Collection Principles
This collection of personal letters, a diary, and photographs are from the Civil War era. They were contributed by the Boone County Historical Society. It is a part of the Missouri Digital Heritage Initiative, proposed by Secretary of State Robin Carnahan in 2007, to increase the amount of information about the state’s past found online. The Missouri State Archives, the Missouri State Library, and the State Historical Society of Missouri have all been a part of this initiative to present and make more accessible important information about Missouri and its past.
This collection is accessible to anyone anywhere. However, there must be permission to distribute any of these items in print form or electronically.
Object Characteristics
The 11 items in this collection are scans of the original objects. These scans allow the user to see every tear, fold, or stain that is visible on the original. The images are shown as thumbnails and have a title and description of the item. When you click on the thumbnail, it takes you to the object and from there you may zoom in, zoom out, pan right, pan left, fit the image to the window, fit the image to the width, or show the image at maximum resolution.
For each of the handwritten items, there is an option under view called “page & text.” This option allows you to see a transcript displayed next to the handwritten item. In some cases, this is very helpful because some of the letters or diary entries are difficult to read.
Metadata
Each item has these descriptors: title, author, description, subject, coverage, source, language, date.original, type, access file format, master file format, relation, publisher.digital, editorial note, availability, contributing institution, copy request. This information is not readily available. It can be found in the view drop down menu under “document description.”
Intended Audience
The intended audience for this collection is anyone who is interested in the past of Missouri as it relates to the Civil War. It is a small number of items with historical importance from a county historical society.
There is only one page for this collection and it has the images and descriptions. I do not like that there is no introduction to this particular collection. All we know is where the collection is physically held. It does not give any information as to how the collection was acquired by the Boone County Historical Society. I would also like to have more background information on the individual items. Overall, the collection was ok, but could have been put together in a different way with a little bit more information about it.
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