John G. Blog #3 Just Outside Austin: Rural Travis County Communities

I found Just Outside Austin: Rural Travis County Communities on the Smithsonian Institution Library: "Library and Archival Exhibitions on the Web" website. I thought it was interesting to find a local online collection exhibit through the Smithsonian.

Collection Principles
This collection of historic photographs and information about the rural communities of Travis County is sponsored by the City of Austin's "Austin Treasures: Online Exhibits from the Austin History Center". The site provides an "About Us" link that gives general information about the Austin History Center and the collections that it houses. The "Our Collections" link gives the reader generalized information about the collections and implies that since the collections are so extensive, consisting of "more than one million items", it is impossible to provide extensive information about each artifact. Instead it provides information on how the collections are organized and provides several links regarding the metadata standards and collection development policies of the Austin History Center.

Object Characteristics

This collection only contains digitized photographs of the history of Travis County. Although the Austin History Center is also the repository for maps, directories, and other historical information, only photographs are posted in this online exhibition. Viewers can click a link under each photograph for an enlarged image, but aside from an ID number from Picasa Web Albums, no other bibliographic information is available. The exhibit also contains informational narratives that puts the photographs in context, but from the perspective of someone who is not familiar with Travis County, Texas, maps would have been very helpful to see the plotted locations of these historical sites.

Metadata

Each photograph has a brief summary or synopsis but aside from an identification number, mostly a MARC record number, does not have any other bibliographic information associated with it. For example, the photograph to the left contained a brief synopsis describing it as a "photograph from 1937 of the Montopolis old courthouse...the first courthouse in Travis county" but only had "PICA04663" and "Enlarge Image" under the photograph for bibliographic information. I was disappointed to see that the Austin History Center did not provide sufficient metadata to locate the physical photograph in case a historian or researcher was looking for it.

Intended Audience

This collection and online exhibit is intended for historians, interested citizens and researchers. It is also a good tool for the Austin History Center to showcase some of the items in its collection. After visiting the Austin History Center for my project, I think it is wise for the center to post and publish its collection on the web to let the greater public know what types of information are being chronicled. I thought that one of the site's weaknesses is that it provides information from the point-of-view of a local resident of the surrounding areas. I thought that more information could have been provided for the benefit of visitors who had no prior knowledge of Travis County.