Jonny Grass Blog 8, The Cuban Postcard Collection

The Cuban Postcard Collection is a collection housed at the University of Miami Libraries, and is part of the Cuban Heritage Collection.  The collection uses ContentDM, and is searchable by entering terms into a search field, or browsable by subject.  Advanced searches also allow searching across collections, as well as combining terms and phrases for more effective retrieval.

 

Collection Principles

Postcards are continuously added to the collection by gifts and purchases.  Several hundred postcards are added to the collection each year, and the collection has been growing for several decades.  The collection contains postcards from Cuba or about “the Cuban exile experience” outside of Cuba from the turn of the 20^th century to the present. 

 

Object Characteristics

Image formats are not listed in item level metadata.  Moreover, description of the physical object is limited to “1 col. postcard“ in seemingly all cases.  Images can be zoomed in or out for better viewing.  Images are available as thumbnails and larger images, which can be rotated and fitted. 

 

Metadata

Collection-level metadata is listed in a finding aid section of the website.  This page explains the six sections of the collection and their scope, and provides information of the historical nature of postcards.  Abundant rights metadata is also provided, both at the collection level and at the item level.

 

Item-level metadata is good.  A title, physical description, and subject headings are available for each collection object, as well as a digital id number and information regarding the source collection.  It would be easy to identify and locate each physical image the digital surrogates represent if a user wanted to do so.

 

Intended Audience

The collection is unrestricted and is aimed at the general public.  It seems to be intended as a research resource, providing excellent structural metadata regarding the physical collection.  However, the digital collection offers a great deal of contextual information, suggesting that the site was designed to address the interest of casual visitors as well.