NYPL Digital Gallery | Detroit Publishing Company Postcards in the Leonard Lauder Postcard Collection
This collection is a portion of the NYPL Digital Gallery project, which was begun to allow for free and open access to thousands of images from the library's holdings. The library holds many various collections, including this one of the Detroit Publishing Company's postcards which was donated to the NYPL in 1986 by Leonard Lauder. The postcards include, "North American landscapes and cityscapes, including views of well-known streets, buildings, historic monuments, natural scenery, industry, transportation, and daily life".
Selection Decisions:
All images in this exhibit come from the Detroit Publishing Company Postcards collection at the NYPL. The total collection includes 14,500 postcards, of which 5,780 have are included in the gallery. There is no clear information regarding how the digitization decisions were made or when the remainder will be digitized and made available.
Metadata:
Detailed metadata is included on the Image Details page for each image and includes: title, medium, material type, item/plate #, source, physical location, catalog number, digital and record ID, and dates when digital files were produced and updated. These metadata fields are used to return searches done within the system.
Object Characteristics:
Once images are selected, they are either scanned using a flatbed scanner, or photographed using a digital camera, with archival masters ranging from 300 to 1200 dpi. Derivitives are then made at thumbnail, detail, and full size, allowing for the different levels of viewing within the gallery. These images are available as jpg images, which can be downloaded and saved to a local computer. There is no clear information on either the general Digital Gallery or collection pages, however, it appears as though it was built in-house by the NYPL. There is a link on the top of the webpages of the database requesting user feedback on the interface. The search function is helpful in finding your way to precise images, yet the browsing function appears to be arranged based on the physcial locations of the postcards, yet without enough descriptive data to make finding your way through an effective means to finding useful images.
Intended Audience:
The audience for this collection would include users of the Digital Gallery systems, as well as users with either scholarly or recreational interest in postcards/Americana, etc. The size of the collection allows for people to find postcards on a wide variety of topics and from a number of lcoations, providing a wide base from which to conduct research or lazily search.
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