting Principles:
The University of Oregon was interested in making Moorhouse's images from the late 19th Century available to the native population pictured as a way to improve accessibility and let the tribes tell their own stories. Aware of the issues surrounding a white photographer capturing the past of the tribes, U of O's aim is to provide a "culturally balanced context." The website notes that "one of the primary objectives is to provide the tribal people the opportunity to describe their cultural record in their own words by creating descriptions of images from the Moorhouse collection." As for selecting from the 2,600 images, "representatives from TCI chose images for inclusion in the digital library collection in consultation with UO Libraries Special Collections & University Archives staff."

Object Characteristics:
Scanned from glass plate negatives, the images online are "derivative image files, including compressed 125 DPI JPEG images for Web display and thumbnail GIF images for browsing." The site does not elaborate on the original file type, but I will guess a TIFF. OU and TCI have both included metadata descriptions, which lead to expanded searching possibilities. Also, because the images come straight from glass negatives, the quality of detail is amazing. Photographs from this period are usually degraded in some way, from physical abrasions to chemical instability, but the negatives are in excellent condition and offer more information that most photos.

Metadata:
UO used DublinCore standards for the metadata which includes "subject description, content description, and supplied titles."and uses ContentDM framework. The project also worked with Metadata Implementation Group to combine information for the multiple descriptions from both TCI and UO. This is a really interesting way to describe the images, and shows a commitment on the part of UO to work with the tribal community.

Intended Audience:
The project description explicitly lays out the audience: "The project makes a selection of images from the UO Libraries’ Moorhouse photograph collection available online in a culturally balanced context for use by the TCI, the people it serves, the University of Oregon community, and the general public. One of the primary objectives is to provide the tribal people the opportunity to describe their cultural record in their own words by creating descriptions of images from the Moorhouse collection." This collection should also be a good example of an institution working with the community to make interesting and fragile collections accessible.

Meghan C. Blog 9: After Columbus: 400 years of Native American Portraiture

2008-11-10T09:41:00.000-08:00

The diversity of the New York Public Library Digital Gallery is really amazing. They have an excellent reputation of curating and digitizing collections, not to mention their ability to represent the items through appropriate metadata. The After Columbus Collection was created in 2004, ten years after a live exhibit of the portraiture, photographs and paper ephemera were placed on display. The collection consists of almost 600 items which are pieces of the Rare Book Collection and Photography Collection in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences Library at the NYPL.

Collection Principles

The collection was founded on a system of nomination by a board that determines the pictorial and artifactual significance. They chose the objects based on how often they were being viewed by the public and the objects that have seen better days, also the items that seemed to have the most educational value for the benefit of all. The collection is important in creating credibility for the library and in enhancing patronage and support of the facility. The collection is very easy to use, and a bit simple at times, but serves a broader purpose to the public.

Object Characteristics

The NYPL creates high resolution files for all of their digital collections and they give information on their digitizing practices through their website. They create a high resolution master and three smaller resolution images for use on their site. They differ from 300-1200 dpi for the preservation masters and 150-760 dpi for the user friendly images. Apparently the library does some touching up on the images before they publish them to their site to ensure highest quality usability. I find this particularly noticeable in this collection of photographs, at least in terms of quality. These are some of the finest quality images I have seen, you can zoom in very close and not lose any of the quality.

Metadata

The metadata on this particular site is very well done, it might have something to do with it being a library and all. What I liked particularly about this site was its methods for searching. After selecting an image to view, you are then presented with options to view the different subjects, keywords and collections that contain similar content to the image you are viewing. This does not seem very significant, but the architecture is very intuitive and I found it pretty helpful. You are also presented with a number of ways of viewing the images themselves, which just continues to make this site awesome. The specific metadata is very specific and searchable, for example you can search by creator, subject, location, medium, date added, date acquired.

Intended Audience

Everyone! Enough said. It is a very simplistic and intuitive site, perfect for scholars, or others just wishing to browse and take in a breath of the past. The images themselves are breathtaking and The New York Public Library is doing a great and rare service to the country and the world by providing access to this site. They really are awesome!

Geoff Willard Blog #10: Player Piano Rebirth

2008-11-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

On the look out for another example of folk archiving, I stumbled across Terry Smythe's Player Piano Rebirth page. Terry has been digitizing player piano rolls into MIDI files using a home brew scanner, and documenting the entire process. While the content is deep, the site's architecture leaves something to be desired.

Collection Principles

Based on the information provided on this preservation page, I would assume that Terry targets any piano roll as a candidate for scanning and transfer. All rolls are scanned at an unknown setting into an unknown program; details of the scanner are extraordinary detailed for other budding piano roll archivists, but the actual digitization is somewhat mysterious. Other than CakeWalk for creating the MIDI files, I'm not sure what other programs are utilized. Although the original scans are apparently too large to post, Terry will provide a user with the original scans on request, no fee required. There is no mention of copyright restrictions on the files, only a plea that the MIDI files not be used for commercial purposes. Presumably most are in the public domain, but I am not up on my piano roll copyright history (I would image a few are still in the hands of the original composer's estate though).

Perhaps the most glaring omission is the lack of transparent file descriptions. All 5,782 titles are rolled into a handful of zip files. Want to search his collection? Download a massive Excel file. I kid you not, there is no database involved.

Object Characteristics

MIDI is an industry standard, although I'm not sure if it qualifies as an archival standard. What I find fascinating is Terry's approach to information gathering:

"I must presume that the viewer has access to an appropriate catalog to determine additional information for a particular music roll. You will note that some information about the roll is missing, as a consequence of a torn leader, missing box, obliterated leader data, or a combination of conditions. What you see is what I know about a certain roll, largely from the information contained within the roll label, followed by a Google Advanced Search."

The file name labeling system consists of the tune title + catalog number. Terry claims the information he has gathered is embedded into each MIDI file, but I have been unable to view it. QuickTime does not reveal this header information, and I do not have CakeWalk.

Metadata

The fields in that massive Excel file that constitute descriptive and administrative metadata are the following: Tune Title, Composer, Lyricist, Performer, Catalog #, Manufacturer, Roll Type, Copyright Data, Donor, Batch, Comments. By no means are these fields complete; most are missing at least 1-2 pieces of information.

Intended Audience

As a member of AMICA (Automatic Musical Instrument Collectors' Association), no doubt Terry had this group in mind when constructing his archive. Reproducing rolls, which feature performances by famous musicians, will surely appeal to listeners who want to hear how selected compositions were originally meant to be played (for instance, a Scott Joplin rag played by Joplin himself).

Sarah Weinblatt Blog 9: The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia

2008-11-07T18:33:00.000-08:00

The Civil Rights Movement in Virginia was an exhibition during 2004 at the Virginia Historical Society. It was also a traveling exhibition through 2006.

Collection Principles
This exhibition contains items from Virginian history during the Civil Rights Movement. The site is divided into different issues, events and people such as The Jim Crow Laws, Hampton Institute and Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. DuBois and the NAACP, and Brown I and Brown II.
There is no description regarding the images and content chosen for the exhibit.

Object Characteristics
Once you click on the subject heading you are taken to a page with related images and description of the topic. There is also a description that corresponds to the images.

The images can be enlarged into another screen but the size is not much larger than the image on the exhibition page. You cannot zoom in and out on the images.

Metadata
There is very little metadata accompanying the images. Next to the image there is always a title and listing of who lent the image such as the newspaper or the person or institution.

Intended Audience
One of the intended audiences is teachers teaching the Civil Rights Movement to their students. There is a link specifically for middle school and high school teachers that displays a number of links to related sites on the Civil Rights Movement.

I found this website to be very simple and basic. It was easy to navigate, but the metadata was very poor which might be due to the fact that most of the images were not housed at the Virginia Historical Society.

Claire B. Blog 8: Dream Anatomy at the National Library of Medecine

2008-11-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

Drawn mainly from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomy shows off "the anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present."

Collection Principles

The online exhibition showcases anatomical illustrations created by anatomists and artists of the Western world during the past 500 years. The site offers curatorial narration alongside images, and the site intends to be one explanatory window into the beginning and development of the science and art of human anatomy. It's a little confusing to tell (and little documentation is provided) what the collection's organizational scheme is. It's more of a meandering historical and visual look at different anatomical images with accompanying description. It's a very cool site, though, once you get your head around what's inside.

The site is organized chronologically and thematically, sort of. It seems intended to move through it the way the site developers intended (as opposed to searching for and/or browsing the collection contents). It is actually prettyinteresting if you're willing to go through the set path; if not, it just gets confusing. An introduction offers description of the image technologies (e.g., wood engraving, photography, x-ray and digital imaging) used to represent human anatomy historically, and also a chronology of the study of human anatomy. The next three sections are mini-sites of their own, split roughly into a site on the "early modern era" of anatomical study (1450-1750); the period between 1680-1800 where anatomists began "purging imaginative elements from scientific illustration"; and 1800 to the present, where anatomy had officially been defined as a science rather than an art. The site map wasa bsolutely clutch - otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do with this!

Object Characteristics

Images in the site, which are interspersed with descriptive text, are jpegs, with one level of zooming available. At first I thought it was impossible to view all of the images in the collection, but once you open one, you have the option to either view the previous or next image, or view the entire gallery of images. The gallery is all thumbnails - no titles or other identifying information until you open an image.

Metadata

Most images list their title, where and when they were created, the name of the anatomist and the name of the artist. I thought this was really interesting - it implies a collaboration, at least with some of the earlier images, betweenscience and art. Some of the images have a sentence or two of descriptive commentary, which helps.

Intended Audience

Dream Anatomy offers a Learning Station, which is a separate site with an Educator's Corner (resources for teachers) and online activities for high school and "older" students. These two resources give some shape to the sight and offer a couple inroads to its images and information. Frankly, the site seems perfect for someone who just wants to either browse haplessly or be directed exactly how (and in what sequence) to view the different images. I imagine K-12 science and art students would enjoy this, but the images are gorgeous and probably have broader appeal than that. I think its emphasis as an exhibition that merges into the artistic and imaginative worlds, plus its historical (but almost purely speculative and conversational in tone) content, makes it less of a research site. For all of my complaining, I really enjoyed this site...maybe it is a good example of a site that, despite its lack of collection principles, limited metadata, and confusing layout, is still a pleasure to look through.

Tami Blog #9: Hidden Lives Revealed: A Virtual Archive - Children in Care 1881 - 1918

2008-11-07T07:55:00.000-08:00

Hidden Lives Revealed: Children in Care 1881 - 1918 is an online exhibit created by The Children’s Society, a “national charity committed to making childhood better for all children in the UK.” The organization began in 1881 as the Waifs and Strays Society and by 1918 had run nearly 175 homes all around England and Wales, caring for approximately 22,500 children. "Hidden Lives Revealed" was one of three New Opportunities Fund (now the Big Lottery Fund) funded projects that formed the Citizenship Past consortium.

Collection Principles

“Hidden Lives Revealed” focuses on the period of 1881 – 1918 and includes unique material concerning the children cared for by The Waifs and Strays Society. The site features a range of archival material, most of it not previously accessible to the public, as well as articles and learning resources to assist in the interpretation of the materials to a modern audience. The site features full contents of approximately 150 case files of the children. Even though some of these files are from over 100 years ago, they are all fully anonymous to prevent the identification of the children. Each case is summarized, and linked to pages about the actual homes they lived in.

Photographs illustrate the poverty and desperation of the time, and also show how many of the children's lives were turned around when they entered the Society's care.

Also featured on the site are various Society publications, including the magazines Our Waifs and Strays and Brothers and Sisters, as well as the organization's Annual Reports. While the site maintains that these documents are searchable, this statement proved to be erroneous. I could find no way to search these documents. In addition, the basic search tool provided for the case files and photographs was ineffectual, as searching for known keywords provided no results. The Advanced Search, however, provided better results.

The site also has an Activities section which includes games such as crossword puzzles and information on the Rover League, a collection of letters and newspaper clippings in which animals ask for donation for the homes. In addition, this section also contains a Virtual Children’s Home, loosely based on architectural drawings held in the Society’s archives. Users can click on various parts of the home and see photographs of the rooms and descriptions on how the children lived. The site also has a page containing e-cards and downloadable screensavers.

However, my favorite area of this site is the Learning Materials. Using primary sources, this section provides interesting questions, worksheets, and fact files exploring the lives of destitute children in the late 1800s. As the section states on its home page, “On these pages you can find out what it was like to be REALLY poor in Victorian and Edwardian times.” It also provides teaching aids to go along with the information.

Object Characteristics

The photographs and documents are jpegs. The documents are available in two sizes, small and large, with the large size being large enough to be easily read or viewed. The photographs, however, can only be seen in their thumbnail versions and a slightly larger size of approximately 350x235. All materials are downloadable.

Metadata

The metadata is very good. Each photographs includes a reference number, title, date, location, creator, description, and copyright information. In addition, each case file has a number of appropriate search terms applied to each one and can be browsed and searched by these keywords. The annual reports and magazines include dates of publication and can be viewed in whole.

Intended Audience

I feel that this site was created particularly to aid teachers in the development of lesson plans on this subject. In addition, I believe the Society is quite proud of their legacy and contribution to the welfare of children in the UK and felt obligated to honor this legacy by creating a site. The information presented in "Hidden Lives Revealed" offers very personal and unique insights into Victorian times and would be quite useful to researchers and scholars.

Jessi Fishman Blog 9: Cape Elizabeth Shipwrecks

2008-11-06T13:05:00.000-08:00

I think it was one of the first blogs that boy Jesse did for this class that was on one of the exhibits from the Maine Memory Network, and I found another one and decided it was interesting enough to blog about. This small online exhibition involves images and informative text related to Cape Elizabeth Shipwrecks.

The Cape Elizabeth Shipwrecks exhibit conveys a small historical blurb about, you guessed it, shipwrecks at Cape Elizabeth, and though it is a very small collection, it is put together nicely and makes for an interesting and informative exhibition.

Collection Principles
All of the exhibitions on the Maine Memory Network site are put together in order to showcase and educate about the history of Maine and important developments and occurrences in Maine culture and history. This small collection was put together to tell the story of a historically treacherous boating area, complete with informative blurbs that, along with the images, give the user a sense of the story itself. This small collection definitely fits in with the goals of the Maine Memory Network to really tell the stories and educate the public about the history of Maine.

Object Characteristics
For each image, a mid-sized jpeg is displayed on the its information page, with links to an enlarged version and a zoomable version of the image. The images come complete with a little bio or story that helps the user understand the history behind the photo. The exhibit itself offers a few points of access: a slide show, which leads the user through the images one page at a time, and a list view, which offers thumbnails and brief information on each image while listing all images in one page. Since this is such a small collection the user can find what they are looking for either way.

Metadata
The metadata listings for these objects are pretty good. The information page for each includes the description, or story, the title, creation date, media format, and LC subject headings. There is also a link to where you can contact the donor of the photo (in most cases here, the Maine Historical Society) for more information, and also a feedback form the user can fill out to give the Maine Memory Network more information they may have about a particular image. You are also able to send an e-card of the image, or purchase it online.

Intended Audience
The intended audience for the Cape Elizabeth Shipwrecks exhibit, and seemingly for the Maine Memory Network in general would probably be residents of the state who are interested in state history and culture, or scholars studying Maine history and culture. The Network also seems to be trying to gather more information from living Maine residents who may know more about these shipwrecks to further add to the collection. Other intended users could be scholars of sea travel and shipwrecks or people interested in disaster photography.

Hannah Norton Blog 6: Free Library of Philadelphia, Medieval Manuscripts Collection

2008-11-05T15:04:00.000-08:00

The Free Library of Philadelphia received an IMLS grant to digitize portions of their manuscript collection for wider access of these rare materials. The collection includes bibles and other religious works, political propaganda, and poetry from 1000 to 1500 A.D. The collection is presented as a traditional exhibit, with educational text describing the basics of how manuscripts were made and used and a “tour” of exhibit highlights, and is also searchable simply as a collection.

Collection Principles
The entire physical collection at the Rare Book Department of the Free Library contains 255 codices, 2,000 leaves and fragments with text and illuminating images, and 1,000 leaves with text only from the time period. It includes collections donated by John Federick Lewis and Joseph E. Widener, both in the 1930s. The digital “tour” of the collection shows artifacts that are described as being particularly notable, but beyond this there is no information provided about how the 3,055 images in the digital collection were selected from the larger physical collection. Presumably the digital materials are those that are of most interest aesthetically or historically.

Object Characteristics
Objects include scanned images from both complete codices and individual leaves. Each digital object represents one two-page spread from the physical original. Zooming and panning capabilities are available in three different sizes, using flash. Files range in size from 42MB to 650MB including large items (11 x 14 inches images and up) scanned at 400 ppi and smaller items (11 x 13 inches and smaller) scanned at 600 ppi.

Metadata
The metadata does a good job of describing each object and its historical context. Fields include: unique identifier, folio (presumably this would help you locate the item in the physical collection), date range, generic title, country, city, creator, script (i.e. type of writing), dimensions, and subjects. Each image has links to other images from the same “shelfmark” (document) and links to the catalog record for the entire document which includes further descriptive metadata and notes. Technical metadata is not included for individual images, but an in-depth description of the project as a whole is provided elsewhere. This project description includes recommendations for optimal web viewing and documentation of workflows for description, cataloging, and the imaging process.

Intended Audience
In their description of the IMLS grant, the library explains that their aim in digitizing these materials was both to fulfill their duty as a public institution of making them more broadly accessible and to “dramatically increase awareness” of these resources. They suggest that these medieval and Renaissance manuscripts would be useful and interesting to the scholarly community and the general public. The collection as presented through the Free Library’s website seems geared primarily towards to the audience of interested amateurs, with its extensive explanations, glossary, and bibliography of other resources. However, based on the robust searching options and the ability to view the images at magnification, I think they would be useful to the scholarly community as well. Scholarly access if further aided by the fact the contents of this digital collection are also available through the Digital Scriptorium, a database that incorporates manuscript collections from many major libraries and museums.

Overall, I think this is quite a useful collection. Because it comes out of an IMLS grant, it includes ample documentation of the imaging process and rationale for the project. The notes provided with most, if not all, of the digital images help put them into historical context and complements the information included in the metadata.

Elizabeth S. Blog #6: Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection

2008-11-05T13:09:00.000-08:00

University of Washington Digital Collections: Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection

Collection Principles
This digital collection comprises selections of decorative/decorated paper from found in various ephemera and book collections held by the UW Libraries Special Collections Division. It showcases a selection of decorated and decorative papers from Europe, primarily Germany, France and Italy, produced between the 17th and 19th centuries. Representative samples include "Western marbled paper, paste papers and decorative papers, such as Dutch gilt and lithographically or linoleum block printed paper. Some examples of Suminagashi are also included in the database.Selected paper samples in this digital collection include loose samples, as well as paper that has been used for the covers and endsheets of books.

The patterns and their techniques have been titled and described using a limited selection of authoritative resources found within the University of Washington Libraries collections. The two main references for marbling used are Richard J. Wolfe. Marbled paper : its history , techniques, and patterns : with special reference to the relationship of marbling to bookbinding in Europe and the Western world [1990], and The art of marbled paper : marbled patterns and how to make them by Einen Miura [1989]. As other resources and permissions become available, the collection will be updated to include modern marbling artists’ work."

Object Characteristics
According to the collection description, this digital collection was created using CONTENTdm JPEG 2000, which enables finely detailed materials, such as illustrations, to be displayed in a higher quality, more usable online format. It allows online visitors to view image details that would be illegible at the low resolutions used in most web interfaces. This software includes pan and zoom capabilities which allow a user to move in and out of an image and to move across the image to display the fine details which researchers need to be able to see clearly. The paper samples presented in this digital collection were scanned from original artifacts as TIFF files, manipulated in Adobe PhotoShop, loaded into the Contentdm JPEG2000, and linked with the descriptive metadata.

Metadata
There are several descriptive metadata fields associated with each files: Prominent and Secondary Pattern Type, Paper Process/Medium, and the Description Notes Field. The latter includes information such as:

An explanation of the pattern name assignments by the our reference sources. In terms of hierarchy, of the four (Western) marbling texts, Wolfe provided the most comprehensive coverage followed by Miura, Schleicher and Maurer-Mathison. This hierarchy also decided which pattern name to use when there were conflicts between these four resources.
Any type of historical information about the pattern itself such as approximate date of creation and/or creator.
Relationships between patterns with explanations regarding their different characteristics or commonalities.
Medium/technique notes. (For example, whether the item is oil marbling, its treatment, and/or how the pattern is created.)
Paper color (if applicable), and primary colors in the pattern
Whether paper is a second. A note of this kind indicates that the example is not of museum quality –a distinction made by the artist.

As far as the technical metadata, the digital reprod uction information is included, for example: "Scanned from an original sample using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL at between 550-600 ppi, saved in TIFF, resized, and imported to JPEG 2000."

For an example item view, click here.

Intended Audience
Presumably, the target audience for this collection would consist mainly of those interested in decorative papers from an aesthetic perspective, for crafts purposes, or for researching trends in publishing styles broadly. For those looking to do more in-depth research as to the specific books from which the examples were taken will be disappointed. The metadata, while extensive, does not link to the particular volume or sources.

karyn j blog 7; American Indian Oral History Collection

2008-11-05T12:11:00.000-08:00

This week I decided to look for something from my home state. This search took me to New Mexico's Digital Collections, which is a part of my alma mater's rival school. I was a little disappointed, but hopefully I’ll have better luck next week.

Collection Principles

This American Indian Oral History Collection documents oral traditions and recollections of Native Americans. University of New Mexico graduate recorded the interviews between 1967 and 1972. The majority of the interviews are Navajos and New Mexico Pueblos discussing personal and family histories and other aspects of Native American life, including commentaries on the 1968 Civil Rights Act, the Red Power Movement, and the occupation of Alcatraz.

Restrictions for this collection are that it is for educational use only. The interviews can only be access if you are physically at the University of New Mexico. However, interview descriptions are available to the public. This collection was funded by a grant from the Gladys Krieble Delmas Foundation and the support of Deborah Giannelli.

Object Characteristics

Each of the interviews and transcripts are identified by title, source (tape or transcript), subject, description of the interview or transcript, and some have the original date. When you go to the link for the item, there is no additional information other than a note that says the file is restricted. To search within the collection there is a keyword search and advanced search in which you can search by title, subject, language, or tape number.

Metadata

The metadata for this collection is informative. The descriptors for each item are: title, contributors, interviewer, subject, description, language, type, source, publisher, relation, rights, date digital, digitization specifications, and format. The metadata informs the user when and how it was digitized and where the physical item can be found. Maybe another field for restrictions would also be helpful.

Intended Audience

According to the about the collection page, this collection is for educational purposes only. However, this collection would be beneficial to anyone (both researchers and casual browsers) interested in the history of Native Americans as told by individuals who experienced it. That is if they can access it. The website for this collection is okay, but I think inability to access the interviews takes away from the information they are trying to share. Also, transcripts for each of the interviews would be helpful.

Yunmeng Du Blog 5: The Romance of Orchid Discovery

2008-11-05T11:33:00.000-08:00

Collection Principles

I found this collection The Romance of Orchid Discovery: The John Day Scrapbooks through National Science Digital Library. John Day painted hundreds of exquisite watercolors of the newly discovered orchids that were entrancing Victorian Society. As a result of his passionate work, a stunning archive of orchid illustrations have been formed, 280 out of which have been selected for reproduction in a superb book, “A Very Victorian Passion: The Orchid Paintings of John Day”.

Metadata

Metadata in this amazing collection is created to be name, date, distribution and scrapbook for which the painting was drawn. A brief description for each painting has been provided. The location of a particular kind of orchid is also placed along each image; however, there is no search function for this site. It’s a very typical informational website.

Object Characteristics

All the images are organized in a gallery view style, which encompasses four sets of paintings from Tropical America, Tropical Asia, Europe and Afro-Madagascar and John Day’s Orchids. Ten images are placed on each page in one set. Two small triangles allow users to click through each gallery page. On the page of each painting, a view large image function was incorporated. The “Back to gallery” and “home” links act as navigation tools for this site. The homepage of this collection also include the knowledge of the romance of orchid discovery and modern day orchid research, the link to the exhibition in the Kew Gardens Gallery, and a link to buy the book.

Intended Audience

Since collection is hosted by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the intended audience seems to be the visitors to Royal Botanic Gardens, or botanists who are doing research on orchid, or readers of the book “A Very Victorian Passion: The Orchid Paintings of John Day” as well as someone who would like to browse the online exhibitions just like myself.

Meghan C. Blog 8: Open Vault

2008-11-04T18:11:00.000-08:00

The public television station in Boston is a fore runner for media archives, with over half a million assets from programs and series created at WGBH. As a result the Media Library and Archive was endowed with money to begin the digitization of these assets and they are now free to the public through Open Vault. These videos also include transcripts and some keyword metadata and much more information about the program, series and creators of the clip. There are an assortment of different genres to choose from; arts, sciences, education, business and Massachusetts. Some of the videos go back to the early 1950's. The collection contains masters, stock footage, and stills, as well as the audio/visual assets.

Collection Principles
The creation of the Open Vault was to provide access to their plethora of information which was sitting idle in an archive. It was out of obligation and duty that WGBH created the Open Vault digital collection in order to provide as much access to their facility as possible and benefit the community. According to their assessment document, the majority of their assets still retain enduring value to scholars and community members, by allowing people to reach into the past. Some of their programs were award winning, or critically praised, which I suppose creates enduring value.

Object Characteristics
Although the assessment gives much background into the project itself, it does not provide much in the way of technical information about the project. It is a little disheartening. It seems like the files are in quicktime, which is fairly universal and free to download which is good for most the population who would desire to view this site. The transcripts cannot be downloaded from the site, it can only be read there. Each of the videos would carry much more value if they all had corresponding transcripts based on them. It is unfortunate they do not. I believe that the transcripts were originally records that were kept and later put into the same entry at the Open Vault digital collection site. The site itself is aesthetically pleasing and simple to use. There is an advanced search where you can search by series, date, and other criteria. I found that most of these videos were also only clips of the originals. I understand that the time and effort that would be needed in digitizing the entire segment, but the collection seems to loose its value due to this.

Metadata
The metadata on this site was a bit disappointing as well. Other than search able by keyword and date the collection does not seem to carry any other data about the information. There are nice little narrative snippets about the programs, series, and authors, but this does not compare to the importance of operableness. So this site may be more like an exhibit really, but it was funded by the IMLS grant to create it, so I still feel it is credible.

Intended Audience
The intended audience for WGBH would be Boston and the the other public broadcasting stations across the nation that receive the shows created in Boston, but the audience for Open Vault and its Media Library and Archive are much more diversified. The television station founded this site in order to help educate those wishing to grasp television of the 50's-90's and to learn about history and cinema. The job of PBS is to bring to people a sense of community and WGBH is making it a global community with access to the past of WGBH. Most of the people using the site will be scholarly, or in an education field, but I am sure there are those just wishing to get a little taste of Boston.

Lauren Blog 9 – World’s Columbian Exposition Books

2008-11-04T15:50:00.000-08:00

The World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 is a Web site of the Illinois Institute of Technology that hosts digital copies of four nineteenth-century books about the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago. The online collection consists of over 12,000 illustrations and full-text images.

Collection Principles
All of the four books digitized in this project were published in the two years immediately following the fair. These books were chosen for digital preservation importance in Illinois and American history as it hosted “Chicago's debut on a world stage as a locus of great architecture and burgeoning economic power.”

Object Characteristics
Each page of the books has been scanned and OCR’d to make it searchable and more easily readable. The images are available in several different resolutions, including very high resolution. Though the digitization of the books is versatile and high quality, the Web site hosting the project is very poorly organized. The images are essentially organized by hierarchal indexes, descending from an alphabetical site map to individual books to chapters and to pages, which have been given titles. The pages of the books can also be clicked through in numerical order. Additionally, some interactive features have been added to the books, like a “clickable” maps of the grounds that links to images of specific buildings. However, these maps not highlighted on the homepage or anywhere else on the Web site, I merely stumbled upon them in an index of that book’s chapters. Sadly, a search feature supplied by Google is the easiest way to find a specific image or topic. Also strangely, all the websites reside under the same address, so you cannot hyperlink to specific pages.

Metadata
Metadata is scattered at best. The bottom of each webpage states that the image is “Copyright, Paul V. Galvin Library, Digital History Collection” and gives the date the page was created. Some of the scanned book pages credit their photos; others do not. An APA citation is listed for each of the books in the about section. The only information given about the digital objects is that they were created by Luna Imaging Co. as the result of an Illinois State Library FY98 Educate and Automate grant.

Intended Audience
The site is quite narrowly intended to make the materials easily and immediately available for “Illinoisians”. An emphasis is placed on the linear readability of the texts, implying that they will be used primarily for historical research.

Emily V. Blog 9 NYPL Dance in Photographs and Prints

2008-11-04T13:27:00.000-08:00

The NYPL Digital Gallery hosts an exhibition titled Dance in Photographs and Prints, this collection is managed in part by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the Library for the Performing Arts.

Collection Principles

This collection contains a huge variety of photographs and prints of dancers, including dance instruction guides, portraits of famous dancers, programs from dance performances, and other images. The collection digitized seems limited, however, in the Collection History section of the Web site, they do note that the collection will continue to grow over time.

Object Characteristics

The digital quality of the images is very good, they can be zoomed in on, and the site offers options to resize, buy, or print the image.

Metadata

The metadata related to these images was excellent. In addition to an Image ID and description listed with every image, there is an option to expand on the Image Details. This option provides additional data related to the material, source, location, and further identification information.

John G. Blog #6: The Magical Book: Movable Books for Children, 1771 - 2001

2008-11-04T05:41:00.000-08:00

The Magical Book: Movable Books for Children, 1771 - 2001

The digitized version of this collection is from the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books in the Canada Trust Gallery at the Toronto Reference Library. It was an exhibition from April 13 - June 9 of 2002. The collection contains examples from 200 years of children's pop-up and other movable books. I thought that this digital collection/exhibition was done in a creative way. Because it showcases items that are "movable", the website uses a variety of different views of each item to simulate movement.

Collection Principals

The items that were selected for this collection range from the 18th Century until 2001. The website explains that movable books had been in use since the 14th Century to teach Astronomy using movable parts to simulate the movement of the constellations in the night sky. It wasn't until the 18th Century that movable parts were used in children's books. This collection is only a part of the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books that was donated by the British Librarian Edgar Osborne in 1949. The collection contains over 2000 items from a wide variety of examples of early children's literature.

Object Characteristics

Each item was digitized and is played through Adobe Flashplayer 9. Each digitized image also plays for approximately 5 - 10 seconds before resetting and playing again. There are two links per item, the initial picture or icon that demonstrates how the movable book works and the "more information" link that provides viewers with additional bibliographic and narrative information. Some objects, like the lion from German artist Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) include sound effects. All of the objects are from early children's books. Some of the books also included "sound effects" or small air bellows that when activated by pulling a bow or string, the animals or characters in the book would make a sound. According to the website, the air bellows have now been replaced with simple circuitry and batteries.

Metadata

Every digitized item includes a "More Information" link that provides viewers with supplemental bibliographic and narrative information about the item. The bibliographic information includes the title of the book that the item was taken from, the author, publisher, and publication year. Some also include excerpts from the text and provide a narrative of the author's reasons for including movable objects in the book. Unfortunately, there is not much metadata associated with the digital items. Since the objects all come from the same collection, and because this was an exhibit in 2002, it does not appear that there was a need to include detailed metadata with the digitized items regarding specifications and current physical location.

Intended Audience

According to the website's "About Us" page, the collection was designed to serve the research community and to entertain readers of all ages, including young children. As an Elementary School Librarian, the website caught my attention because the younger children at my school are fascinated by movable, pop-up books. There is also a "Links" page that provides viewers with other links of interest.

CSchley Blog 9 : Museum of the Moving Image

2008-11-03T22:19:00.000-08:00

The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952, when Madison Avenue advertising executive Rosser Reeves convinced Dwight Eisenhower that short ads played during such popular TV programs as I Love Lucy would reach more voters than any other form of advertising. This innovation had a permanent effect on the way presidential campaigns are run.

Collection Principles. As noted under the “About” section of this exhibition’s home page, the 2008 edition of this site was made possible by a grant from the Verizon Foundation. Per the very thorough “Site Guide/Help” section, “The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008 is an online exhibition presenting more than 300 television commercials from every election year since 1952, when the first campaign TV ads aired. The website will be updated through the 2008 election between John McCain and Barack Obama. The site includes a searchable database and features commentary, historical background, election results, and navigation organized by year, type of ad, and issue. There is a playlist feature that allows visitors to select, annotate, and share their own groups of ads, and to view playlists by guest contributors. Each selected commercial is accompanied by a list of related ads. There is a transcript for each ad and a feature that allows visitors to search the entire database by title and by words in the transcripts.” Commercials on the site may be accessed on the toolbar in six different ways: Election Year; Type of Commercial; Issue; Curator’s Choice; Playlists; and Search. The commercials are organized into types such as: Backfire, Biographical, Children, Commander in Chief, Documentary, Fear, and Real People. The “For Teachers” section on the toolbar provides 8 lesson plans complete with pdfs for those plans

Object Characteristics. To view video, you will need Adobe Flash Player 8 or above. Screen resolution: The site is optimized for 1024x768 or higher screen resolution, and works with all major Web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. If you click on any still image, the video will begin to play in a viewer in the center of the screen. This viewer offers the following capabilities: Pause/Play Button; Full Screen Button; Connection Speed Button; Volume Button; Scrub Bar; Credits Button; Transcript Button; Share Button; Save Button; Related Commercials; and Related Playlists/Activities. There are also clear instructions for creating, managing, and sharing playlists of various commercials. A click on Election Year 2008 brings up the McCain vs. Obama election, complete with a summary of the election, a fixed image from a video of McCain , and two rows of jpeg thumbnails in “click to view video” flash format, divided into Democratic and Republican campaign ads. Note also the pdf format for the 8 teacher lesson plans provided on the site.

Metadata. This exhibition is replete with metadata at nearly every click of the mouse! The full list of support, staff, research, organizational support, producer and curator, to name just a few of those noted are listed in the “About” section. The Privacy and Copyright section has some of the most complete privacy policy statements I have seen on similar image exhibitions. The copyright information is also similarly complete and thorough in listing the site’s terms and conditions of use. The short descriptive summaries for various type ads are clear and lead directly into the video. For example, in the Backfire type of commercial, the thumbnail for a 2008 ad regarding the rapid decline on Wall Street, states “On September 15, the day of the Lehman Brothers bank collapse and a 500-point drop in the Dow Jones average, John McCain said at a campaign event that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." The Obama campaign seized on this instantly, releasing an ad the next day which repeats McCain's words several times.” Of particular interest are the Online Resources on the toolbar which provide a range of resources and links for further information on a wide range of topics including political commercials, politics and presidents, campaign websites, websites from prior campaigns going back to 1996, blogs and general resources.

Intended Audience. This exhibition is a current and up to date treasure trove for political junkies! But there is also a wealth of information for the folks who are interested in the history and development of video political campaign commercials. The site is not “academic” enough for a scholar to cite, but the various links are a good beginning for research in video on political campaigns.

2008-11-03T19:40:00.000-08:00

Jonny Grass Blog 7

University of Washington, Alaska, Western Canada and United States Collection

The Alaska, Western Canada and United States Collection is a digital collection of historic photographs of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, the Yukon Territory, and British Columbia. The digital collection is based on a University of Washington special collection that includes from the latter part of the 19^th century, such as the Alaskan Gold Rush of 1898-1900, and the 20^th century. The site is well organized and provides very good metadata; the site allows searches across a number of University of Washington special collections.

Collection Principles

The collection is based on a special collection of the University of Washington libraries. Most of the photographs were taken from the Alaska Collection, and the Canada Collection PH Coll 393, though a number of smaller collections of related items were also included in the database. The library plans to add items to the digital collection, as well as update information about the collection items.

Object Characteristics

The images were scanned from black and white photographic prints in grayscale and color using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL at 100 dpi. Images were then saved in .jpg format at compression rate 3 and resized to 768x600 dpi to present the clearest possible digital image. The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using the Contentdm software suite. This viewer allows site visitors to manipulate the images for better viewing; functions include zooming in and out, rotating images, showing a thumbnail, and clipping the image in a new window.

Metadata

Metadata for this collection is very thorough and explicit. The collection homepage details the process of digitizing photographs and the formats used, as well as the software used for presenting the digital objects to visitors. Each image also includes extensive descriptive metadata, such as title, photographer, notes, relevant dates, repositories from which photographs were sourced, and different types of subject headings.

Intended Audience

The digital collection seems to be aimed at the general public, though, since it is based on a special collection, it is likely also intended for research use. The extensive metadata also suggests that the site is intended for serious scholarly research and, perhaps, designed to present an example for digital collection building at other institutions.

Katie R - Blog 8 - Rare Maps Digitisation Project

2008-11-02T16:14:00.000-08:00

The National Library of Australia started a Rare Maps Digitisation Project in order to investigate the best process to digitize its collection of rare maps in 1998. This pilot project only involved a small portion of the holdings, but describes the digitization process in incredible detail, as the Australians seem to do quite well.

Collection Principles
Because this is only a pilot project, only 25 maps were chosen to digitize. The library was interested in exploring high quality scans. They chose maps that that would include "range of sizes available; black and white, or colour; physical condition, including any particular problem such as dissected and; mounted, bound into books, mounted on board, tape or other repairs, tears." The Project Report available on the web site details most of the project planning and process.

Object Characteristics
The images in this collection were "captured at 300 dpi using a Phase One digital scanning back with a scanning resolution of 6,000 x 8,400 pixels and a 36 bit internal colour depth." The images are kept as master TIFF files that are then compressed using MrSID software at 22:1 for viewing on the website. The user can view the images with the MrSID plug-in or without, which is really nice since not everyone wants to download the software, free or not. The map images offer a zoom feature, along with the opportunity to change the pixel size.

Metadata
On the front end, the metadata attached to the images is fairly traditional for maps. It includes title, author, publisher, size, and scale (ie, 1:724 000). Additional information on some of the maps that is helpful is the physical description which includes the map supports (paper on linen) and how stored (folded into slipcase). Some maps also include the latitude and longitude covered (E 140° 50' -- E152° 15' / S33° 36' -- S39° 50'). This specific information will be helpful when a software is more common that lets a web user outline an area on a map with a mouse, and the catalog would bring up all maps in that area (for instance, outlining Somalia, and all maps within those latitudes/longitudes would come up). The map cataloger is usually in charge of this information, so not all maps in this project have it.

Because this project was focused more on the high-quality images, I will cut the library some slack in the dismal metadata. But it seems that all aspects of a project should be figured out during this pilot. Since the project is 10 years old, I looked up a few online maps at the library, and it seems basic MARC fields still apply.

Intended Audience
The idea to digitize these rare maps appears to be access-oriented, so anyone anywhere can view the library's rare maps. There are many map aficionados in the world, so perhaps digitizing the rare maps will bring prestige to the collection. This is also helpful to GIS students or researchers.

Geoff Willard Blog #9: The Hand Drawn Map Association

2008-11-01T22:11:00.000-07:00

As far as ideal digital collections go, this archive of hand drawn maps is not one of them. However, the archive's singular, off-the-wall vision is so intriguing I thought it deserved a second look. Ephemera collecting is the kind of collecting I can really get behind.

Collection Principles

The specificity of the archive certainly binds their collecting policy. Save for a stray post-it note, they will generally only accept images of hand drawn maps from users, preferably in high resolution (300 DPI or higher, and at least 700 pixels in any one direction). Under the terms and conditions, users retain the copyright over their submissions, but the archive can effectively do whatever they want with it once it's in the collection.

You'll notice there's no way to search or browse the 98 maps. Not surprisingly, none of the maps have been OCRed. There is also no option to zoom on any of the images (a second click brings you back to the main collection).

Object Characteristics

It looks like the curator of this archive has imposed some level of name control on the submitted jpegs. Images are labelled with delimiter-separated words, beginning with 'hand_drawn_map' and ending with some word that summarizes the image. No other authority controls in terms of upload format, image size, or descriptive metadata are enforced, only suggested. I do wonder though what the process is - in terms digitization & description - when a user snail mails a map rather than sending it digitally. "We actually prefer this method," they claim, "and will even pay you for your submission to help cover postage costs (limited time offer). We prefer your actual, physical map on paper because they are so much more interesting and fun to archive."

Metadata

Like the sample archive from last week, almost all the metadata falls on feet of the submitter. The archives provides the image with a number, the location (if known), the submitter user name, and the date uploaded. The curators occasionally describe how the map was submitted; a physical description is noted if they received the map in hard copy.

Intended Audience

Saying that cartographers would be interested in this collection might be stretching it a bit. General connoisseurs of ephemera would probably see the appeal in this noble activity. It's the type of website that's enjoyed by BoingBoing readers (and I say that as one of them).

Tami Blog #8: The Conner Prairie Museum Textile Collection

2008-11-01T08:34:00.000-07:00

Textiles were once an important element in American homes. As The Conner Prairie Museum Textile Collection’s home page states, “having enough textiles to keep warm during cold winter nights could mean the difference between life and death.” The textiles in this digital collection are preserved and housed at the Conner Prairie Living Museum in Fishers, Indiana. Conner Prairie was donated to the Quaker liberal arts school, Earlham College, by Ruth and Eli Lilly in the early 1960s. The museum eventually became independent of the college and preserves the historic William Conner home and recreates 19^th century life in Indiana on the White River. The textile collection was founded in the 1940s by the Lillys.

Collection Principles

This collection contains 41 digitized images of quilts, samplers, and coverlets. While the jpegs of the textiles are quite beautiful, the site itself has a few problems and was irritating and frustrating to use. There was no discernable “about this collection” section so the process taken to digitize the collection is unknown. In addition, there is no information indicating whether this is the complete collection maintained at Conner Prairie or why this particular collection was chosen for digitization. A creation date of March 19, 2008 is found on the bottom of the collection’s home page.

Object Characteristics

Each full object jpeg can be zoomed in or out to provide quite a bit of detail. In addition, detailed jpegs are provided that are crisp, clean, and zoomed in so tight as to provide easy viewing of individual stitches and weaves. The site maintains the usual ContentDM functionality with the ability to add the object to a Favorites folder, compare and rotate objects, and enlarge the sections you particularly want to view.

Metadata

This collection provides very good metadata. Once you have clicked on the textile image and are viewing the enlarged versions, you can click “Go” next to the words “document description” and you are provided with the metadata for that object. The metadata is very extensive and includes such criteria as title, object ID, description, creator, date creator, type, condition of the object, notes from the curator, digital date, and digital specifications. The descriptors for each object can then be clicked on to bring up more items with these same characteristics. Even the individual words in the descriptive text can be clicked to single out items with that particular quality.

The “advanced search” feature of the site allows you to search across as many of the Indiana digital collections as you like. There are 43 of them, ranging in topic from an art journal entitled Umbrella 1978-2005 to the Crispus Attucks Collection. The default setting has all of the collections checked but “select all” and “clear all” buttons are provided.

Intended Audience

This collection would be useful to researchers of early American history and textiles. I believe that the general public would find this site interesting due to the extensive amount of metadata provided. The notes from the curator are especially revealing. The university also provided a link to a document entitled “Quilts Across Cultures and for Many Reasons,” which is essentially a teaching aid, that can be accessed through the home page of the collection.

Sarah Weinblatt Blog 8: Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture

2008-10-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

Ballyhoo! Posters as Portraiture is the online version of the current exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington DC. I just saw this exhibition two weeks ago and decided to see if there was an accompanying online exhibition.

Collection Description

"By interweaving the three themes of poster art—celebrity, promotion, and advertising—this exhibition from the National Portrait Gallery’s collections examines how a famous face can enhance a poster, and, conversely, how posters have defined reputations of prominent Americans. These images remind us of the ubiquitous presence of visual messages outside the world of fine art. Widely disseminated forms of popular portraiture—like the poster—remain a profound influence in our culture."

You can take an audio tour of this collection narrated by the curator or you can browse through each image.

The site is divided into 8 different sections: Broadsheets and Show Posters, The Poster Craze, Wartime Propaganda, Export of American Culture, The Product and the Promise, Politics and Protest, Postermania of the 1960s, and Film and Music Advertising.

On each of the pages there is a description of the content along with the images.

Object Characteristics

The images on the site can be enlarged via Flash Player. Once you click on the image a new screen pops up that allows you to view the image and click on a tab for the accompanying text describing that image.

You can also view images of the actual galleries at the NPG.

The site does not display all 60 posters found in the exhibition. I was disappointed to find that they did not have an online image of the my favorite poster from the exhibit of the Hitchcock film, Notorious.

Metadata

The metadata that is available for the objects include: the title, persons portrayed, artist, year, media type, dimensions, home within the Smithsonian Museums/Libraries/Archives and provenance.

Intended Audience

Anyone interested in poster art, portraiture etc... Or just a visitor to the NPG's website.

Jesse Blog #6: Senator Joe McCarthy: Audio Excerpts, 1950-1954

2008-10-29T15:47:00.000-07:00

Senator Joe McCarthy: Audio Excerpts, 1950-1954 - home page

This collection of 35 audio clips, culled from the Senator Joe McCarthy collection, is held and was digitized by the Marquette University of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. These have been posted on the e-Archives website, a portion of the Special Collections & Archives division of the university library using ContentDM.

Selection Decisions:
The audio clips presented here were taken from the archives' expansive collection sound recordings within the full McCarthy Papers. The full collection of audio recordings appear to include over 100 hours of audio, ranging from the 1950's through the 1960's. The "About The Project" notes that this is a small fraction of the total audio available form the collection, yet give no details as to how the excerpts were selected. The clips cover range from 1950-1954, and concern mostly percieved communist threats to the United States, as well as McCarthy's concern about homosexuals working in the state department and other topics. The "about" page acknowledges that some topics discussed by McCarthy are today considered greatly offensive, and that he is still controversial figure in American history.

Metadata:
For each digitized clip, the archives has included a robust metadata set including: title, date, description of contents, keywords/subjects, location of recording, length of recording, original format, reproduction notes, information on location within full collection, and a link to the transcript. The metadata is able to be searched either via text search or year.

Object Characteristics:
The original recordings were digitized from the original 1/4" tape (although wire recordings also exist in the collection). The transfers were recorded in Adobe Audion at CD quality (16-bit/44.1Khz) wav files. These files are delivered in ContentDM via Apple Quicktime. The default action for the audio files is to stream, however, by right-clicking they can be downloaded to the users local computer as a Quicktime mov file. Transcripts are delivered via pdf downloads. Unfortunately, the naming conventions between the mov and pdf files are not standardized, so it would be difficult to keep track of the relation between files if downloading more than a few at a time.

Intended Audience:
From the website itself, it is unclear to who this collection is intended to serve. It would not be terribly useful to a serious reseracher, due to the incompleteness of the audio clips. However, the presence of the clips may serve to lead those wishing to do more complete reserach to the collection, based on the web presence. One group who may find the collection useful would be students of 20th century American history who are reseraching the cold war and it's effects, as McCarthy was a major figure during that era.

Kempleel blog 8 - Advance Australia

2008-10-29T13:13:00.000-07:00

Since I was beaten to the punch on the national archives exhibition of "Running for Office," How about a completely different take on the political process? Advance Australia: South Australian and Federation is a production of the South Australia State Library and is notable mostly for it's uselessness.

Collection Principles: The website is intended mainly as a bibliographic resource for the Australian Federalist movement in the late 19th century, with additional digitized material, namely photographs, cartoons, posters and fliers, as well as some sample text documents. Thus most of the content they're conveying isn't even on the site. However, if a source relates to a digital document, there is a link - but most of the links are broken.

Object Characteristics: Objects are contemporary images and photographs relating to the people, places and issues surrounding the federalist movement in Australia and the emergence of the Australian constitution. It's difficult to say how many images there are, since they're linked different places and there seems to exist to comprehensive image index. Most come in a single resolution, making some that contain text completely illegible. The site is searchable, but only to a point. Images are not separately searchable, although the can be viewed by topic section.

Metadata: Extremely minimal - Images usually only include a title and an original source, i.e. for cartoons the original paper of publication and date. No where could I find any information for most images about the original artifact digitized, it's author, its place of holding, etc, etc. Many broken links, but a few images did link to catalogue records in the Mortlock Library of South Australia, the Rare Books and Named Collections of the Library of South Australian, and the South Australia Parliamentary Papers. However, there is no way of telling whether most other images belong to any of these collections.

Intended Audience: Those with an interest in Australian political history, students, teachers, etc. Honestly, I had previously been completely unaware that Australian had had a contentious constitution making of it's own, or that Women in South Australian could vote in 1897. I just wish they had included more resources!

karyn j blog 6; William F Boyd Photo Album

2008-10-29T12:44:00.000-07:00

The William F. Boyd Photo Album is a collection of 43 images taken by one of Seattle’s earliest and most important photographers. This collection depicts views of Seattle and the Puget Sound Area. The images capture the aftermath and devastation of the Seattle Fire on 6 June 1889, as well as notable events, such as President Harrison’s visit in 1891, and popular sights and scenery from the area and the other parts of the state.

Collection Principles

The about the database page for this collection does not give the reasons for the digitization of this collection. Nor does it explain why only 43 of the 104 “vintage photographic prints” were chosen and used in this collection. It does, however, tell us that “the information for the William F. Boyd Collection was researched and prepared by the UW Libraries Special Collection staff in 1998.” The original physical collection can be found in the University of Washington Libraries Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives Division as the William F. Boyd Album Collection no. 34. This collection uses CONTENTdm Digital Asset Management format.

Object Characteristics

The images are listed alphabetically based on the title. Each thumbnail has a title, date/approximate date, and place the picture captures. When you click on the thumbnail, it takes you to an enlarged image which is at 100% with the metadata beneath it. You may also view the photograph at 25%, 50%, or 75% (there are no other options). There are also options to fit, rotate, clip the image, or hide/show the thumbnail. Because the photographs could not be directly scanned, the images were scanned from recopied 35mm color transparencies and are viewed as JPEGs.

Metadata

The metadata for this collection is helpful. The metadata for the images uses these descriptors: title, photographer, date, notes, subjects, location depicted, collection, order number, ordering information, repository collection, object type, digital reproduction information. The subjects for each image are determined using both LC subject headings and the LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (you can also search using both of these subject terms). There is no mention of copyright information (perhaps because it is in the public domain). However, the metadata does a good job of telling who took the picture, when and where it was taken, what is depicted, and where the physical piece can be found.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this collection is the casual browser or researcher interested in Washington around the turn of the century. It is not directed towards scholarly researchers. Overall, this site is okay. While browsing the collection, there is no easy way to return to the collection homepage without pressing the back button. I also think it would be beneficial to the user if information concerning how and why the collection came about was included.

John G. Blog #5 Musicians and Their Pets

2008-10-29T12:04:00.001-07:00

Musicians and Their Pets

Musicians and Their Pets is a collection of digitized photographs from the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library from Yale University. I found this collection on the Smithsonian's "Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web" link. As the title of the collection implies, the collection includes photographs of various musicians and their pets. Unfortunately, this is all that the collection includes.

Collection Principles

I was unable to locate any information about the collection principles. Based on the photographs that are included in the collection, one can only assume that these photographs have been digitized and put into a collection because they come from notable musicians in history. There was no "About" page on this website. There is only an email included Julie.Niemeyer@yale.edu for contact information.

Object Characteristics

The collection only includes photographs. No other types of media or art are included. Photographs from the following musicians are included in the collection: Benny Goodman, Charles Ives, Deems Taylor, Vladamir and Wanda Horowitz, John Kirkpatrick, Cole Porter, Kurt Weill and Lotte Lenya, Fred and Rose Plaut, Virgil Thomson, David Stanley Smith, Horatio Parker, and Robert Shaw. Oh, and "Staff Pets" are also included in the collection. Unfortunately, there was very little bibliographic information for the staff's pets as well.

Metadata

There is very little metadata presented for each photograph. Each photograph has a title and sometimes includes a brief description or annotation specifying which collection the photograph comes from. I was disappointed to see that such little information was included for each photograph. It is unknown if the bibliographic information does not exist or if there was no effort put into the collection since it involves such a random and obscure topic (Musicians and Their Pets). It is a little shocking to find that this collection, which is associated with Yale University, is so poorly put together. I was expecting more from them.

Intended Audience

Well, since there was such little information about the collection posted, one has to assume that this collection was intended for music historians and aficionados. I don't know of anyone else who would be interested in learning about the pets of deceased musicians.

Emily - Blog 8 - Running for Office

2008-10-29T11:42:00.000-07:00

Appropriately timed, The National Archives is currently hosting an online exhibit titled Running for Office, which showcases political campaigns through the years of 1898 - 1948, particularly focusing on political cartoons drawn by Clifford K. Berryman.

Collection Principles
The collection principles for this exhibit are clearly outlined, as they limited themselves to a particular artists drawing about a particular subject matter. I thought there selection was excellent - and showed a good variety of his work through the years.

Object Characteristics
This site had excellent quality, the best part being that there was an option to Click to Enlarge, as well as Download and Print - which I haven't seen often on archive Web sites.

Metadata
Metadata was the only field I thought could be improved on this site. The metadata only included the very general location of the item ("U.S. Senate Collection
Center for Legislative Archives"), but no call number or other information.

Intended Audience
Voters all over the US would find this site interesting!

Lauren Blog 8 - Newton Owen Postcard Collection

2008-10-29T10:36:00.000-07:00

The Newton Owen Postcard Collection, found online at the University of Louisville, represents nearly a century in the life and travels of an extended Kentucky family. The 781 cards include souvenier travel cards and greeting cards. Some of the items date back to the late 19th century and stretch into the 1980s, but the bulk of the collection is from 1900-1940.

Collection Principles

Of the 781 items in the collection, 579 have been digitized. The About section reveals that items were left out due to copyright constraints, though as an educational institution it seems U of L could argue fair use. Another interesting note from the About section of the website states that the collection contains stereotypes of Dutch and African American people that may be offensive to many viewers. While the University does not endorse these depictions, the curators write that "the cultural record would be incomplete -- and we would not be honest with ourselves and our past -- if these images were omitted." I think this is the correct stance and is very well explained.

Object Characteristics

Lots of lovely metadata lets the visitor know that the images were selected and scanned by Caroline Daniels in 2006-2007 on a Epson Expression 1680 flatbed scanner as a 600 dpi TIFF image in 24-bit RGB color. "Daniels converted the images to JPEGs of 'maximum' quality and resized them to 600 pixels in the longest dimension using PhotoShop versions 7 and CS2. The images were then uploaded into CONTENTdm (versions 4.1 and 4.2)." This means that the postcards show up on my screen looking slightly larger than life size and showing excellent detail. The database looks like ContentDM and can be searched easily and favorite images can be saved. The collection also features a mapping feature that shows some of the Louisville images on a GoogleMap. I was really excited about this feature, until I realized it was only for 11 images, but this would be a really great tool for exploration if expanded.

Metadata

The metadata here is great. Each record has a lot of information about the physical object and its digital surrogate. The "About" section of the site also provides a lot of background on how the items were digitized.

Intended Audience

The postcards are largely from Kentucky, Indiana and the Southeastern U.S., so they would be of interest to people studying the changing landscape and architecture of that area. However, the cards also give a great deal of insight into the family life and popular culture of the era. Unfortunately, features like the Googlemap of Louisville narrow the audience that might be interested in the collection.

Meghan C. Blog 7: VIVA2

2008-10-28T19:45:00.000-07:00

VIVA2 or The Visual Index of the Virtual Archive 2 is a wonderful site full of interesting innovations of the web. The archive consists of 3D representations of Manhattan, New York City. The original archive, or The Visual Index of the Virtual Archive version 1 created by the Skyscraper Museum in Manhattan was an actual archive which they digitized and created a a virtual world for people to travel through. The original collection is based on over 500 photographs and scrapbooks and papers of skyscrapers in New York and beyond. VIVA2 is comprised of these photos and other memorabilia to create a very comprehensive and intuitive database which is at times hard to search through, but very appealing to those that wish to gain a better understanding of the pieces that make up the Big Apple. This project was funded by a grant given by the IMLS foundation.

Collection Principles

The collection principles were to digitize everything, I believe. They found a way to market all of their collection by creating an interesting a new way of looking at the information which was originally just kept in a finding aid and within the museum itself. The amount of access to these documents was limited due to this, and by creating this website they have given even the most uninteresting items life! I believe that the website is an item in the collection as well, it is very interactive, and the principles behind it seem to be ones for harvesting interest within a community of educators and travelers. Problems I see with this site are its uses of advanced programs on the internet which require newer machines with more capabilities. The use of Flash seems to be the greatest deterrent for those who can't afford a top of the line PC which would allow them to view some of these spectacular images and interactive functions, like the viewing of Manhattan over many periods and additions to the city's skyline, or the viewing of the worlds tallest buildings back to back.

Object Characteristics

The original finding aid states that the images were only digitized as TIFF's at 8 bit color depth, which is not quite up to standards. The original digitizing occurred around 2001, so maybe this is the reason why. It is a bit disappointing, I find that the images are not poor, but small. There isn't a very intuitive way of enlarging the images either, after right clicking one can zoom in as many times as one wants but the image then lacks any definition due to the pixelation. It is unfortunate that this collection cannot work as individual documents, but must remain a part of the overall site in order to deduct real meaning from the photographs.

Metadata

The metadata on this site was really fascinating. It is not contained with the images but rather on a separate finding aid page, which provides a comprehensive list of attributes and keywords for the collection, not necessarily every item. What is interesting is that within the composing of this information on their site they have created little blurbs about the buildings themselves which incorporates the metadata into a narrative. Within the Flash diagrams of the information you can search the archive for keywords and genres of the information. I liked that the flash incorporated this into it. I found that the metadata could have been a bit more accessible to the more scholarly folk who would wish to peruse this site for credible documents, unfortunately this isn't so. I think that the format of this site has a lot of potential within the world of Web 2.0 in creating more interaction between people and their information, but this has been somewhat neglected. Possibly one day other sites will learn from the lessons and innovations of this site.

Intended Audience

As I postulated earlier, I believe that the intended audience for this collection is most likely young students and tourists, as well as some curious members of the community within New York. This is made evident by the different options created for children and other adults wishing to search the interactive archive. Hopefully they might do better to incorporate other pieces of the metadata to make this site more operable.

Claire B. Post 7: The Cornell University Witchcraft Collection

2008-10-28T12:19:00.000-07:00

The Cornell University Library Witchcraft Collection is a digital sampling of titles from the Cornell University Library's collection of materials on Witchcraft. According to Cornell, the collection documents the earliest and the latest manifestations of the belief in witchcraft across a range geographies, with works on canon law, the Inquisition, torture, demonology, trial testimony, and narratives.

Collection Principles

The majority of the Witchcraft Collection was acquired in the 1880s through the efforts of Andrew Dickson White, Cornell's first President and an active scholar and book buyer, and his first librarian, George Lincoln Burr.
The collection contains early texts from the period when the theory of the heresy of witchcraft was being formulated, including fourteen Latin editions of one of the more sinister works on demonology, the Malleus maleficarum, which codified church dogma on heresy. Four of these Latin editions were printed in the fifteenth-century, most notably the scarce first edition printed before April 14, 1487.

The collection also contains other texts of the doctrinal discussion of demonology, as well as the works of theologians who opposed the Inquisition, for example Cornelius Loos, the first theologian in Germany to write against the witch hunts. The project's claim to fame is its court records of the trials of witches, including original manuscript depositions taken from the victims in the torture chamber. One example is the minutes of the witchcraft trial of Dietrich Flade, a sixteenth-century city judge and rector who spoke out against the persecutions in the 1580s. The manuscript was discovered in Germany and acquired by Andrew Dickson White in 1883.

Object Characteristics

The current digital collection contains 104 monographs (23,220 pages of material). Pages are viewed as GIF images, or as long formatted pages of the text taken from the pages with a manual delineation of pages. You can save or print images, and also add them to your "bookbag" where your searches are saved. Once saving in the bookbag, viewers can email the links of the items of interest to themselves or others.

Metadata

The volumes are viewable as "body of text" (scanned pages) or viewers have the option of "view entire text" which shows a long page of all text from all pages together. Any item that is available is available in its entirety, so it takes a while to load some of the enormous volumes. Then you can do a text search, or copy and paste text as needed. Metadata includes author (if known), title, publication information. Browsing is available by author or title. This can be challenging if you do not read Latin.

Intended Audience

The Witchcraft Collection is a rich source for students and scholars of the history of superstition and witchcraft persecution in Europe. The site's documentation page claims that the collection "focuses on witchcraft not as folklore or anthropology, but as theology and as religious heresy," but I imagine that folklorists or anthropologists, as well as literary scholars, would still find some interesting materials here.

Jonny Grass Blog 6, Charlotte, the Vermont Whale

2008-10-27T09:53:00.000-07:00

Charlotte, the Vermont Whale

Charlotte, the Vermont Whale is listed as an electronic museum on the icom site of virtual museums, though its digital collection is not well curated. It was created in 1993 by the Computing and Information Technology department at the University of Vermont to highlight the 1849 discovery of a fossilized beluga whale near Charlotte, VT. The site contains an “Introduction to the Story,” a “Directory of Exhibits,” and an “About the Project” page. Due to curtailed funding, the site remains incomplete.

Collection Principles:

The virtual museum is based on the fossil of a whale that is housed in Burlington, presumably at an institution affiliated with University of Vermont. While it is not clear where the fossil is housed, the site was founded and managed by UVM, so it is likely that this is where the physical object is located. It is not clear how the photographs that were used for the digital images were selected; the site is derived from a slideshow the curator, Jeff Howe, compiled for a traveling presentation. However, it is not clear that the digital images were part of his slideshow, or why he chose these images in the first place.

Object Characteristics

Within the exhibit directory, an image is displayed with one or two sentences. The description usually includes at least one term with a hypertext link to a page explaining that term, also with an image and a couple sentences. Presumably the exhibit is this one image, plus the single images on linked pages. The images on some of the pages are clickable in order to open better resolution images in another window. These new images are roughly 600 pixels x 200-400 pixels.

Metadata

There is little metadata for the images. The rights information is provided, but that is it. The site is descriptive about the events surrounding the finding of the fossil, as well as relevant subjects, such as beluga whale. However, descriptive metadata about the images or the fossils doesn’t seem to be available.

Intended Audience

The intended audience is school children, though the site does not state what age this means. It seems like it is geared toward younger elementary school kids; the site was constructed to supplement traveling presentations by its curator to Vermont schools to tell children about the fossil.

CSchley Blog 8 American Wine and Thomas Jefferson’s Dream

2008-10-26T19:48:00.000-07:00

Collection Principles. This online exhibition, “Doubtless as Good: Thomas Jefferson’s Dream for American Wines Fulfilled” is a production of the Smithsonian National Museum of American History that describes the development of the American wine industry from 1776 to 1976. The tale is told in four “chapters” linked from the exhibition’s home page. Each chapter opens to text and images focused on: Jefferson’s Dream 1776; Growing Gains, Growing Pains; The Paris Tasting, 1976; and American Viniculture & Viticulture. There are also links to “Bibliography & Credits” that provide list of books containing more information (but no links!) on viniculture, historical works and other related cultural works, and “Links to Related Sites” for more information on wine, Prohibition, Thomas Jefferrson, etc. However, none of the books are more recent than 1995, and many of the links in the Related Sites are no good, broken or out of date. Although all the information on the exhibtion’s site is related to the growth and development of the American wine industry, the information is dated and focused primarily on the California development.

Object Characteristics. The text on the various web pages for each “chapter” is in Times New Roman bold with images in thumbnail jpegs that are click to expand and accompanied with a sentence describing the image. Most images are in black and white, although the California and the few Virginia wine labels under American Viniculture & Viticulture are in dull colors. There is very little metadata for the images, and no metadata as to the origin, ownership or rights with respect to the content of the image. For example, the image for Washington’s Coaster includes only the statement, “This engraved, openwork plated silver and wood coaster was used to hold wine bottles at George Washington's Mount Vernon estate. It probably was made in Sheffield, England, about 1765.”

Metadata. As noted above, there is very little metadata for the jpeg images. And very little for the text descriptions for each “chapter.” However, the dated bibliography appears to have a solid listing of wine and related texts, but they have no links. The “Credits” information on the Bibliography page lists the curator, the project manager and others as well as the Web designer for the online exhibition; there is no contact information, however. There is no statement of the date of the exhibition (although is looks to be around 1996), nor any information about rights or usage, other than the copyright symbol on the bottom of each page next to the name National Museum of American History. The pages do contain an email sign up section at the bottom of each page for a “customizable monthly newsletter to keep you informed about activities that interest you.”

Intended Audience. This is not for the serious wine lover who has an interest in the U.S. wine industry. Nor is it for the student or scholar. The information is too dated and there is too little of what there is on the few pages of this online exhibition. Perhaps this would be of interest as an initial resource for a high school student’s short paper on how wine has developed in the US since Jefferson’s time. But he or she would have to do much more research for current articles.

Yunmeng Du Blog 4:Asian Ethnographic Collection

2008-10-26T13:57:00.000-07:00

I found Asian Ethnographic Collectionthrough the National Science Digital Library. This collection is part of the online collections supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, New York State Council on the Arts, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, which encompass digital images of artifacts, documents, and photographs.

Collection Principles

Asian Ethnographic Collection contains 44,598 objects with images and 49,624 images in total. From 1897 through 1902, Berthold Laufer, Waldemar Jochelson, and Waldemar Bogoras launched a collection of more than 15,000 objects from Siberia and China. In recent years, a host of objects from Vietnam have been added to this collection resulting from curator Laurel Kendall’s fieldwork in the ethnic groups of that country.

Metadata

Metadata has been assigned to every object such as catalog number, culture, country, material, dimensions and a short description of the object as the object name. The search function for this collection is very powerful. On the left hand of the homepage, users can do a free-text search within each field of metadata. Such fields include object name, material, locale, catalog number, accession number and donor name. There are more limiters like country and culture under the search box. You have six options to sort the results. On the center of the page is the image in gallery view with another search box at the bottom of the page, which allows users to refine the search. Each search box is followed by either brief search tips or a link to help.

Object Characteristics

16 images are displayed on each page in gallery view. They are grouped by different catalog number, the default index setting. The original setting for presenting images is gallery style, which means users can only see thumbnails and names once they conduct a search. But there is an “information view” link at the bottom of the page in order to let users view more descriptions of each image. A “print page” button also placed along with the information view so you can easily print out something from this page. When you click through each object, you can always go back to the original catalog page by clicking on the link above each image. This is another display option to let you view objects with nearby catalog numbers. No button or link can you use to go back to your previous page. However, since each image page is opened automatically in a separate window or tab, you will always have the homepage opened in a window or a tab. There is no zoom in/out function for this collection.

Intended Audience

This collection is launched by the Division of Anthropology at American Museum of Natural History. According to its mission statement, this collection can provide a window into the lives of the people who produced them, and they are resources answering those questions about the human experience. I would say this collection can be attractive to students or faculty who are doing research on anthropology, or to those who feel interested in human lives in a particular area.

Katie R - Blog 7 - Seeing is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration

2008-10-26T12:47:00.000-07:00

This online exhibit, Seeing is Believing: 700 Years of Scientific and Medical Illustration, compliments a physical exhibition of the same name at the NYPL in 1999-2000. This website is apparently from 2001, although looks much nicer than some newer online collections. The exhibition is meant to highlight the scientific prints in NYPL's collection. Since printing processes enabled medical and scientific information to be distributed, these illustrations are important in the spread of knowledge.

Collection Principles:
My first reaction to this exhibit was that it was comprehensive with interesting illustrations, and that it placed a heavy emphasis on printing processes. Since I love printmaking, I was very excited to see this explication. And then I realized that basically was the exhibit. I was expecting the exhibit to focus more on a cultural aspect, such as how the advances in printing led to the spread of medical knowledge, etc. Not so much. However, the succinct descriptions of printing processes and a small bit of its history did warm my heart. I think the physical show included more items from the NYPL's collection than the online exhibit (I should hope so, anyway). The exhibit was curated by two rare book and manuscript librarians, who I'm assuming knew the collection very well an chose the best examples of relief, intaglio, lithographic, and photographic illustrations.

Object Characteristics:
The images are jpegs. If you access the images through their respective process using the top menu bar, you can just enlarge the item into a new window. If you access the images through the Illustrative Processes page, then the site gives the option of clicking on an area of the image and seeing a close-up of that section, called Detail Studies. When clicking around to different pages, many phrases are links, but I found they all just lead you in circles or down an avenue from which it is difficult to return. Not very handy. Nice features include Links and Suggested Readings. I have no idea if this site uses a particular data management system.

Metadata:
The information with each image is basic but complete, including the artist, title, year, print process, what collection it's from within the NYPL, and the digitial size (not physcial, interestingly) of the image. I don't think there is any exceptional 'behind the scenes' data, since there are no search options. There is a link to "more information about this image" with all images, which brings up a short paragraph about the artist, scientist, or work of art. This seems like it is from the placards from the physical exhibit. The link to the rights of reproduction is prominant on any page with an image.

Intended Audience:
This online exhibit might attract those interested in science, but it should ultimately be geared toward printmakers or those interested in rare books and prints. The scientific/medical aspect of the exhibit is so basic and historically limiting that it would probably not be of interest to an historian. The digital exhibit could be a platform for the library to highlight its rare collections, there for the public and researchers to see and browse without too much effort.

Sarah Weinblatt Blog 7: Contagion: Historical Views and of Diseases and Epidemics

2008-10-25T20:09:00.000-07:00

I wanted to examine this digitization project, Contagion: Historical Views and of Diseases and Epidemics, because it uses OpenCollection. We are using this OpenSource software at the HRC to catalog our movies posters. This project is based at Harvard University, and the Harvard University Library is involved in this project along with a team of others. The items found in this digital library are a part of the collections of the Harvard Library system.

Collection Principles

The website states,"Harvard’s new “open collection” contributes to the understanding of the global, social–history, and public–policy implications of diseases and offers important historical perspectives on the science and the public policy of epidemiology today."

You can search a broad overview of the site by using the links on the left side. These links provide information on 9 different epidemics. One can also search and browse through the collections in the catalog records or through full text. The browse options provides a list of genres and topics from which you can search. There is also the option of searching using a Google toolbar.

Once you click on a disease link you are brought to a page with text about this epidemic. There is also a list of selected additional resources.

There is also a timeline that provides links to the materials found on this site.

Metadata

According to the site, in most instances, you can access the digitized materials through a hyperlink in the items's catalog record.

When you click on the browse by genre link, you are given the metadata about the various objects found on the site such as title, creator, date and a link to the object. You are also given the option to display a full record. This provides information regarding the location of the object, the subjects, categories, forms/genres, publishers, language in which it is published, and a description of the item.

Object Characteristics

The items that can be found in this digital library include: books, manuscripts, maps, broadsides, and images. The images in this collection can be enlarged by clicking on them. This takes you to a separate record where the images can be enlarged or decreased. For example, when I clicked on an image in teh cholera epidemic, I was taken to a digitized book from which this image was pulled. The text in these digitized resources is able to be searched.

Intended Audience

I really like this digital library because not only do they tell you about the contributors to the project, but there is also a help page that tells you how to search the collection. The intended audience of this digital library includes people interested in the history of diseases such as my fiancee who is in medical school. When I told him about this site, he said that sounded right up his alley.

Geoff Willard Blog #8: The Freesound Project

2008-10-25T19:11:00.000-07:00

The Freesound Project, a project of the Music Technology Group of Pompeu Fabra University, is an extremely cool database of Creative Commons licensed audio samples. The site's strengths lie in its extensive searching & browsing and object metadata. Kudos to them for explicitly stating, "Samples are useless without good descriptions and tags."

Collection Principles

Any and all samples are welcomed into Freesound's repository, as long as they're a) released under the Creative Commons Sampling Plus License, and b) not copyrighted. The CC license they've chosen allows users to download the samples, remix them, and use them in noncommercial distributed works with attribution (assuming it's not advertising). Each sample displays download metrics, a permalink, and allows for commenting, rating and tagging. Freesound allows browsing through a conventional keyword search, a tag cloud, by user name, geographic location (samples are geotagged), and a clever Remix! tree. Their "similarity searches" are based on the sound's semantic information. Neat.

Object Characteristics

When you download a sample, it's unique ID is appended to the file name. As best as I can tell, all samples are either in FLAC (lossless), AIFF/WAV (uncompressed lossless), or MP3/OGG (compressed). Freesound is the first digital repository that I've seen use a waveform display to depict frequency information through color - colors towards blue are low in frequency and colors toward red are high in frequency. Recording methodology is left up to the submitter; some provide it and some don't. Freesound encourages thorough documentation ("your descriptions need to be as precise as possible"), so the structural and descriptive metadata on each sample more often that not looks like this.

Metadata

I'm in love with this metadata. Seriously, it's fantastic. Sample pages list the audio format, frequency, bit rate, channels (mono or stereo), duration, file size, CC license, and user supplied tags and description. There's even a forum post dedicated to describing a sample based on four levels: macro (broad description), meso (description broken up into smaller events), micro (the sample's spectromorphology), and technical (what technology was used to create the sample).

Intended Audience

Anyone in the market for sound effects for any media application - film, music, radio, Web, etc. - should find this site useful. Creative Commons advocates will probably be drawn in because Freesound trumps CC's horn to no end.

Jessi Fishman Blog 8: NYPL Digital Gallery: American Popular Song Sheet Covers, 1890-1922

2008-10-25T09:11:00.000-07:00

I found this online exhibition, American Popular Song Sheet Covers, 1890-1922 simply by going to the New York Public Library website and browsing through their online digital collections. I really liked the idea behind this collection because it showed a super early example of amazing organization and metadata skills: "Totaling more than 400,000 titles, the collection came to the Library in 1966 from the estate of George Goodwin (1900-1966), a radio station director who developed the Tune-Dex, a comprehensive 25,000 card catalog index of popular songs... The information on the cards was nearly exhaustive, documenting composer, publisher, licensing and copyright information as well as the song's words, music and chords, all on two sides of 3x5 inch index card!"

Collection Principles
According to the "background" section of this online exhibition, "Before the Music Division acquired the Goodwin collection, it regarded the collecting of popular sheet music as a secondary endeavor, but the Goodwin acquisition immediately made NYPL a major source for popular songs and remains so today. Wide in scope, the up-to-date collection encompasses early musicals, ethnic songs, presidential ballads, war songs, parlor songs, and even popular lead sheets. The collection's immense depth allows researchers to view a wide array of social, political, and historical moments in time in a way that only a contemporary piece of sheet music can provide." The NYPL does a good job with their unique and interesting collections, always making sure there is a cohesive bond and good principles behind the online collections. This is no exception. The NYPL website makes it extremely easy for the user to find out any information they might need about a specific exhibition or about the library, copyright/usage rules, and access in general. This collection is easy to find, and easy to use, and documents the wide scope and breadth of the many NYPL collections.

Object Characteristics
This particular collection doesn't have too many options for browsing and searching, as it is of a somewhat limited scope, but it is easy to maneuever and find interesting items nonetheless. You can either browse, which simply brings up a list of links to the song sheet covers separated by they year they were created, or enter a search term, or "display all images". Also, when you find one you like and click on it there is a "related items" link which makes it easy to find other song sheet covers created in that year so you can follow the history of the creator and of the collection.
From each object's characteristics description, the user can determine the object's origins and structure, see where it can be found physically, understand the NYPL's naming scheme, view associated metadata, and know that the item is trustworthy because the NYPL has high standards and is known for its reliability and quality of information.

Metadata
The only real problem I have with the object's individual pages of metadata and description is that they don't open in a new window or tab. I always prefer for individual items to open in a new tab so I don't get lost or have to always press the back button on my browser. However, other than that little nitpicky issue, the metadata for these objects is of course up to par with NYPL...there are "captions" and "alternate captions", links with breadcrumbs telling you how you got there and how to get out, published date, where it can be found in the library, and information about the digitization of the item including dates and id numbers.

One problem I had with this collection is that if you think of a search you want to perform while you are in the middle of browsing, you have to get all the way back to the front page of the collection to just search the collection...if you use the search box at the top of the page, it will search all of NYPL's digital collections, which can get frustrating. Also, I was hoping that in the metadata sections, it would tell you which genre of music the particular object came from, as I think that would faciliate searching...instead you can only search for words in the title, which is not that useful when it comes to finding information about music.

Intended Audience
This collection goes along with most of the NYPL online collections, that it is good for researchers, with quality information, multiple points of access, and links to other online and print resources that could be helpful to scholarly research. For this reason, the main intended audience for this collection would probably be scholars of George Goodwin and early music categorizing and organizing. People studying music paraphernalia and ephemera would also find this site useful, as would anyone interested in the history of music and music organization.

Tami Blog #7: Documenting the American South: First-Person Narratives Collection

2008-10-24T12:33:00.000-07:00

First-Person Narratives Collection

Documenting the American South (DocSouth) is a digital publishing initiative that provides Internet access to texts, images, and audio files related to southern history, literature, and culture. Currently DocSouth includes 12 thematic collections of books, diaries, posters, artifacts, letters, oral history interviews, and songs.

Collection Principles

One of those collections, “First-Person Narratives of the American South," is a compilation of diaries, autobiographies, memoirs, travel accounts, and ex-slave narratives written by Southerners. The majority of materials in this collection are written by those Southerners whose voices were less prominent in their time, including African Americans, women, enlisted men, laborers, and Native Americans. "First-Person Narratives of the American South, 1860-1920" was a 1996/97 Award Winner in The Library of Congress/Ameritech National Digital Library Competition. This award funded the digitization of 101 texts.

Object Characteristics and Metadata

Each narrative contains a clickable table of contents, including the jpeg illustrations from the narrative and a list of subjects in which this narrative belongs. Most of the narratives contain illustrations of the book, spine, frontispiece, title page, and a list of illustrations contained in the narrative. Clicking on the List of Illustrations takes you to a table of content -styled listing of the illustration titles and page numbers. Click on the page number and you are taken to the illustration, which includes the name of the illustration, the page on which it can be found, and a list of additional subjects (metadata) that apply to this illustration. In addition, at the top of every page of the narrative is the title of the narrative, name of illustrator, author, publisher, and publishing year. You also have the option of clicking to the previous or next illustration in that narrative. The jpegs cannot be zoomed but are of good size and can be easily read. The transcribed text of the narrative can be viewed as either an HTML file or an XML/TEI source file. The only disappointment I had with this collection was the inability to search in each individual collection. You only had the option to search through all 12 at one time.

Intended Audience

While appropriate for all, these collections are particularly useful in a classroom environment. The site offers a variety of classroom resources, including a teacher’s toolkit, lesson plans, and guides to other sources. I spent quite a while reading the narratives in this collection and found it fascinating and engrossing. I believe these collections would also be useful to scholars of the South, slavery, and the suffragette movement. It was an interesting and controversial time and I feel that these collections do a good job of representing that era by letting you experience it through the words of the participants.

Yunmeng Du Blog 3: Science and the Artist's Book

2008-10-22T21:12:00.000-07:00

Collection Principles

I found this exhibition from Mosaic of Science Galaxy in Smithsonian Institution Libraries. Science and the Artist's Book is an exhibition presented by the Smithsonian Institution Libraries and the Washington Project for the Arts. This exhibition aims at exploring links between scientific and artistic creativity through the book format. The two host institutions invited a group of nationally recognized book artists to create new works of art based on classic volumes from the Heralds of Science collection of the Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology, which serves as part of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries’ Special Collections.

Metadata

I don’t see any significant metadata in this collection. This collection doesn’t have any search function, as far as I see. All images are sorted by different scientific subject such as Aeronautics, Architecture, Biology, Physics, Medicine, etc. Each image is an illustration from a specific book, which presented under the respective image with the author, title, publication title, location, date and the description of the book. Since there is no search function in this exhibition, any information can only be browsed by users, which means you can only click through each image in order to access them.

Object Characteristics

The resulting artist's books in this collection, each inspired by the subject, theories or illustrations of the landmark works of science with which they are paired, offer a number of witty and imaginative insights into the creative side of scientific research. For example, under Architecture subject, there is one page with one image from a scientific book and the other one from the artist’s book. Full-size JEPGs and GIFs for each image are available and downloadable. However, the image on this page itself cannot be zoomed in or out. There are only two buttons at the bottom of the page—return to the previous section and return to the start of the exhibition. Otherwise, there is no way to navigate from this page to other pages of the collection. This is not a good example of providing online exhibitions to the public. The possible reason may be this is a small exhibition based on very limited collections.

Intended Audience

The intended audience is kind of vague for this exhibition. Since it contains illustrations from both scientific books and respective artist’s books, I assume that the intended audience is people from public who are interested in the illustrations of scientific books, or the professional artists illustrating scientific books.

Hannah Norton Blog 5: Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Animal Behavior Archive

2008-10-22T15:53:00.000-07:00

The Cornell Lab of Ornithology houses the world’s largest collection of audio and video recordings of animal behavior. Although not all of their recordings are available online, they are continuously digitizing new material with the ultimate goal of making these recordings available for education, conservation, and research around the world. Along with the recordings themselves, their website contains information about how to make animal behavior recordings, possible uses of the recordings, the history of the archive and potential future directions, and archival methods.

Collection Principles
The online portion of this collection contains streaming audio and video recordings of birds and other animals in nature. Recordings are contributed by staff but also, in large part, by hundreds of amateur and professional “recordists” from around the world. The archive aims to collect the most comprehensive collection of animal behavior recordings possible. Although recordings from contributors are, to some extent, serendipitous in nature, the lab also actively seeks to complete their collection by taking annual “Big Expedition” trips to different regions and by posting a list of “Most Wanted Species.” They also see a value in obtaining numerous recordings for the same species, as this can help highlight different behaviors practiced at different times as well as geographic variation within species. Presumably the lab does have some limitations on the number of duplicates and type of submissions it will accept, but I was unable to find an explicit description of this policy.

Object Characteristics
The archive is an effort of the Cornell Lab of Ornithology; therefore their main strength is in recordings of bird behavior. However, they also have hundreds of recordings of mammals, reptiles, amphibians, and insects. Recordings available for streaming are mp3s and QuickTime movie files. The search function brings up records both for digitized recordings and those that have not yet been digitized. Although none of the recordings are immediately available for download, you can order recordings from the Cornell Lab of Ornithology for a fee (as a non-profit, this is simply a processing fee, and is discounted for educational purposes); this applies to all recordings regardless of whether or not they have already been digitized.

Metadata
The metadata provided is more robust for certain recordings than others, but overall is sufficient. Search results include the catalog number, common name of animal subject, scientific name of animal subject, location of recording, recordist’s name, date of recording, length, and quality rating for each recording. Further metadata is provided through a link to the catalog number, including confidence rating (confidence that the recording is a representation of the animal it purports to be), further information about the geographic location (such as elevation, latitude, longitude), what kinds of sounds can be heard (eg. clicks, whistles), person who identified the species, and date of species identification. Records also contain an icon indicating that more information is available and accompanied by the following blurb: “Over time, new fields will become public as we check our records for quality. Please contact us if you would like to view the full data.” Users are able to search by many of these parameters under the advanced search option. One problem I experienced in using the basic search function was that in some cases I searched by common name and found no results, even though a search for the same species by scientific name did bring up results (and these results included the common name!). When this happened, I did receive a tip to use scientific names.

Intended Audience
The intended audience for this website is very broad encompassing educators, researchers, environmentalists, commercial businesses, and members of the general public. The page “How to Use the Archive” details what potential uses fit under each of these categories and provide links to some case studies that other organizations have done with these recordings. The site also contains a list of scientific publications that resulted from work making use of these recordings.

This is a really interesting site! The fact that the lab receives many of its recordings from individuals not on staff means that the website is very inclusive, with lots of helpful information about how to make recordings and what you might do with recordings. Another interesting feature that I didn’t mention was their “RavenViewer” application. This is a free plug-in for QuickTime that allows you to see the spectrograms and waveform patterns of the sounds as they are played. (Having recently gone to a talk in the biology department about bird songs, I know this is one of the ways that researchers analyze these sounds.) In all of the places that I saw problems (search snafus, places where more metadata would be appropriate), there were messages indicating that these problems were in the process of being solved. The Cornell Lab of Ornithology has funding lots of major sources for this archive, and they seems genuinely committed to expanding and improving it.

Kempleel blog 7: Acadian Heartland

2008-10-22T12:52:00.000-07:00

Acadian Heartland: Records of the Deportation and Le Grand Derangment, 1714-1768 is a project by the Nova Scotia archives to digitize a number of their records with regards to the political situation and eventual expulsion of the Acadian French from Canada after Britain took over the region in the early 18th century. This subject is surprisingly obscure in the modern United States history curriculum, though doubtless given far more attention in Canada.

Collection Principles: "this Website presents documentation which began as primary records, written down at the time and preserved in the years afterwards; these documents provide a factual account of events leading up to the Expulsion, first-hand descriptions of the Expulsion itself, and additional relevant documents from the aftermath years." They also claim to have the largest digital collection of archival sources for this subject/period.

Object Characteristics: For the largest digital collection, they only have five digital books, all of which were published more than a century after the period (although the first few books are reprints of much older records). They were all scanned with corrected OCR, and are full-text searchable. No images of the original pages are viewable, just the text. There is also a collection of images relating to the period, including portraits of major players and a lot of romantic engravings used to illustrate the poem "Evangeline." The text is presented in pages, a similar format to JSTOR, and the images can be enlarged from a thumbnail, but do not otherwise have a particularly stellar resolution. There is even a map, of old Acadie, but you have to download viewpoint mediaplayer to view it.

Metadata: Presumably, all the materials are held by either the Nova Scotia archives, the progenitors of this project, or their allies the Nova Scotia’s Office of Acadian Affairs and the Royal Nova Scotia Historical Society. The books are sited as sources, but are not cataloged for where they may be found in a collection. Image metadata is more inclusive but still fairly sparse, detailing the artist/progenitor, the date, the medium, and the collection they are housed in.

Intended Audience: The website mentions the archives desire to bring these somewhat obscure documents to a wider audience. I'm sure that given the popularity of genealogy projects, there are probably many Acadians in North America who might wish to utilize this, as well as students of early North American history. The website lists many, many links to other web sources of information about the period.

Lauren Blog 7 - Center for Civil War Photography Stereo Cards

2008-10-22T10:39:00.000-07:00

The Center for Civil War Photography is a non-profit organization that creates physical and digital exhibits using images from individual private collections and the public domain.

I set out to write this blog about the Center's Digital Archive Project, which, as described on the website, sets out to digitally secure, preserve, organize, create a database of, and make available online every image pertaining to the American Civil War. The archive will include all formats of photography as well as select sketches, drawings, woodcuts and engravings. You'll notice I say "will" because, as I was disappointed to learn, this project has not been completed. It's start and expected completion dates are unclear. So I've decided to consider the 3D Photographs Exhibit, one of two online exhibits, get a handle on how the archives database might improve over their current online materials.

Collection Principles
This exhibit is a selection of Civil War stereo views from the collection of Bob Zeller. Its purpose seems simply to let people know that such images exist and to let them look at civil war images in a new way. No overview is given of the history of stereo images or how they were traditionally viewed.

Object Characteristics
Many of the stereo images here were featured in a book called The Civil War In Depth. Owners of this book are instructed to use its viewer to look at the images in 3D. But I'm guessing that quite a lot of people do not own this book and thus just see two very similar photographs side-by-side. The exhibit consists of 22 thumbnails of stereo cards with short description. Clicking one of these takes you to two medium-sized images (500 x 249 pixels) of low resolution, one of the front of the stereocard and one of the back.

Metadata
For each image, there is a paragraph of historical narrative. No further information is given about the physical artifact. No metadata is given about the digital images.

Intended Audience
Largely, the websites seems aimed at increasing awareness about the vast visual resources that exist from the civil war era. The homepage points out that "new photographic finds from our nation's greatest conflict are still being made on a regular basis. Nearly every Civil War soldier had his photograph taken by one of the more than 5,000 American photographers active at the time, and a select group of documentary photographers took thousands of images on the battlefields and in the army camps, often in 3D." The intent here seems to be to show people what images are available to them and to increase preservation of these images.

Based on the limited resources currently available from CCWP, I really hope they follow through on the goals for their digitization project, which includes metadata creation, high resolution files, a searchable database and an online reference library. These images really are amazing, but they deserve to be high resolution and easily accessible. However, since the CCWP will be pulling these images from various private and public collections, some probably already in digital form, it seems unlikely that they will be able to set image standards.