Jonny Grass Blog 7

University of Washington, Alaska, Western Canada and United States Collection

 

The Alaska, Western Canada and United States Collection is a digital collection of historic photographs of Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Washington, the Yukon Territory, and British Columbia.  The digital collection is based on a University of Washington special collection that includes from the latter part of the 19^th century, such as the Alaskan Gold Rush of 1898-1900, and the 20^th century.   The site is well organized and provides very good metadata; the site allows searches across a number of University of Washington special collections.

 

Collection Principles

The collection is based on a special collection of the University of Washington libraries.  Most of the photographs were taken from the Alaska Collection, and the Canada Collection PH Coll 393, though a number of smaller collections of related items were also included in the database.  The library plans to add items to the digital collection, as well as update information about the collection items.

 

Object Characteristics

The images were scanned from black and white photographic prints in grayscale and color using a Microtek Scanmaker 9600XL at 100 dpi.  Images were then saved in .jpg format at compression rate 3 and resized to 768x600 dpi to present the clearest possible digital image.  The scanned images were then linked with descriptive data using the Contentdm software suite.  This viewer allows site visitors to manipulate the images for better viewing; functions include zooming in and out, rotating images, showing a thumbnail, and clipping the image in a new window.

 

Metadata

Metadata for this collection is very thorough and explicit.  The collection homepage details the process of digitizing photographs and the formats used, as well as the software used for presenting the digital objects to visitors.  Each image also includes extensive descriptive metadata, such as title, photographer, notes, relevant dates, repositories from which photographs were sourced, and different types of subject headings.

 

Intended Audience

The digital collection seems to be aimed at the general public, though, since it is based on a special collection, it is likely also intended for research use.  The extensive metadata also suggests that the site is intended for serious scholarly research and, perhaps, designed to present an example for digital collection building at other institutions.