The Cushing/Whitney Medical Library at Yale University's School of Medicine has a number of online digital library collections and they are adding to them continually to expand access to the library's unique collections for scholarly research and life-cycle management of digital objects. The collections are powered by Greenstone digital library software. One of these collections, the Pathology Teaching Collection, contains over 600 digitized images of pre-photography medical drawings that were used to document and explain anatomy and medicine.
Although the collection includes illustrations done by a number of creators, the bulk of the drawings were done by Armin B. Hemberger (1896-1974) who worked at Yale for most of his career and created very scientifically accurate medical images in pen and ink, pencil, gouache, and watercolor.
Collection Principles
For this particular collection, the principles are clearly stated in an extensive "about" section. This section provides a detailed history of medical illustration as a profession in general, and limits the scope of the collection to images created at Yale, focusing on images that were a particularly important resource regarding unusual cases, providing doctors with a rare opportunity to view medical conditions that they would be unlikely to encounter on a regular basis. The library also provides the reasoning behind the digitization of the other collections, including historical artifacts relating to the library's namesakes and a collaboration to electronically publish the full text of Yale medical students' theses. The site gives clear directions on how to use all the search functions, and keeps a permanent background with links to all pertinent sites in the Medical Library realm.
Object Characteristics
Although the actual digitization technique is not stated anywhere completely conspicuously, the images are clear and easy to see, with two options for viewing (one with higher ppi). All the images open in a new tab, which I always approve of, but the title bars for them only have the identifier number, which is not very useful when examining a lot of pictures at a time. The objects are zoomable and they all have associated metadata. Although, as stated, it is not that clear how they did their digitization or how long the images will be accessible for, considering that this is Yale's med school, they probably have a good backing for the collections.
Metadata
The metadata for each object is adequate. The title given to each object is usually taken from the title that the artist gave the drawing in the first place, which helps ensure validity that the object is what it purports to be. However, the "other title" and identifier fields are unclear, and do not provide much assistance to researchers. There is also a rights holder field and a repository field, so the physical locations of the objects can be determined, and a "notes" section which usually involves the medium of the drawing (i.e. pen and paper, watercolor, etc). I would expect that a website from Yale using Greenstone digital library software would associate more metadata with each object, but I suppose the necessary fields are filled in.
Intended Audience
The Pathology Teaching Collection, according to the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library site, is still widely used as a teaching resource in Yale's medical school. The main intended audience, therefore, would be students and researchers at Yale, specifically those looking for detailed illustrations on various pathologies—some related to WWI and WWII chemical warfare. Other intended users would be scholarly researchers focusing on pre-photography medical teachings, detailed medical drawings, or the art of Armin B. Hemberger.
I would also see a wider audience for this type of collection, as the images themselves are vivid and extraordinarily done, and lend themselves in a slightly eerie way to the understanding of the human body, and the digitization is clearly well done as well. In this manner, any number of people might be interested in using this collection, including digitization specialists (or fans) or just people who like sort of creepy old timey drawings.
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