Collection Principles
According to the "background" section of this online exhibition, "Before the Music Division acquired the Goodwin collection, it regarded the collecting of popular sheet music as a secondary endeavor, but the Goodwin acquisition immediately made NYPL a major source for popular songs and remains so today. Wide in scope, the up-to-date collection encompasses early musicals, ethnic songs, presidential ballads, war songs, parlor songs, and even popular lead sheets. The collection's immense depth allows researchers to view a wide array of social, political, and historical moments in time in a way that only a contemporary piece of sheet music can provide." The NYPL does a good job with their unique and interesting collections, always making sure there is a cohesive bond and good principles behind the online collections. This is no exception. The NYPL website makes it extremely easy for the user to find out any information they might need about a specific exhibition or about the library, copyright/usage rules, and access in general. This collection is easy to find, and easy to use, and documents the wide scope and breadth of the many NYPL collections.
Object Characteristics
This particular collection doesn't have too many options for browsing and searching, as it is of a somewhat limited scope, but it is easy to maneuever and find interesting items nonetheless. You can either browse, which simply brings up a list of links to the song sheet covers separated by they year they were created, or enter a search term, or "display all images". Also, when you find one you like and click on it there is a "related items" link which makes it easy to find other song sheet covers created in that year so you can follow the history of the creator and of the collection.
From each object's characteristics description, the user can determine the object's origins and structure, see where it can be found physically, understand the NYPL's naming scheme, view associated metadata, and know that the item is trustworthy because the NYPL has high standards and is known for its reliability and quality of information.Metadata
The only real problem I have with the object's individual pages of metadata and description is that they don't open in a new window or tab. I always prefer for individual items to open in a new tab so I don't get lost or have to always press the back button on my browser. However, other than that little nitpicky issue, the metadata for these objects is of course up to par with NYPL...there are "captions" and "alternate captions", links with breadcrumbs telling you how you got there and how to get out, published date, where it can be found in the library, and information about the digitization of the item including dates and id numbers.
One problem I had with this collection is that if you think of a search you want to perform while you are in the middle of browsing, you have to get all the way back to the front page of the collection to just search the collection...if you use the search box at the top of the page, it will search all of NYPL's digital collections, which can get frustrating. Also, I was hoping that in the metadata sections, it would tell you which genre of music the particular object came from, as I think that would faciliate searching...instead you can only search for words in the title, which is not that useful when it comes to finding information about music.
Intended Audience
This collection goes along with most of the NYPL online collections, that it is good for researchers, with quality information, multiple points of access, and links to other online and print resources that could be helpful to scholarly research. For this reason, the main intended audience for this collection would probably be scholars of George Goodwin and early music categorizing and organizing. People studying music paraphernalia and ephemera would also find this site useful, as would anyone interested in the history of music and music organization.
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