Emily V: Blog 1 - The British Library, Online Gallery Highlights Tour

The British Library, Online Gallery Highlights Tour

http://www.bl.uk/onlinegallery/highlights/highlights.html

For my first blog entry I chose to look at the British Library Online Gallery Highlights tour. I felt this would be a good starting point because of the notoriety of the institution and the caliber of the collection.

Collection Principles

The British Library has a clearly defined collection policy, to “represent the collective memory of the nation by retaining for posterity the intellectual output of British publishing.”

They have also outlines specific guidelines for their Web archive:

* put in place systems that enable the British Library to become the point of first resort for anyone who wants to access a comprehensive archive of material from the UK Web domain

* ensure that this archive will be accessible forever

* put in place people, processes and systems to enable the Library to fulfill its obligations with respect to legal deposit.

While they do address the selection process of the Online Gallery Highlights (or “Treasures”), noting that these artifacts exemplify the range of the collection, they do not go into the specific details of why these items were chosen to be emblematic of the collection.

Object Characteristics

The items displayed, both visual and audio, are of very high quality, though some can not be magnified which is frustrating. Despite this, many of the objects in this exhibition have the “Treasures in Full” option, which allows the user to explore the object in depth. This includes being able to flip through pages (or move through scrolls), and magnify sections- the quality of these digital copies is excellent.

Metadata

All items include copyright information, creator, object name, approximate dates, and call number. In addition to the metadata, each item is accompanied by an interesting explanation of the item’s importance and relevance.

Intended Audience

This collection assumes a very broad audience. Because it is an internationally known institution with a Web site that receives a high level of traffic from everyone from potential tourists to school children, to serious scholars. I believe that the purpose of this portion of the site is to introduce people to British Library and give them an impression of the contents of the collection.