Kempleel blog 6: Early Las Vegas

Early Las Vegas: A Digital Collection is an online exhibit of a special collection at the University of Nevada Libraries. The collection covers the early days of the city as a railroad company town through the construction of the Hoover Dam and the beginning of Las Vegas' meteoric mid-century rise as the worlds biggest extravaganza.
Collection Principles: Objects are all part of the University of Nevada Las Vegas special collections, and represent primary source materials. there is no explanation or introduction to the collection, but there is a page explaining how to navigate the site. It's worth noting here, that despite it's status as part of the exhibit, the Hoover Dam section is really a complete other site, and therefore has an option to view it in it's entirety, or a stripped down version in keeping with the rest of the exhibits aesthetics.

Object Characteristics: The display is broken down by category, and within categories, one has to side scroll, often for an annoyingly long time, to see the exhibit. The exhibits are set up like exhibits - blurb of text, then some pictures - often multiple pictures layered on each other. However clicking on a picture leads you to a fabulous world of ContentDM, which thankfully allows you access to a lot of metadata and a zoom function. However, many objects cannot be made any bigger than they appeared on the initial page, and all of an annoying red box frame declaring them to be "University of Nevada, Las Vegas Special Collections."

Metadata: Metadata is fairly extensive, but you must click on an individual object to view it's ContentDM page. This is not instantly obvious, unless you find the tiny, unobtrusive "user guide" link. All of the metadata is click-able, however, so can be used as a search for similar images. The search function is also present, but not very emphasized.

Intended Audience: Presumably students of Nevada history, those interested in the architecture of company housing and hydroelectric dams, and 20th century showgirls. Which I imagine, is just about everyone at this point. however, due to the terribly designed side scrolling interface, I'm going to go with "people who are very patient" as the main site users.