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Collection Principles
The vast majority of the collection arrived at the Indiana University Archives in October of 1972, four months after Charles' death. There are approximately 14,500 Kodachrome slides, and the collection is organized into four series: Photographs and Negatives, Slides, Correspondence and Papers, and Camera Equipment. Along with the photographic images themselves, IU provides access to notebooks and scrapbooks Cushman used to keep track of his adventures and his work, information about the equipment he used, and links to essays about his work, a detailed biography, a preview of the non-digitized early black and white photographs currently in the physical archive, and detailed information about copyright and usage regulations and how to order copies of his prints. IU really makes sure that the user can discover anything and everything about Cushman's life, work, and the collection overall.
Object Characteristics
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"The slides in the Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection were outsourced to Luna Imaging, Inc., in Culver City, California for digitization. We purchased from Luna one master TIFF file and three sizes of JPEG derivatives (200, 600, and 1000 pixels on the long side) for each of the nearly 15,000 35mm slides in the collection." The Master File specifications were:
TIFF format, 2200 ppi resolution, 24-bit color, no compression, and done so that the color should match the original slide in its original condition. IU conducted vigorous quality control when they got their images back to make sure that all levels were appropriate and they were as true to the original as possible. The site also has a detailed "Technical Implementation" section, in which they convey that "the Charles W. Cushman Collection web site is hosted on IBM eServer pSeries server hardware running version 5.1 of the IBM AIX operating system. The web site was developed in Java, using Java Servlet technology, Java Server Pages, and the Struts Java web application framework.We are using the open source Tomcat application server and Apache HTTP Server software to deliver the web site."
I think the only complaint I have with the object characteristics in this collection is that there is no really good naming scheme...each photo has detailed metadata, and the search and browse capabilities are amazing, but I prefer, when I open one object, for the title of that object to show up in the tab, and clearly over the image...in this case, the title of each window and object you open still remains the same as the home page (Charles W. Cushman Photograph Collection) but just adds on where you are. To explain that a little better, when you open an object, the name of it appears to just be "Details". That doesn't help the user know exactly what they are looking at, and if they are doing research, they can easily get lost and that is never fun.
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According to yet another expertly provided section on the "Project Info" part of the site, "Cushman's notebook annotations and corresponding documentation on slide mounts have been exactly transcribed, even when abbreviations or misspellings are included. These descriptions are keyword searchable. Dates associated with the slides are also searchable. In addition, descriptive metadata for the subject content, geographic location, genre and physical characteristics of each image provides enhanced access to the collection. " Although we may not always know exactly what IU is talking about in the metadata section (the first two labels are always a "Cushman ID" and an "Archives ID"), the metadata provided for each object is thorough and extremely well done. Each image contains descriptive information both from the slide and from Cushman's notebook entry about the photo, multiple searchable subject headings, and information about the camera, roll and frame of film used to take the shot. There are multiple browse and search options to facilitate just roaming around or finding something specific, and with each search I tried I got applicable results.
Intended Audience
Considering the amount of effort that IU put into making this site both user-friendly and extremely well-documented, I would venture to say that the original purpose in creating the site was not only to provide access to a really cool collection (although that is a big part of it), but also to show how good a digital library or online exhibition can be, and make a name for their Digital Library initiative by showing the right way to do this. They provide access to their grant proposal and other papers and presentations on the collection, information about the history of the site and the IMLS grant they received, and immense "behind the scenes" information including technical data, workflow, and project personnel. For these reasons, I would say that the intended audience could include not only Cushman scholars and researchers, but the general public interested in groundbreaking photography and also people interested in (or doing actual scholarly or applied research on) digital libraries.
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