CSchley Blog 8 American Wine and Thomas Jefferson’s Dream

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However, none of the books are more recent than 1995, and many of the links in the Related Sites are no good, broken or out of date.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.