karyn j #8; Franklin Automobile Photograph Collection

Invented by John Wilkinson and manufactured by HH Franklin, the Franklin Motor Car was ahead of its time in numerous aspects. It was a luxury car, but did not survive the Great Depression and was no longer manufactured after 1934. This collection looks at the people who enjoyed this particular automobile and the different aspects of it. The car and the collection have one thing in common if nothing else, they are both antiques!

Collection Principles

This Franklin Automobile Photograph Collection consists of more than 150 photographs of Franklin cars, the factory and production process, and sales and advertising. These photographs were taken from the Franklin Automobile Collection at the Onondaga Historical Association. They were scanned and provided with metadata in the summer of 1997. This collection was digitized through the Central New York Library Resources Council with funds provided by a Library Services and Technology Grant from by IMLS. The website for this digital collection was created in August 1999. There is no mention of copyright or access to the collection, but it does mention that the physical collection can be viewed for research.

Object Characteristics

The objects in this collection are very different than what I am used to seeing in the others I have written about. There are no thumbnails of the images. To access the JPEG image, there is an image no. and it is linked to the scanned photograph. There is no zoom capability, but the scanned photographs are fairly decent if the lighting is right, if the person/people in the photograph are close enough to be seen, or if the photograph is not faded or have other marks on it. Some of the photographs are better than the others.

Metadata

The metadata for this collection is not very good. Each image has 5 metadata fields: description, date, photographer, print size, OHA no. These fields are not very helpful because a large number of the images do not have the name of a photographer and some do not have dates. The description, however, is fairly helpful in that it tells you exactly what you are viewing.

Intended Audience

One can assume that the intended audience for this collection is the causal browser who is interested in Franklin Automobiles. Perhaps, it would also provide historians with useful information about the manufacturing of this automobile. The website for this collection is very plain and generic and needs to be updated. However, I’m guessing when it was created it was considered modern.