The Wizard of Oz online exhibition found on the Library of Congress' website is a part of the many online exhibitions targeted towards children. The site states that The Wizard of Oz is the first completely American fairy tale.
Collection Principles
Having looked at other sites designed by the Library of Congress, I do not consider this to be as well organized. There is no statement of purpose for the online exhibition; therefore, I am not sure the reason for the digital collection except that The Wizard of Oz is a beloved children's novel. The site has been divided into three parts: the first titled "To Please a Child" leading up to the publishing of the novel, the second, "To See the Wizard" focuses on the film and stage adaptations, and the third part is called "To Own the Wizard" which discusses the various collectibles that have emerged from the popularity of this book. These three sections could have been divided up into more pages instead of three rather long pages that requires lots of scrolling through images and text.
Object Characteristics and Metadata
The images used in the exhibition are jpeg files that can be enlarged and zoomed in on. These can either be accessed from the full object checklist page or from the three parts of the exhibition. Images include scanned letters, book covers, posters, and illustrations.
The object checklist page divides the images into the the sections of the exhibition. Next to each image title/link is the metadata for the object. This includes which department the image is a part of for example: Prints and Photographs, Motion Picture Broadcast Record Sound or Music. There is also a number next to object that lists what number it is within the online exhibition. There are also objects that are no found in the Library of Congress' collections and this is made note of as well. Bibliographic information is provided for each of the objects such as book title, author, page number, year etc... Links are provided to the different divisions from which these objects came.
You can also access the enlarged scans of these objects from the exhibition pages. The same bibliographic information is found under these scans. The links to the divisions are included as well.
Intended Audience
As stated previously the intended audience for this online exhibition are children. The link on the front page of this site leads the viewer to other site's targeted towards children. Since the book has been published there have been sequels, movies, theatre productions etc... therefore, much scholarly interest has been placed upon this book. The site could also be of interest to those studying The Wizard of Oz and Frank Baum.
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