karyn j blog 4; Newton Owen Postcard Collection

Newton Owen Postcard Collection

This is a collection of numerous postcards collected by an extended family from Kentucky: the Baynes, Foells, and Owens. The 781 cards in the collection include travel postcards and greeting cards, mostly holiday cards. It displays their travels throughout the United States and Europe. The earliest card dates from the late 19^th century and the most recent card dates from 1980.

Collection Principles

The collection was donated to the University of Louisville Archives and Records Center in 2006 and was processed by the collector’s son (it does not say who specifically donated it). While there are 579 cards in the digital collection, there are 781 cards total in the physical collection. The card in the digital collection were selected based on copyright status. The cards are dated from the late 1800s to 1980. The collection is open to anyone for research purposes and copyright advice was sought in the development of this digital collection.

Object Characteristics

Each image shows up as a thumbnail with a title, subject, and description in alphabetical order according to the title. The images were scanned as TIFFs and were converted to JPEGs. You can click on either the thumbnail image or the title and it will take you to an enlarged image. There is no zoom capability.

There is an option on the introduction page that allows you to “view map of Louisville postcard locations.” This gives you a list of the 12 postcards that show locations around Louisville. When you click on any of these postcards, you are taken to the same enlarged image as mentioned above. It also gives you the option to “view larger map” which takes you to a Google Map of Louisville with the 12 pinpointed locations.

Metadata

Most of the metadata was found on the postcards and through additional research using secondary sources. Titles not found on the cards are enclosed in square brackets. All metadata complies with the University of Louisville Digital Initiatives data dictionary. Each image has these descriptors: title, description, subject, location depicted, date original, object type, source, collection, collection website, digital publisher, format, ordering information, and image number.

Intended Audience

There is no information given about who this collection is specifically targeted to, but I would say the intended audience for this collection is anyone who may be curious or interested in postcards and greeting cards from around Europe and the United States. Anyone who wants to see landmarks, beautiful sights, or greeting cards from different places would also be interested.

This collection was well organized and I like the way it set up. It gives you all the information you need to know, from who did the scans, when, and using what format, to the person who provided copyright advice. It also provides the format for citing any of the images in the collection. Pretty much any information you may need or want to know about this collection can be found in the acknowledgements on the about the collection page.