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.