Lauren A. Blog 2: The Influenza Epidemic

This National Archives online exhibit pulls together fifteen photographs and documents on the American influenza epidemic of 1918 from its regional holdings.

Collection Principles

The materials consist of photographs, telegrams, medical documents and other items relating to the epidemic. They were drawn from nine of the National Archives regional archives. No further information on the selection of the materials is given. It is one of three online exhibitions on regional history put together by the National Archives and Records. The other exhibits are on the National Archives of the Southeast and the 1906 San Francisco Fire and Earthquake. What these three collections have in common and how they best exhibit the holdings of the regional archives is unclear.

Object Characteristics

The digital exhibit consists of a homepage with background information on the exhibit, which leads to a single page of document thumbnails. Aesthetically, the site is very well designed and is fairly easy to navigate. However, the document formats are inconsistent. When the user clicks on the thumbnail most images pop up in what I believe is a flash window. However, the multi-page documents are PDFs, which must be downloaded by clicking the thumbnail and opened using Adobe Reader. This inconvenience is wholly inconsistent with the meticulous and costly website design. However, the one benefit of the PDFs is that they can be zoomed into, while the flash items cannot.

Metadata

Beside the thumbnail of each item, the location of its home archive is given as well as the individual record number or record group number. There is also a link to information on how to order copies of a National Archives document so a viewer could go track down the original artifact. Additionally, the educational information beside each item gives the date and location where the item was taken or written, as well as information on its subject and its historical context.

Intended Audience

The home page of the exhibit states that “the influenza epidemic of 1918 has been overlooked in the teaching of American history.” If the point of the exhibit is to educate the public about this period in our history, it does a good job, largely through the exhibit’s accompanying text. However, most public institutions also carry the ulterior motive of self promotion. If this exhibit was intended to act as a teaser, interesting the public in the regional archives’ historic holdings it is certainly a failure. The few documents serve merely as illustrations of the text rather than enticing the audience with the knowledge present in the primary-documents themselves. Additionally, the link that explains how to contact regional archives and order copies over the phone only serves as further evidence that dealing with the archives will be a purely non-digital, 20^th century hassle.

With its online exhibit on the Influenze Epidemic, the National Archives ignores the opportunity to create a collection larger than the sum of its regional parts and instead wastes its money designing a website that does next to nothing to increase the accessibility or longevity of its collection.