The B.W. Wells Collection at North Carolina State University was created in honor of Bertram Whittier Wells, faculty member in the Department of Botany and Plant Pathology from 1919-1954 and pioneer ecologist within the state. B.W. Wells worked to learn and teach about North Carolina’s native plant species and how they fit into their habitat, especially in the unique Big Savannah area. Big Savannah, despite Wells’s best efforts, was developed into an agricultural area in 1952, but a similar habitat was recently saved from a similar fate and named the B.W. Wells Savannah (thus renewing interest in his work). The collection was created through the collaborative efforts of the University Library and the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences.
Collection Principles
The digital collection consists of an exhibition describing Wells’s life and work, three oral histories by close colleagues, and an image collection containing photographs of plants of North Carolina. The exhibition provides a narrative account of his work and influence on the University, taking quotations of and by him from the B.W. Wells papers and select photographs from the broader collection to illustrate his story. The photographs form the bulk of the collection and include 494 taken by B.W. Wells himself during the course of his work as well as 1079 taken by Freda Wilkins in the past 5 years documenting the plant species present in the B.W. Wells Savannah. Although the project website doesn’t mention collection principles explicitly, presumably the image collection contains all of the photographs that Dr. Wells converted to lantern slides to accompany his lectures and all of the photographs taken by Freda Wilkins for the project. In addition, the project received input and advice from a number of subject specialists to ensure accuracy and appropriateness of content. The introduction to the exhibition does identify a broad goal of the collection: “to inspire each of you to see North Carolina as Wells did- as a beautiful and majestic natural garden.”
Object Characteristics
In the image collection, photographs taken by Freda Wilkins are almost entirely 3504 x 2336 pixel JP2 images. Those taken by B.W. Wells are also JP2 images, of variable size. They were digitized using an Epson Perfection 3200 PHOTO scanner from lantern slides, many of which were hand-tinted. Zooming capacity is robust and easy to use. Versions of some of these images are duplicated in the exhibition, which also contains photographs of Wells, aerial photographs, and maps. Images in the exhibition are mostly about 240 x 200 pixel JPEGs with captions. The oral histories are 45-55 megabyte mp3 files.
Metadata
The image collection, seen on its own, provides excellent metadata. When an image is selected, there is option to see its “data,” which includes information identifying the image (title and filename), information about the plant which is the image’s subject (time of the year in which it blooms, common name and scientific name, both as they were known in Wells’s time and as they are known now), other bibliographic information (creator, date, publisher, subject headings, location, rights), information about the creation of the digital image (format, bitdepth, resolution, format creation hardware, dimensions), and information about the repository. Images can be searched by keyword or by any one of these fields, although several of these fields are given preference: filename, family, botanical name, common name, and creator.
Metadata for other parts of the collection, on the other hand, are not readily available. Images that accompany the narrative in the exhibition have identifying captions but no other information. Some of these images are smaller versions of those available in the image collection – the viewer could therefore search for the image separately in this collection to find metadata. For photographs that pertain to Wells’s broader life and work, however, this is not the case. The oral histories are presented with biographical information about the interviewee, but no other metadata – most striking to me was the lack of information about when this information was recorded.
Intended Audience
Given its broad goal of inspiring an appreciation of nature, this collection seems to be geared to the general public of North Carolina. The straight-forward narrative of the exhibition and the appealing photos of native plant species reinforce this goal. The collection would also be appropriate for those with a particular interest in the University’s history as well as those interested in the history of ecology. The bibliography and list of related library collections encourage further research on this topic.
Overall, I thought this was a well-done site. The image collection has excellent documentation, there are helpful resources for learning about scientific nomenclature for plants, and the exhibition is logically arranged and interesting. What could be improved on is the metadata available for objects outside of the image collection and the ability to link directly from images in the exhibition to their more complete counterparts in the image collection.
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