Drawn mainly from the collections of the National Library of Medicine, Dream Anatomy shows off "the anatomical imagination in some of its most astonishing incarnations, from 1500 to the present."Collection Principles
The online exhibition showcases anatomical illustrations created by anatomists and artists of the Western world during the past 500 years. The site offers curatorial narration alongside images, and the site intends to be one explanatory window into the beginning and development of the science and art of human anatomy. It's a little confusing to tell (and little documentation is provided) what the collection's organizational scheme is. It's more of a meandering historical and visual look at different anatomical images with accompanying description. It's a very cool site, though, once you get your head around what's inside.
The site is organized chronologically and thematically, sort of. It seems intended to move through it the way the site developers intended (as opposed to searching for and/or browsing the collection contents). It is actually prettyinteresting if you're willing to go through the set path; if not, it just gets confusing. An introduction offers description of the image technologies (e.g., wood engraving, photography, x-ray and digital imaging) used to represent human anatomy historically, and also a chronology of the study of human anatomy. The next three sections are mini-sites of their own, split roughly into a site on the "early modern era" of anatomical study (1450-1750); the period between 1680-1800 where anatomists began "purging imaginative elements from scientific illustration"; and 1800 to the present, where anatomy had officially been defined as a science rather than an art. The site map wasa bsolutely clutch - otherwise I wouldn't have known what to do with this!
Object Characteristics
Images in the site, which are interspersed with descriptive text, are jpegs, with one level of zooming available. At first I thought it was impossible to view all of the images in the collection, but once you open one, you have the option to either view the previous or next image, or view the entire gallery of images. The gallery is all thumbnails - no titles or other identifying information until you open an image.
Metadata
Most images list their title, where and when they were created, the name of the anatomist and the name of the artist. I thought this was really interesting - it implies a collaboration, at least with some of the earlier images, betweenscience and art. Some of the images have a sentence or two of descriptive commentary, which helps.
Intended Audience
Dream Anatomy offers a Learning Station, which is a separate site with an Educator's Corner (resources for teachers) and online activities for high school and "older" students. These two resources give
some shape to the sight and offer a couple inroads to its images and information. Frankly, the site seems perfect for someone who just wants to either browse haplessly or be directed exactly how (and in what sequence) to view the different images. I imagine K-12 science and art students would enjoy this, but the images are gorgeous and probably have broader appeal than that. I think its emphasis as an exhibition that merges into the artistic and imaginative worlds, plus its historical (but almost purely speculative and conversational in tone) content, makes it less of a research site. For all of my complaining, I really enjoyed this site...maybe it is a good example of a site that, despite its lack of collection principles, limited metadata, and confusing layout, is still a pleasure to look through. 
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