Jesse Saunders #3: Somewhere a Voice is Calling

Somewhere a Voice is Calling: American Irish Interpreters, 1850-1975.

This exhibit was curated and posted by the O'Neill Library, one of the libraries at Boston College. The O'Neill Library is focused on primarily on collections related to Government Documents and Media materials. The library hosts a permanent exhibit honoring Thomas P. (Tip) O'Neill Jr., former MA Speaker of the House and BC Alum, as well as temporary exhibits based on materials in the library's collection. The "Somewhere a Voice is Calling: American Irish Musical Interpreters, 1850-1975" exhibit was on display from July-October, 2007. This web exhibit served as an "Online Supplement" to the physical exhibit, of which no other information exists on the library website.

Selection Decisions:
There is no clear information given regarding how selection decisions were made as to what information and materials were included in the online exhibition. Surely the online exhibit was built to work within the context of the physical exhibit in the library, yet with no other information or media (images/video) of what was included, we cannot know how the two worked together and what was pulled from or added to in order to build the online exhibit.


Metadata:
On the pages which contain the photographs and audio clips, there is no metadata given, other than names and song titles. However, on the final "Credits" page, a list of image/photo information, which includes details about those included in the images, when/where they were taken, and who holds the original physical photographs. There are no details given about when/how the scans were done. This page also contains a link to a .pdf document which gives the standard bibliographic citation information for the exhibits audio clips. As with the images, there is no information about when or how the digital transfers were done, yet in the case of the audio there is not even any information on whose copies of the recordings were used for the audio transfers.

Object Characteristics:
Image files are primarily locally hosted .jpg files, with the exception of The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem album cover, which is linked to on wikimedia, at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:ClancyBrothersFirstHurrah.jpg. Other than that of The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem images are quite small, and there are no options to either view or download larger versions. The audio clips are presented in Real Audio format, requiring users to have the Real Player software installed on their computers, and not allowing users to download the clips.

Intended Audience:
As this is listed as an "Online Supplement" to the physical exhibit, the intended audience is clearly people who either already had, or were planning to visit the exhibit. Given the lack of context or further information given about the materials in the physical exhibit, the O'Neill Library has made it difficult for the online exhibit to stand on it's own and provide a full, enriching experience. While it contains some good information, it leaves someone new to the exhibit to go and look for something more on the topic.