Jonny Grass Blog 10, DigiBarn Computer Museum

The DigiBarn is a museum based in northern California aimed at documenting the history of personal computers and the technological progress of their development.  It is managed and curated by Bruce Damer, and it presents images of computers, patents, manuals, and other documentation on the history of personal computing since 1975.

Collection Principles

The collection has been assembled by Bruce Damer, the collection’s curator.  Damer has procured each collection item through purchase of his own at various sales of vintage and recycled goods.  Since he has amassed these items as a personal collection, his collection principles are determined by his familiarity with various items; furthermore, since he is attending various sales to purchase collection items, which items he obtains are dependent on which items are available wherever he goes.  While there does not seem to be a specific unifying theme besides the theme of computer history the collection attempts to explore, Damer has attempted to organize and curate the collections, acknowledging: “It takes more than this to create a museum and we invite you to explore our collections and other parts of this site so lovingly created for your nerdly history pleasure.”

Object Characteristics

Images of computer systems have been scanned and made available as JPEGs.  Images are presented as thumbnails that can be clicked on to provide a larger JPEG in its own page.  These larger JPEGs can be zoomed in once, but not more than that.  Sometimes manuals, patents, and other materials have also been scanned as JPEGs, and can similarly be zoomed in upon once.

Metadata

Metadata for this collection does not seem to be very well organized.  Collection images of computers or machines are organized on separate pages based on the company who created them.  Each page provides historical information on that company, its designs, and its development; however, item-level metadata does not seem to be present.  Other collection items include manuals, patents, and other types of written documentation that could possibly be relevant to the images of computers; unfortunately, since these written documents have not been transcribed and the information provided in them has not been written on the website, they do not appear to be particularly helpful to the web site visitor.

Intended Audience

The site states that the museum “constitute[s] a kind of ‘memory palace’ for the nerd-inclined,” suggesting that the intended audience is the public in general, though specifically people interested in the history of personal computer technology.  The site also differentiates the museum’s mission from the Computer History Museum, identifying the fact that it allows visitors to physically operate the computers in the collection as one of its strengths.  Therefore, the web site and its digital collection is largely intended to pique the interest of site visitors in order to encourage them to visit the physical museum.

Yunmeng Du Blog 9: ArchNet Digital Library

Collection Principles

ArchNet is an exciting project being developed at the MIT School of Architecture and Planning with the full support of The Aga Khan Trust for Culture, an agency of the Aga Khan Development Network. The Aga Khan Trust for Culture is a private, non-denominational, international development agency with programmes dedicated to the improvement of built environments in societies where Muslims have a significant presence. The goal of ArchNet is to create a community of architects, planners, educators, and students. The community can help each other by sharing expertise, local experience, resources, and dialogue. Members are urged to take on a pro-active role in the community. Imagine the wealth of knowledge and history created in the various schools of architecture around the world. ArchNet hopes to tap that knowledge and provide a mechanism by which these valuable tools can be disseminated. The ArchNet Digital Library is part of ArchNet website containing the documents, images and other documents collected.

Metadata

The metadata has been well designed and employed. Since this collection developed for architecture, such metadata are set to be variant name, street address, location, date, style/period, century, building type, building usage and keywords. Also, the image for each building goes with notes as a short history and description. ArchNet also has publications and other documents with metadata encompassing citation, author/editor, book title, publication date, copyright, language, document type, keywords, file type and size as well as description. It also allows users to download the files from this site. You can search by clicking through the subject terms under book title and keywords fields. There are portfolios from the contributors in this association with metadata like author/creator, year, file type, format, copyright, source, file size, and description. They are also downloadable. The references resources are given within this digital library and another gallery view is available for users to browse all the images.

Object Characteristics

A navigation bar seems to be adopted by every exhibition I found and always on the left side of the screen. Under the Digital Library tab, there are five sub-categories under these section- images, publications, portfolio, reference and gallery. Starting from the images, I got a full index in this section. All the words in the index have been sorted alphabetically and you can view the content by collection, country, building type, building style, building usage, century, decade and site name. Publications have been sorted under special collections, document type, language, author name, title and articles related to building type or country and keywords. In a word, the entire index is based on the metadata created for this collection. Other sub-titles followed the similar way of exhibiting their content.

Members can contribute by adding their individual image collections and files in their personal workspace. They can add events to the Digital Calander, post a topic or a response in the Discussion Forum, create a Group Workspace with other members from around the globe, work with their institution to create an Institution Workspace to make student work and faculty research available to the larger community, and add to the academic directory or link to web resources in the Reference Section of the Digital Library.

Intended Audience

ArchNet set its goal to become an international online community for architects, planners, urban designers, landscape architects, conservationists, and scholars, with a focus on Muslim cultures and civilizations. The objective of ArchNet is to create a community of architects, planners, educators, and students. The community can help each other by sharing expertise, local experience, resources, and dialogue.

John G. Blog #10: Heavens Above: Art and Actuality

Heavens Above: Art and Actuality

"Heavens Above: Art and Actuality" is an online digital exhibition through The Science, Industry, and Business division of the New York Public Library. This is an exhibition contrasting the 19th century art and Science of Etienne Leopold Trouvelot (1827 - 1895) with the contemporary photographic images of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The exhibit was on display at the SIBL in New York in 2001.

Collection Principles

I thought that this website/online exhibit was interesting because it compared and contrasted art from history with contemporary photographs. The exhibition focused on the art and Science of E.L. Trouvelot who was a French-born artist and amateur astronomer. He worked in the U.S. at several prestigious observatories and universities and was known for his astronomical drawings from various telescopes. His chromolithographs and other works from "Trouvelot: From Moths to Mars" are featured in this exhibition.

Object Characteristics

The objects in this exhibitions are Trouvelot's chromolithographs and photography from NASA. Although the exhibition presents a variety of images, when viewers click on the image, they are redirected to the NYPL.org website to learn about the rights and permissions associated with the images.

Metadata

Brief descriptions of Trouvelot's images are included on each page, but I was unable to locate any detailed metadata from these descriptions. Images from NASA, however, include image metadata information on the attached links. Information about the name, type, dimensions, and size (bytes) are included for each image.

Intended Audience

It appears that the intended audience for this exhibition is scholars, artists, and astronomers. I thought that it was very interesting to showcase historic art and images about objects in space and contrast them with contemporary photography. After reviewing all of the other digital exhibitions and collections this semester, I can tell that this online exhibition was created in the early 2000's. Metadata was limited and the functions and capabilities of the website were very limited and not very attractive or user friendly.

Tami Blog #10: HistoryBuff.com

HistoryBuff.com is a nonprofit organization that provides online primary source material concerned primarily with major and not so major events and how they were reported in the newspapers. It also contains information about the presses and technology used to produce newspapers over the past 400 years, state trivia, panoramas of U.S. historical sites, transcripts of news articles about major events, and interactive quizzes. The site also provides info for those interested in collecting and selling historic newspapers.

Collection Principles

There is a plethora of information on this site. However, for the purposes of this blog, I am mostly concerned with its online newspaper archives.

The newspaper archives is arranged chronologically, dated from 1700 – 2004. While the chronological arrangement is quite helpful, the grouping of the newspapers is rather strange. For example, one folder contains items dated from 1700 – 1739, the next from 1740 – 1769, and a third from 1770 – 1799. The grouping appears to be arbitrary, based on no perceived logic. Why not group all the newspapers for that century in one folder dated 1700 – 1799?

Object Characteristics

The site has done a good job of digitizing the newspapers and making them available online. While I could not discern the format of the objects, the newspapers can be enlarged to a very high degree of clarity. One complaint is that only the first page of each newspaper has been digitized. The information offered would be much more valuable if the complete newspapers were online. In addition, an index of some kind would allow users to see the headlines without having to click into each folder containing the newspaper groupings.

Metadata

The metadata is very good. It lists the date, name of the newspaper, and headline for that date. However, you do not have the capabilities to search the newspapers.

Intended Audience

The site states this collection was placed online for “students, teachers, and history buffs.” I agree with this and also believe that this site would be useful – although in a very limited capacity – to researchers needing to see historic front pages of major events. Some of the more interesting newspapers provided digitally on this site are:

• The New York Herald, 4-13-1861, “Civil War Begun!”

• The Daily Cleveland Herald, 4-28-1865, “John Wilkes Booth Captured and Killed”

• Chicago Daily News, 9-10-1900, “Galveston Texas Hurricane”

• Milwaukee Daily News, 4-15-1912, “Titanic Sinks”

Some of the other sections of this site contain useful and/or interesting information as well and are worth a view, such as the panoramic views of historic sites, the state facts, and the quizzes, although you have to log-in to interact with the latter.

A State of Convenience: The Creation of West Virginia

Since I am moving here next year, I decided I would blog about an online exhibition at the state archives in West Virginia. There are a few online exhibitions on the West Virginia State Archive's website. All of them have a layout similar to this one about the creation of West Virginia as a unified state.

Collection Principles

"This exhibit offers historians, students, and others interested in West Virginia's statehood period the opportunity to read the actual words of the participants themselves. Through transcriptions of the proceedings of the First and Second Wheeling conventions, President Lincoln's opinion on the admission of West Virginia, and other primary-source documents, individuals will learn about the process by which West Virginia became the thirty-fifth state in the Union. Illustrations of participants in the process, as well as secondary resource materials, are also available as part of the online exhibit. "

This website is stated to be a work in progress and additional materials will be added in the coming months. There is no date indicating when this website was first added or when it was updated last.

Object Characteristics

The website is divided into sixteen chapters telling the tale of how West Virginia became a state. The table of contents page lists the titles of each of the chapters. In each of the chapters there are documents and photographs illustrating the narrative that is being told on the site. Some of the images allow you to enlarge them by clicking on them while others do not. The enlarged images are jpeg files.

There are 3 other sections titled primary documents, images and other sources that provide a list and links of the documents and images found on this site. On the images page there is a brief description of the image. The images are divided into sections alphabetically.

Primary documents are listed in the chapters that pertain to the topic such as particular conventions.

Metadata

The metadata for the images and documents varies from image to image. Some include the title, provenance, artist, author, date etc...

I wish there was more information regarding the location of these documents within the archives themselves.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this website is anyone interested in the history behind how West Virginia became one of the 50 states of the US. I know funding for the archives is very sparse so it is hard for me to criticize their online exhibitions when I am surprised they have any at all. The site was very easy to navigate and interesting from a historical perspective despite the simplicity of the layout and design.

Jesse Saunders Blog #9: Old Sturbridge Village Graphics Database

The Old Sturbridge Village Graphics Database contains a collection of over 1,400 scans done by the living history museum of materials within their collection. This online exhibit is maintained separately from the museum's collection of images of 3 dimensional objects. Old Sturbridge Village is a living history museum in Sturbridge, MA which portrays life in a rural New England town in the 1830's. The museum was born from the artifact collections and history interest of the Well's family of Southbridge, MA, who were vital in initiating the work of the museum in its early years.


Collection Principles
The images exhibited on the OSV Graphics Database are a portion of the museum's total archival image collection. However, there is no indication in the brief information on the website about how the images were selected to be scanned and exhibited. While information on selection is lacking, the images are sectioned into 35 categories ranging from "Agriculture and Horticulture" to "Youth/Courtship & Marriage", many containing fewer than 50 images, yet one holding over 200. The collection was most likely built from the collections of materials from the museums founders, based on the categories previously mentioned, which portray many of the values and activities espoused by the museum.

Object Characteristics
While browsing through the image collection, or on the search results page, images are displayed with thumbnails in sections of 10 per page. After clicking on a particular image, the user is taken to a new window, which displays a slightly larger version of the image, along with the metadata and a link to a tool which allows the users to display the image in a variety of sizes and with various sharpening/editing tools. This page also contains the option to download the full-size image, which is delivered in .jpg format. The downloaded images are quite high-res and the several scans I viewed appeared to be very well done. There is no information on the OSV website regarding how or on what equipment the scans are done or what software was used to do any correction/modification to the images.

Metadata
Each image contains basic, but useful metadata for each image. The metadata fields include: description (generally one sentence), keywords, title, author, publisher, where published, publication year, page, and call number. For letters and business papers, data regarding sender/recipient and date of authorship are also included. In the case of letters, transcripts are generally provided as well.

Intended Audience
As with most of the information on www.osv.org, the image collection would largely be of interest to visitors, or potential visitors, to the museum. Yet with the high profile of OSV in the museum community and the Wells' brothers large collections of 19th century materials, individuals interested in that era would certainly find the collection quite useful, though it is difficult to know how easy a time researchers would have finding the collection if they did not explicitly know of its existence.

Hannah Norton Blog 9: Virtual Landscapes of Texas

Virtual Landscapes of Texas is a digital collection of public domain documents related to the early geologic exploration of Texas. The documents were selected from the holdings of the Walter Geology Library at the University of Texas and the project funded in part by a TexTreasures grant.

Collection Principles
The introductory letter by the Geology Librarian on the collection’s homepage does a good job of clarifying the purpose of the collection and what kinds of information it contains. According to this short narrative, the collection is designed to give a historical look at how Texans handled issues of energy, water, public safety, transportation, and economic development, issues that certainly remain relevant in the current day. To this effect, the documents are all in the public domain and include both primary documents and secondary reviews of early Texas geologic exploration. Presumably, objects were chosen directly by the Geology Librarian. Thus, once you get to document, it is relatively easy to use, but it is difficult to determine whether the document you have found is relevant until you look at its content.

Object Characteristics
Objects primarily consist of government documents from U.S. Geologic surveys to guidebooks to publications of the Texas Board of Water Engineers. Many documents are presented solely as PDFs for download (a disadvantage when browsing), while others are available for browsing. They are presented as text with images from the original document inserted into this text with a linked table of contents available for easier browsing. If desired, the user can also view the page scan itself. These documents also have an option to be formatted for printing.

Metadata
Not much metadata is readily apparent to the user of this collection, although I’m relatively certain that it is there somewhere, having heard a talk by someone who worked on this digitization project in which she was specifically discussing metadata standards. The alphabetical listing of publications shows the name of the publication and authors, and a list of search results includes only the title (and, where relevant, the page number within that publication where your particular search term was found). Information about publication date, size and format of file, method of digitization, and subject matter are not available in an aggregated format. The use of title only for browsing is somewhat redeemed by the fact that these geologic documents have quite detailed titles that provide relevant information about their subject matter.

Intended Audience
This resource is clearly intended for scholars and students with a particular interest in geologic history. Documents are text-heavy and often developed by governmental agencies and are thus not particularly accessible to non-academics.

Although I think the resources in this site are likely helpful and interesting to the geology community, the web site itself and method of accessing the resources would benefit from some updating.

Katie R - Blog 10 - The Willard Suitcase Exhibition Online

This exhibit, The Lives They Left Behind: Suitcases from a State Hospital Attic, chronicles the lives of patients in a New York mental institution through their old belongings. While an extremely interesting and thought-provoking concept, the online interpretation is clunky and barely engaging.

Collection Principles:
I have no idea. While this exhibit is also a traveling show with an accompanying book, on the website I can find no information about why certain patients were chosen to highlight, as 427 suitcases were originally found in the attic when Willard closed in 1995. I know legal constraints would not allow the use of full names, so perhaps not all of the patients could be included because of legal reasons. The book appears to delve into 10 people's lives.

Object Characteristics:
The site runs on Flash, which is incredibly frustrating. There is only one way to scroll down the text; little arrows at the bottom must be clicked. The images next to the text also must be browsed by arrow clicking. As a person with who must newly work with only my non-dominant hand, I would stop looking at the site because of the difficulty getting around and scrolling. The 'drop-down' menu options at the bottom of the site are also annoying, as there is no index page for each topic. You can't go to the "Suitcases" page, just to each name separately. The images are probably jpegs. There are streaming sound files, as well, but I don't know what file they are.

Metadata:
There is no visible upfront metadata with the images. The images don not even have captions with them. I don't even know how much administrative metadata there is behind the scenes. There are no search capabilities. All in all, poorly done.

Intended Audience:
Originally an exhibit at the New York State Museum in 2004, the audience would be the general public. Online, it seems quite basic, almost for school children.

John G. Blog #9: The Warhol: Time Capsule 21

The Warhol: Time Capsule 21

The Warhol: Time Capsule 21 is a cool online exhibition from 2005 that showcases one example of the artists' collection of "time capsules" that contain a wide variety of items that he chose himself. According to the information on the website, there were 600 time capsules that Warhol created, but this online exhibition contains the items of only one time capsule, "Time Capsule 21."

Collection Principles

This online exhibition/collection showcases the items contained in "time capsule 21." The items range in date from the 1950's to the 1970's. They present a window into the artist's art, life, and socio-cultural aspects of his life. The items are part of the "Andy Warhol's Time Capsules" exhibition in the Andy Warhol Museum which is part of the Carnegie Museums in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

Object Characteristics

There are over 50 items in Time Capsule 21 that include: photobooth photos, source material for his paintings, business records, personal notes and cards, record albums, and newspaper reports and photos related to the June 3, 1968 attack on his life. The items are displayed on the website using Adobe Flashplayer 9.

Metadata

Overall, there is a significant amount of data associated with the items in this collection. This exhibition was organized by the Andy Warhol Museum (Carnegie Museum) and the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt, Germany, so the art is cataloged in a very detailed manner. The website offers a "Complete Inventory of Time Capsule 21" page that provides all of the metadata associated with the items in the exhibition. The metadata includes: the item number, title, description, materials used, dimensions, and the condition of the item. You can also sort the items on the "Selection of the Time Capsule 21 Contents" page by category or item type. There are also zoom capabilities and related links so that viewers can learn additional info about the items.

Intended Audience

According to the website, the intended audience is curators, scholars, and the general public and the hope is that the exhibition provides viewers with "important information about Warhol's life and his work and artistic practice." I thought that the items were very interesting and presented in an appealing manner and I learned some new things about the artist.

Meghan C. Blog 10: Treasures in Full Caxton's Chaucer

This Treasures in Full collection is composed of The Canterbury Tales which were begun in 1387 by Early British writer Chaucer, the Two editions of are on display in this digital collection of the British Library. The two editions were created by a printer by the name of William Caxton in 1476 and 1483, less then a quarter of a century after Gutenberg invents the printing press. The acquisition of the first and second editions happened over a long period of time after passing through the hands of certain prominent owners, such as George III. The books were digitized in 2002 Keio University for the British Library.

Collection Principles

Although this is a relatively small digitization project consisting of only two of the British Library's best copies of the first and second editions, it is extremely well documented. The purpose of this collection is to allow users to view the two editions side by side and compare the characteristics of each according to style of text and changes in the text itself. Apparently the second edition was created after Caxton became familiar with a document that was very similar to the original Canterbury Tales. These pieces are irreplaceable to the British Library and to Great Britain. The library is very selective in choosing who is permitted to view the books, but in order to increase use of these books the library chose to digitize them. Creating both high and low resolutions for all pages in both books.

Object Characteristics

The images were captured using a very high end camera at Keio University in Japan. Each image is 4000x4000 pixels at 12 bit RGB. The books had a maximum opening space and needed a special platform for them to prevent access wear and tear on the over 500 years old books. There are two options for viewing the editions. You can view them one at a time or side by side for comparisons sake. You can only zoom in once to view the detailed lettering and ornate decorations in the beginning of each chapter. Once you have zoomed in, you can click to view the transcripts which are very helpful, at least for me. Some of the words do not seem to relate to any English that I am familiar with, but I am not sure if this is a result of the OCR or the old English in which the books were written in.

Metadata

As this is a library, an institution based on information, I thought it safe to assume that there would be provided a wealth of metadata on each of the objects digitized. Unfortunately I was not able to locate this information. There is quite a lot on Chaucer and Caxton and the printing press, but it is uncertain where the library holds the editions and in what why they index them, or these images. It was a bit disappointing. There is even a reference page provided for users who wish to know more.

Intended Audience

The collection was obviously intended for intensive scholars of both the Canterbury Tales and Caxton, they make this very explicit. That is not to say that this site does not contain information that other users may find helpful. It is a digital connection to the past, a representation of what used to be viewable but now viewing it would bring about its demise. The Internet opens many doors, but its curators must learn to make them available properly.

Jonny Grass Blog 9

The Paradise Possessed Exhibition features digital surrogates of items in The Rex Nan Kivell collection, which is among the holdings of the National Library of Australia.  Rex Nan Kivell was a collector of documentation in various forms of the European exploration and colonization of Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific.  The exhibit commemorates the centenary of Rex Nan Kivell birth, and is divided into six thematically distinct sections.  Each section of the exhibit presents 5 images that can be browsed and looked at with accompanying metadata, but there does not seem to be a search function.

 

Collection Principles

The total collection comprises over 14,000 items of various media, including paintings, drawings, etchings, manuscripts, books, pamphlets, objects, and maps.  These items were collected by Rex Nan Kivell himself in order to document the exploration and colonization of Australia and its neighboring areas.  Since the library collection is based on a personal collection, the collection strategies seem to represent the collector’s personal interests, though no explicit collection principles are stated.

 

Object Characteristics

Digital objects in this collection are images, though the format is not stated.  The objects represented vary in type, from maps to photographs to manuscripts, among others.  The digital images cannot be viewed in a separate window, zoomed, or otherwise manipulated for better viewing.  The size of digital objects varies, but a significant portion of digital images are small or thumbnail size and very difficult to see.

 

Metadata

Metadata for each physical collection item consists of object type, title, author, relevant dates, size, materials, and collection number.  However, metadata about the digital objects or about the process of digitization and its goals is not readily available.  The digital exhibition does provide background information in the introduction and in the main page of each section.

 

Intended Audience

Since it is an exhibition, the intended audience seems to be the general public.  As mentioned earlier, many of the items cannot be seen in enough detail to use for research; detailed examination of items does not seem to be a consideration.

 

Yunmeng Du Blog 8: July 1942: United We Stand

This is another online exhibition I found through the National Museum of American History. July 1942: United We Stand presents covers of magazines nationwide with American flags during July 1942, seven months after the United States entered World War II. It was a way for magazine publishers to prove their value to the war effort.

Collection Principles

The National Museum of American History put this virtual exhibition online in order to mark the sixtieth anniversary of the United We Stand campaign. The collection presented here demonstrates how some of the past is saved. Many of the covers were collected in the summer of 1942 by Marguerite Jacquette Storm and then acquired by Peter Gwillim Kreitler in 1999. As the home of the Star-Spangled Banner, the National Museum of American History is a place to explore the history of the national symbol and the ideals for which it stands.

Metadata

Each cover of a magazine has been assigned rich metadata such as magazine title, artist, publisher, date and credit, which means the collection where a particular magazine cover has been selected. All of the images for covers have been classified under different categories or sub-categories including themes, magazine subjects, etc. A powerful search engine embedded into this collection provides a free-text search box as well as a set of advanced search options on the same page, which allows visitors to search by title, theme, magazine subject and type of prize the cover design earned.

Object Characteristics

It is obviously that this collection of magazine covers has been well analyzed and organized. As a result, the corresponding virtual exhibition encompasses rich educational content, plenty of view options as well as helpful search functions. The navigation bar standing on the left side of each web page is served just like the table of content of a book for this collection. By clicking through the labels on the navigation bar, it gives me a feel of reading through a pamphlet or a book about this exhibition. Each theme as well as its sub-titles has been fully discussed along with respective images derived from the collection. This exhibition serves as a very good example of teaching and educating visitors with knowledge of the role of magazine publishing community during World War II around 1942.

Intended Audience

As it is stated on the introduction page of this exhibition, the National Museum of American History provides this exhibition in order to let the visitors “enjoy touring the virtual exhibition, and we also invite you to visite the Museum, where nearly one hundred original flag covers will be on view from March 22 to October 27, 2002”. July 1942: United We Stand is an extension of an onsite exhibition in the museum. All visitors who are either planning to visit the museum or browsing its website are intended audience for this exhibition.

Claire B. Blog 10: The Encyclopedia of Life

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL) is an extensive project to organize and make available via the Internet "virtually all information about life present on Earth." At its heart lies a series of Web sites—one for each of the approximately 1.8 million known species—that provide the entry points to a range of biodiversity information about that species, including taxonomy, geographic distribution, collections, genetics, evolutionary history, morphology, behavior, ecological relationships, and importance for human well being. The species sites provide lots of general information, but they also provide links to researcher data.

The EOL has only about 20 full-time employees - scientists and other professionals working from museums and research institutions around the world. The project currently has 20 full time employees, but it has over $12 million in grant money, technical partners who handle cataloging etc, and "technology partners" like Adobe and Microsoft that are building tools that the site incorporates.

Collection Principles

While this is not a typical digital library, it is a collection of visual and textual information about a specific subject, i.e. all living species on earth. It aims to gather, organize, and make accessible "all information about life present on earth." Pretty ambitious, but pretty well-done, I believe. All source information is linked, allowing viewers to explore in-depth (and also lending credibility to the site so it doesn't become a wikipedia-gone-
wild of animal fanatics or plant nuts).


Object Characteristics

Images are JPEGs, mostly photos but some drawings as well, and there is a sliding tool that allows viewers to see more or less detail on images. Each species has a map page behind its intro page that highlights areas of the world where the species is found, and the level of occurrence.


Metadata

Searching is available by subject or species. Users can browse through a text or graphical version of the species classification visible on every species or linking page, choosing which level of classification to browse. There is also a rotating assortment of images that appear on the home page.

It seems like the EOL forum is used pretty heavily as a searching tool as well, where people ask how to find a specific species as opposed to searching the site themselves. Pages that have minimal metadata requests that interested viewers contact them to become contributors (of text or images) or curators to help EOL seek out and display more information.

The current version is available in English, French, German, Russian, and Ukrainian, but EOL aims to expand to offer viewing in more languages. Users can bookmark pages, and a login offers saved searching and (maybe?) enhanced access. (Not sure - I didn't create an account)

Intended Audience

The site aims to be a primary research resource for a wide audience, including scientists, natural resource managers, conservationists, teachers, and students. Video tutorials on using the site and an extensive FAQ page make it much more navigable and less intimidating for the neophyte explorer, like myself. There are some interesting participatory features that expand the site's use and utility well beyond formal scientists, like and EOL Flickr group where people can upload images to be incorporated into species sites and a curator forum (the Curator Network idea is still under development, and raises interesting ideas about who is an expert and whose input is worthy).

EOL is very adamant about the project's potential impact on science (its ability to be a "macroscope for discerning patterns in large amounts of information" as well as a "microscope for zooming in on the small") and society. EOL is making digitally available millions of pages of biological information previously only available in texts in a limited number of institutions: "Now, no one will have to travel to these libraries to gain access to this information. The information found on EOL is free of charge and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions." I'd be interested to hear how it's received across scientific communities...

Elizabeth S. Blog #7: NASA Images

NASA Images (nasaimages.org)
This online digital collection gathers together images from various NASA agencies. The website itself is not part of or funded by NASA itself. Instead, it is offered by Internet Archive (www.archive.org ), a non-profit library, to offer public access to NASA's images, videos and audio collections.

Collection Principles
NASA Images is constantly growing with the addition of current media from NASA as well as newly digitized media from the archives of the NASA Centers.

Object Characteristics
The site is powered by Luna Imaging, and takes advantage of the new version (introduced June 13, 2008). Luna offers many neat, Web 2.0 features, making it a fantastic resource for education. In addition to viewing and zooming seamlessly over the internet, users are allowed to download hi-res zipped jpeg files (for images).

Metadata
The images I looked at all had extremely rich descriptive metadata, including titles, description, filenames, dates, location, which agency generated the image and how many light years away the particular object is.

Intended Audience
According to the "about" section of the website, its goal is to "benefit humanity." That's a pretty big audience. It seems to have a very broad appeal. It is easy to use, unless java is a problem for one's browser.

Jesse Saunders Blog #8: The Massachusetts Historical Society: Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts

The Massachusetts Historical Society | Images of the Antislavery Movement in Massachusetts

This exhibit by the Massachusetts Historical Society displays images and digitized renderings of a variety of mediums including: artifacts, broadsides, engravings/prints, manuscripts, covers (envelopes), photographs, portraits, and sculptures. A majority of the images are portraits and sculptures of individuals active in the abolitionist movement, however there are also a large number of other material and object in the collection which are not usually encompassed by a digitization project. The exhibition begins with a page describing the collection and a brief scope of the materials, which leads the user to a "browse by format" page which offers individual links to the materials highlighted and their related collections.

Selection Decisions
Through the wording on the website, it appears as though all materials in the Massachusetts Historical Society's collection related to Anti-slavery movement have been digitized. On first glance at item list it appears that not all are available, as users are required to click through to the archival finding aid to gain access to all of the engravings, photographs, and portraits.

Metadata
Each individual item's page contains metadata regarding its creation (creator, city, date, etc - as much as is known), format, size, and a brief description. No data is given regarding the creation of the digital images, how or by whom the images were made, or on what equipment.

Object Characteristics
The objects are displayed on the Massachusetts Historical Society website in a fairly basic, html format, without ContentDM or any major organizational software. The images are in jpeg format, and can be viewed in either small or large (the large being very high-res) format depending on the needs of the user. All images are watermarked with a statement regarding ownership by the society and prohibiting reproduction.

Intended Audience
Due to the size of the collection (nearly 850 objects), these materials could be useful for anyone from a middle school social studies class to a serious researcher. For those on the younger end, it would be helpful for the historical society to develop some instructor materials to help teachers lead students through materials, particularly as some contain images and phrases, which while acceptable at in the context of the day, could be seen as offensive today.

Hannah Norton Blog 8: Everglades Digital Library

The Everglades Digital Library is an effort of Florida International University Libraries to make Everglades research freely available over the internet. This portal provides access to three main collections: the Everglades Education Consortium, Everglades Online, and Reclaiming the Everglades: South Florida’s Natural History, 1884 to 1934. A collaborative effort, the Everglades Digital Library contains documents from the Florida Center for Library Automation, Everglades National Park, the South Florida Natural Resources Center, the Historical Museum of Southern Florida, the University of Miami, and the U.S. Geological Survey’s Everglades Priority Ecosystems Science Initiative.

Collection Principles
Like other digital libraries that serve as portals to diverse collections, the Everglades Digital Library’s guiding objective seems to be the aggregation of as much information as possible related to this unique geographic region, in the form of quality research and primary documents. Determinations of the quality of individual resources is presumably made on the basis of the reputation and authority of their contributing institution. Although it is not explicitly stated on their website, it seems that the library is looking to continue expanding its collection (which currently includes about 470 items), given the fact that some resource types listed under the advanced search currently contain no items.

Object Characteristics
The Everglades Digital Library supports a broad range of resource types, from news and journal articles to maps and photographs, to letters and sheet music to lesson plans. A section of digitized books appears to be coming soon. When you select an item, you are taken to the website of the contributing collection in order to view it. The Reclaiming the Everglades collection, which contributes more documents than any other collection, provides both JPEG and PDF versions of most documents, with no zooming capacity.

Metadata
This digital library does a good job of providing ample bibliographic metadata. In addition to basic title, author, and date information, records also include audience level, format, rights information, language, subjects, resource type, a unique identifier, and, in some cases, a screenshot of the resource. The advanced search option allows users to search by many of these characteristics. As far as I was able to tell, no information is available on the website about how the various resources were digitized – presumably each contributing body had its own procedure.

Intended Audience
This resource is clearly intended for a research audience, but both formal academic research and informal research by the interested amateur can be supported. Any individual can register with the site and provide annotations and ratings for the various resources and then, as with Amazon, receive recommendations for other resources that may be of interest. This inclusion of user-generated content and interactivity seems designed to appeal specifically to the “general public” and not the scholarly research community. From my perusal of the site, it seemed that these features have not yet been taken advantage of to any great extent, but I was unable to determine how recently such capabilities had been added to the library.

Although it currently doesn’t contain quite the quantity of resources that would be desirable for such a portal (when I searched for alligator, I only found 3 documents), I think that as it grows the Everglades Digital Library has the potential to quite useful.

karyn j blog #9; Florida Slave Narratives

Florida Slave Narratives

These interviews from the 20s and 30s depict the lives of former slaves during their childhood and teenage years as told by those who lived it.

Florida Slave Narratives

Collection Principles


The 40 written interviews in the collection were compiled from 1926-1936, but there is no information about how the University of South Florida digitized the materials. However, the interviews were digitized for students to understand on a more personal level the experiences of former slaves. The original typed documents are owned by the Florida Historical Society. Digitool is the digital asset management system and the website was made in 2005. There are terms of use for this collection, but someone failed to enter what they are.


Object Characteristics


The items are listed in alphabetical order by title, but can be changed to list by creator or subject. You can view the records in brief view, table view, or full view. Next to each thumbnail (which is not a picture of the document, but the Adobe PDF symbol) is a description of the item which is a link to the full view of the record with metadata. By clicking on the thumbnail, a new window is opened and the document is opened as a PDF. All of the regular options for zoom and searching within the text are present. There are 2 metadata options: open metadata in new window or show/hide metadata (above the file). This metadata is different than the full view record because it is a MARC record. This option is handy and unique, but not easy to understand if you do not know what a MARC record is or how to read it.


Metadata


The metadata fields are: object, system number, title, imprint, date, etc., notes, subjects, other, contributor(s), related collections. The related collections field is somewhat useless because the options for the other collections are only those provided by USF, most of which are not even remotely related to slave or slavery. Also, it would be a good idea to provide the location of the physical piece.


Intended Audience


The site says the collection was intended to “give students the opportunity to experience history at a personal level.” While it is specifically aimed at students, the collection would also be useful for research by historians and the casual browser interested in experiences of slaves. Overall, the collection was not that impressive. It would be better if it had more background information, was more inviting, and if the introductory page was easier to access. The information the interviews hold is priceless, but the way the interviews are presented could be better. Sadly, the best thing about the collection is that you have the ability to change the size of the text!

Claire B. Blog 9: Children's Books of the Early Soviet Era

Children's Books of the Early Soviet Era presents a (small) selection of book covers of over 350 Soviet children's books published in the 1920s and 30s now housed in the Rare Books and Special Collections Division of the McGill University Libraries.

Collection Principles

Among the many radical changes in the Soviet Union after the 1917 Revolution, the transformation of children's books offers a bold reminders of the vast ambitions of the new social order. Building simultaneously upon the progressive legacy of the 19th century Russian literature and upon the tradition of Russian Futurism, a linguistic, literary and artistic movement that galvanized Russian intellectuals in the early decades of this century, post-Revolutionary publishing for children evolved quickly. The site claims that in the first decade after the Revolution, general book production climbed from 26,000 to 44,000 titles a year; the number of copies published rose from 133 million to 190 million. Children's books naturally followed the mass trend and a first printing of 100,000 and up was common.

Certain state publishing houses were exclusively concerned with publishing for children. Propaganda for Communist education was one factor, along with the publications' serving as a creative outlet for authors and artists looking for an alternative publishing medium to books for adults. The books in this collection are written in a variety of languages. Since more than 100 nationalities live within the fifteen former republics of the USSR, Russian may have been the official language of the Union but children's books were published in Ukrainian, Uzbek, Tartar, Kazakh, Azerbaidzhani, Armenian, Georgian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Estonian, lakutian, Nanaian and other languages are well.

The exhibition is organized in eight groups - thematic exhibitions within the site - meant to demonstrate the importance of Soviet literary production following the Revolution. The collection is organized in such a way that items are only viewable within their corresponding exhibitions. A short introduction clues viewers into certain design aspects to look for, and each exhibit has an introduction as well, but exploration is not really the purpose here (and is virtually impossible to someone who does not read the languages in which the books were written).

Object Characteristics

Within each exhibition, book covers appear as thumbnails and JPEGs.

Metadata

There is minimal metadata associated with each image, but the basics are there: title (in the language in which the book was written), author, description (i.e., size of book and number of pages), and occasional notes about illustrations in the book. This is great if you speak Lithuanian, Georgian, Nanaian, or what have you. Not so great if you don't. There are no call numbers or locations for the items in the exhibits if researchers wanted to find a specific title at McGill.

Intended Audience

I'm not too sure, frankly. The images are beautiful to look at, but only a handful have been digitized for each exhibit and information about each exhibit's purpose is somewhat limited. I learned more than I knew about the children's publishing industry in the early 20th century, but I can't imagine the site would be seen as authoritative for either history or literature researchers. Children probably are not the target audience, unlike a site like the International Children's Digital Library. I specifically searched for sites for children since digital libraries and collections seem to rarely target this audience, only to find a disappointing site. I imagine the intended audience is staff and faculty at McGill who are already familiar with this collection and were simply curious to see what the covers would look like online. The site seems like it has not been updated in a few years, so perhaps it was a one-time project to get a sample of a much larger in-house collection online and out to the public.

John G. Blog #8 On the Cutting Edge: Contemporary Japanese Prints

On the Cutting Edge: Contemporary Japanese Prints from the 50th College Womens' Association of Japan Print Show

This digital collection exhibition commemorates the 50th anniversary of the College Womens' Association of Japan (CWAJ) Print Show. This collection is part of the Library of Congress. This is another exhibition that is not a good example of what a thorough digital collection should look like. Although the art in the exhibit is lovely, the Library of Congress did not really put a lot of effort into providing detailed metadata for the objects in the collection.

Collection Principles

The CWAJ has become an internationally-renowned showcase for contemporary Japanese print art, known as hanga. In 2005, its fiftieth year, CWAJ received more than 800 prints for selection. From these, an international jury selected 221 outstanding examples, 212 of which were donated to the Library and are mounted in this exhibition. The prints represent a rich spectrum of styles and subjects, carrying forward many hanga traditions while embracing new cutting edge works by both master and emerging artists. This important acquisition brings a fresh infusion of visual art to the Library, updating its superb collection of Japanese prints from the Edo Period to the 21th century, as well as its extensive holdings of contemporary artist’s prints from around the world.

Object Characteristics

A wide variety of objects are included in this digital collection. Among the items are: woodblocks, etchings, silkscreens, lithographs, mezzotints, and sketchings. These 212 items were donated by the artists to the Library of Congress. Unfortunately, there is no "zoom" feature. When you click on a thumbnail of the items, only a full view picture is shown. Users are not able to take a very detailed and upclose view of the items. The website does offer an "object list" but you can't select the items for a full view from this page. Because users are unable to select a full view from this screen, the "object list" is not as useful.

Metadata

Although this exhibition is sponsored by the Library of Congress, there isn't much metadata associated with the objects in the collection. The only information provided is the title, artist, year, process, and size. The information included in the "about" section of the webpage takes you to the Library of Congress home page and describes the overall objectives for including metadata in their exhibitions. I think that because this exhibition was shown in 2005, the information included in the exhibition is not as thorough as it would be if it were shown today.

Intended Audience

The intended audience for this exhibition are scholars, art enthusiasts, and members of the CWAJ. I was drawn to this collection because I am fascinated by Japanese and Asian art.

Yunmeng Du Blog 7: Pearls Exhibition--American Museum of Natural History

Pearls Exhibition is hosted by the American Museum of National History and supported by Tasaki Shinju, the world’s largest vertically integrated pearl company in Japan. Through three years’ effort, Pearls Exhibition is the world’s first and perhaps the only exhibition of such scope and magnitude, showcasing invaluable pear specimens, objets d'art and jewelry from around the world and across the ages.

Collection Principles

Pearls exhibition was designed and produced by the Museum’s Department of Exhibition. The Exhibitions Department, in cooperation with other Museum staff members and scientific divisions, is responsible for both the design and construction of the Pearls exhibition. It is organized by the American Museum of Natural History in collaboration with The Field Museum, Chicago. It is created as an online exhibition for educational purpose rather than an integrated collection.

Metadata

There is no significant metadata given to this collection, but each image was assigned its title, date, and a short description. Images presented in this collection are jewelries decorated with pearls. A free-text search engine powered by Google is available throughout the whole website of American Museum of Natural History. I typed “pearl” into the search box and it gave me a list of hits with the word “pearl”.

Object Characteristics

As we talked about the differences between a library and a museum, this website gives me a very good example of how well a museum can form an online exhibition to attract people. Pearls Exhibition set its goal to educate people with knowledge of pearls from every aspect. Different types of pearls have been talked about depending on the source where they came from. Each type of pearls has its own story along with a piece of amazing jewelry they formed. The navigation bar is right on the top of each page allowing users to go through the whole site. The history of pearls and how to obtain pearls are also provided within this exhibition. It’s very easy to navigate through this site and each topic has been discussed thoroughly. It is the most typical exhibition I found designed specifically for education.

Intended Audience

Since visitor information has been given on the homepage, this exhibition is certainly becoming another appeal for visitors to American Museum of Natural History. Its intended audience includes kids and their parents, travelers from other locations or countries, etc.

Jessi Fishman Blog 10: Tall-Tale Postcards

Yay postcards! I love this online exhibition. From the Wisconsin Historical Images site, home to nearly 35,000 images in a broad range of online collections comes the Tall-Tale Postcards exhibit, a gallery of over 80 postcards created from 1908 to about 1918 by photographer Alfred Stanley Johnson, Jr., who "specialized in the tall-tale postcard, extolling Wisconsin's agricultural abundance through images of oversized produce and animals...[the] tall-tale postcards affirmed the American myth of abundance — a myth often at odds with reality."

Collection Principles
As previously stated, the Wisconsin Historical Images section of the Wisconsin Historical Society website has a broad range of digitized collections focusing on numerous aspects of Wisconsin history and culture. This particular collection is meant to convey an important part of pre-WWI midwestern history, specifically with the use of tall-tale postcards, which emerged around the turn of the 20th century, when postcards came to function as surrogates for travel. According to the site, "people soon realized that postcards could be used to create or sustain a certain utopian myth about a town or region, and crafty photographers began to physically manipulate their photographs. Nowhere did these modified images, or "tall-tale postcards" as they came to be called, become more prevalent than in rural communities that hoped to forge an identity as places of agricultural abundance to encourage settlement and growth. Food sources specific to the region — vegetables, fruits, or fish — were the most common subjects."

This collection fits in well with the larger attempt at a unique view of Wisconsin history through digitized books, maps, text, images, and ephemera that the Historical Society page undertakes. It is easy to maneuver, and you can always get back to home, search other collections, find out where you are in the context of the site, and learn about privacy, intellectual property, how to purchase items, and where to learn more about Wisconsin.

Object Characteristics

This site does a good job of digitizing images, leading the user to believe that they really care about the persistence, availability, and usability of the items. The items are all named with the name of the collection (Tall-tale Postcard) followed by a colon (:) and the name of the image (this one is "Mammoth Strawberries") and the image number identifier. Also on each object page is information about how to purchase the item as an archival pigment print or digital file, a link to "share the object with a friend" (via e-mail), and a concise but appropriate intellectual property statement: "Credit: Wisconsin Historical Society.This image is issued by the Wisconsin Historical Society. Use of the image requires written permission from the staff of the Division of Library-Archives. It may not be sold or redistributed, copied or distributed as a photograph, electronic file, or any other media. The image should not be significantly altered through conventional or electronic means. Images altered beyond standard cropping and resizing require further negotiation with a staff member. The user is responsible for all issues of copyright."

Metadata

The metadata for each object is thorough and consistent, which lets you know even more how good a job the Wisconsin Historical Society is doing with their digitization efforts and making accessible online collections. Each object has a title, description, item number, creation date, creator name and location, collection name, genre, multiple linkable subject headings, and various image size options. The titles and descriptions do a good job of placing the items in context and the index terms allow for better discovery of related items and finding what interests you.

Intended Audience

I think anyone interested in or researching Wisconsin (or other midwestern) history would find this site extremely useful. The complete site, in which this online exhibition can be found, has numerous learning and teaching resources and lots to discover about Wisconsin, and I think can be seen as a good example for future digital libraries and online collections as well. Anyone studying pre-WWI history, especially with regard to ephemera and printed materials would find this site useful, and it is just a nice, easy site that is fun to look around, and I think many people would enjoy looking at it.

Yunmeng Du Blog 6: Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement

This is the coolest exhibition as far as I found through the National Science Digital Library.
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement utilizes Flash for enhanced search features, cross referencing, and interactive images created with Zoomifyer which, in another way, sometimes takes longer time to load results. Its copy right is held by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and bioinformatics and a broad educational mission.

Collection Principles

This collection is developed primarily through materials from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910 to 1940. It allows people to experience the unfiltered story of American eugenics. With a vast of reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees that used to be considered scientific “facts” in the old days. The majority of eugenics work has been completely discredited.

Metadata

This collection does not encompass a lot of metadata to describe each image but have a lot of options for searching relevant information. The metadata include name of the image, accession number, date, source, and related topic(s). The “Explore additional images from:” feature offers quick search functions by the same period of time, the same source and the topic.

Object Characteristics

Since the whole exhibition is powered by Flash, a lot of mouse-over has been employed. For example, when you move your mouse to nine images on the homepage, each of them will link to a new page with a specific topic. You can view the topic by simply clicking through the smaller window on the web page. Each window has a close icon on the upper right corner performing the back button function. “Menu of virtual exhibits” is actually an index of this collection. Text or transcripts are attached to each exhibit or image. The search engine allows you to enter keywords or document ID number to conduct your own search through the database, or you can browse the categories placed below the search box including topics, object type, time period or archive. Again, mouseovers have been added to each category in order to give the users a brief description or search tips of the targeted category. Besides, the collection also has a HTML-only website for users with dial-up or lower level internet connections.

Intended Audience

I would say this collection doesn’t specify any intended audience as its mission. But from my own understanding, it tries to convey the ideas of how the eugenic description of human life reflected political and social prejudices rather than scientific facts. It keeps the lessons to be learned from thses materials and try to remind people with this particular issue.