Yunmeng Du Blog 6: Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement

This is the coolest exhibition as far as I found through the National Science Digital Library.
Image Archive on the American Eugenics Movement utilizes Flash for enhanced search features, cross referencing, and interactive images created with Zoomifyer which, in another way, sometimes takes longer time to load results. Its copy right is held by Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, a private, non-profit institution with research programs in cancer, neuroscience, plant biology, genomics, and bioinformatics and a broad educational mission.

Collection Principles

This collection is developed primarily through materials from the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, which was the center of American eugenics research from 1910 to 1940. It allows people to experience the unfiltered story of American eugenics. With a vast of reports, articles, charts, and pedigrees that used to be considered scientific “facts” in the old days. The majority of eugenics work has been completely discredited.

Metadata

This collection does not encompass a lot of metadata to describe each image but have a lot of options for searching relevant information. The metadata include name of the image, accession number, date, source, and related topic(s). The “Explore additional images from:” feature offers quick search functions by the same period of time, the same source and the topic.

Object Characteristics

Since the whole exhibition is powered by Flash, a lot of mouse-over has been employed. For example, when you move your mouse to nine images on the homepage, each of them will link to a new page with a specific topic. You can view the topic by simply clicking through the smaller window on the web page. Each window has a close icon on the upper right corner performing the back button function. “Menu of virtual exhibits” is actually an index of this collection. Text or transcripts are attached to each exhibit or image. The search engine allows you to enter keywords or document ID number to conduct your own search through the database, or you can browse the categories placed below the search box including topics, object type, time period or archive. Again, mouseovers have been added to each category in order to give the users a brief description or search tips of the targeted category. Besides, the collection also has a HTML-only website for users with dial-up or lower level internet connections.

Intended Audience

I would say this collection doesn’t specify any intended audience as its mission. But from my own understanding, it tries to convey the ideas of how the eugenic description of human life reflected political and social prejudices rather than scientific facts. It keeps the lessons to be learned from thses materials and try to remind people with this particular issue.