Yunmeng Du Blog 1: Spanish Colonial Architecture

Collection Principles

The Spanish Colonial Architecture as Represented in the Alexander Architectural Archive is a collection of digitized drawings and photographs of eighteenth-century Spanish missions and San Antonio’s Governor’s Palace. These records, dating mainly from the 1920s through the 1950s, reflect how the structures looked before various efforts of restoration and reconstruction. Selected from collections within the Alexander Architectural Archive, they include works by Harvey P. Smith, Stewart King, Ayres and Ayres, Robert Leon White, and measured drawings by UT Austin School of Architecture students in the Texas Architecture Archive.

Metadata

Spanish Colonial Architecture presented has plenty of metadata for each image. Below each piece of work is a list of information for this image. The list includes the assigned indexed name generated by a set of characters, date, description, type, format/size, creator and citation. Above the image is the official name as well as its location. The right side of each page along with an inside search engine created by Alexander Architectural Archive. Users can do a general keyword search or some more focused searches sorted by locations, creators, image types or years. I tried several terms in the Keyword Search box; unfortunately, it does not support Boolean operators. No search functions can be found to search through the whole collection. But there are five tabs on the top of the homepage such as home, properties, FAQ, contact and copyright, which allows users to navigate through this website.

Object Characteristics

The exhibition of images in this collection is well-organized and presented. Each image occupied one page with a small copy on the upper left and a larger one in the center. A small red rectangle can be dragged through each part of the small copy of the image. Meanwhile, the corresponded part on the larger copy of this image in the center of the webpage will be automatically moved to the center. Sometimes, users can even see the texture of each piece of work. On the larger copy of this image are placed seven buttons allowing users to zoom in, zoom out, move towards left, right, up or down or rotate the image. A small black triangle between image and buttons also can be dragged horizontally in order to zoom in or zoom out the image. Each image has its own assigned indexed name located above the real name. When the cursor moves to its indexed name, a small window will pop up. This shows indexed names of other images grouped under the same category.

Intended Audience

This particular collection does not provide specific information for its audience. However, since all the images here are selected from collections existing in Alexander Architectural Archive and measured by School of Architecture students, it is most likely that their targeted audience are architects, researchers focusing on architecture, or students with architecture related majors.