Emily V. Blog 9 NYPL Dance in Photographs and Prints

 The NYPL Digital Gallery hosts an exhibition titled Dance in Photographs and Prints, this collection is managed in part by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division at the Library for the Performing Arts. 

Collection Principles

This collection contains a huge variety of photographs and prints of dancers, including dance instruction guides, portraits of famous dancers, programs from dance performances, and other images. The collection digitized seems limited, however, in the Collection History section of the Web site, they do note that the collection will continue to grow over time. 

Object Characteristics

The digital quality of the images is very good, they can be zoomed in on, and the site offers options to resize, buy, or print the image. 

Metadata

The metadata related to these images was excellent. In addition to an Image ID and description listed with every image, there is an option to expand on the Image Details. This option provides additional data related to the material, source, location, and further identification information.

 

John G. Blog #6: The Magical Book: Movable Books for Children, 1771 - 2001

The Magical Book: Movable Books for Children, 1771 - 2001

The digitized version of this collection is from the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books in the Canada Trust Gallery at the Toronto Reference Library. It was an exhibition from April 13 - June 9 of 2002. The collection contains examples from 200 years of children's pop-up and other movable books. I thought that this digital collection/exhibition was done in a creative way. Because it showcases items that are "movable", the website uses a variety of different views of each item to simulate movement.

Collection Principals

The items that were selected for this collection range from the 18th Century until 2001. The website explains that movable books had been in use since the 14th Century to teach Astronomy using movable parts to simulate the movement of the constellations in the night sky. It wasn't until the 18th Century that movable parts were used in children's books. This collection is only a part of the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books that was donated by the British Librarian Edgar Osborne in 1949. The collection contains over 2000 items from a wide variety of examples of early children's literature.

Object Characteristics

Each item was digitized and is played through Adobe Flashplayer 9. Each digitized image also plays for approximately 5 - 10 seconds before resetting and playing again. There are two links per item, the initial picture or icon that demonstrates how the movable book works and the "more information" link that provides viewers with additional bibliographic and narrative information. Some objects, like the lion from German artist Lothar Meggendorfer (1847-1925) include sound effects. All of the objects are from early children's books. Some of the books also included "sound effects" or small air bellows that when activated by pulling a bow or string, the animals or characters in the book would make a sound. According to the website, the air bellows have now been replaced with simple circuitry and batteries.

Metadata

Every digitized item includes a "More Information" link that provides viewers with supplemental bibliographic and narrative information about the item. The bibliographic information includes the title of the book that the item was taken from, the author, publisher, and publication year. Some also include excerpts from the text and provide a narrative of the author's reasons for including movable objects in the book. Unfortunately, there is not much metadata associated with the digital items. Since the objects all come from the same collection, and because this was an exhibit in 2002, it does not appear that there was a need to include detailed metadata with the digitized items regarding specifications and current physical location.

Intended Audience

According to the website's "About Us" page, the collection was designed to serve the research community and to entertain readers of all ages, including young children. As an Elementary School Librarian, the website caught my attention because the younger children at my school are fascinated by movable, pop-up books. There is also a "Links" page that provides viewers with other links of interest.

CSchley Blog 9 : Museum of the Moving Image

The Living Room Candidate contains more than 300 commercials, from every presidential election since 1952, when Madison Avenue advertising executive Rosser Reeves convinced Dwight Eisenhower that short ads played during such popular TV programs as I Love Lucy would reach more voters than any other form of advertising. This innovation had a permanent effect on the way presidential campaigns are run.

Collection Principles. As noted under the “About” section of this exhibition’s home page, the 2008 edition of this site was made possible by a grant from the Verizon Foundation. Per the very thorough “Site Guide/Help” section, “The Living Room Candidate: Presidential Campaign Commercials 1952-2008 is an online exhibition presenting more than 300 television commercials from every election year since 1952, when the first campaign TV ads aired. The website will be updated through the 2008 election between John McCain and Barack Obama. The site includes a searchable database and features commentary, historical background, election results, and navigation organized by year, type of ad, and issue. There is a playlist feature that allows visitors to select, annotate, and share their own groups of ads, and to view playlists by guest contributors. Each selected commercial is accompanied by a list of related ads. There is a transcript for each ad and a feature that allows visitors to search the entire database by title and by words in the transcripts.” Commercials on the site may be accessed on the toolbar in six different ways: Election Year; Type of Commercial; Issue; Curator’s Choice; Playlists; and Search. The commercials are organized into types such as: Backfire, Biographical, Children, Commander in Chief, Documentary, Fear, and Real People. The “For Teachers” section on the toolbar provides 8 lesson plans complete with pdfs for those plans

Object Characteristics. To view video, you will need Adobe Flash Player 8 or above. Screen resolution: The site is optimized for 1024x768 or higher screen resolution, and works with all major Web browsers including Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. If you click on any still image, the video will begin to play in a viewer in the center of the screen. This viewer offers the following capabilities: Pause/Play Button; Full Screen Button; Connection Speed Button; Volume Button; Scrub Bar; Credits Button; Transcript Button; Share Button; Save Button; Related Commercials; and Related Playlists/Activities. There are also clear instructions for creating, managing, and sharing playlists of various commercials. A click on Election Year 2008 brings up the McCain vs. Obama election, complete with a summary of the election, a fixed image from a video of McCain , and two rows of jpeg thumbnails in “click to view video” flash format, divided into Democratic and Republican campaign ads. Note also the pdf format for the 8 teacher lesson plans provided on the site.

Metadata. This exhibition is replete with metadata at nearly every click of the mouse! The full list of support, staff, research, organizational support, producer and curator, to name just a few of those noted are listed in the “About” section. The Privacy and Copyright section has some of the most complete privacy policy statements I have seen on similar image exhibitions. The copyright information is also similarly complete and thorough in listing the site’s terms and conditions of use. The short descriptive summaries for various type ads are clear and lead directly into the video. For example, in the Backfire type of commercial, the thumbnail for a 2008 ad regarding the rapid decline on Wall Street, states “On September 15, the day of the Lehman Brothers bank collapse and a 500-point drop in the Dow Jones average, John McCain said at a campaign event that "the fundamentals of our economy are strong." The Obama campaign seized on this instantly, releasing an ad the next day which repeats McCain's words several times.” Of particular interest are the Online Resources on the toolbar which provide a range of resources and links for further information on a wide range of topics including political commercials, politics and presidents, campaign websites, websites from prior campaigns going back to 1996, blogs and general resources.

Intended Audience. This exhibition is a current and up to date treasure trove for political junkies! But there is also a wealth of information for the folks who are interested in the history and development of video political campaign commercials. The site is not “academic” enough for a scholar to cite, but the various links are a good beginning for research in video on political campaigns.

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.

Katie R - Blog 8 - Rare Maps Digitisation Project

The National Library of Australia started a Rare Maps Digitisation Project in order to investigate the best process to digitize its collection of rare maps in 1998. This pilot project only involved a small portion of the holdings, but describes the digitization process in incredible detail, as the Australians seem to do quite well.

Collection Principles
Because this is only a pilot project, only 25 maps were chosen to digitize. The library was interested in exploring high quality scans. They chose maps that that would include "range of sizes available; black and white, or colour; physical condition, including any particular problem such as dissected and; mounted, bound into books, mounted on board, tape or other repairs, tears." The Project Report available on the web site details most of the project planning and process.

Object Characteristics
The images in this collection were "captured at 300 dpi using a Phase One digital scanning back with a scanning resolution of 6,000 x 8,400 pixels and a 36 bit internal colour depth." The images are kept as master TIFF files that are then compressed using MrSID software at 22:1 for viewing on the website. The user can view the images with the MrSID plug-in or without, which is really nice since not everyone wants to download the software, free or not. The map images offer a zoom feature, along with the opportunity to change the pixel size.

Metadata
On the front end, the metadata attached to the images is fairly traditional for maps. It includes title, author, publisher, size, and scale (ie, 1:724 000). Additional information on some of the maps that is helpful is the physical description which includes the map supports (paper on linen) and how stored (folded into slipcase). Some maps also include the latitude and longitude covered (E 140° 50' -- E152° 15' / S33° 36' -- S39° 50'). This specific information will be helpful when a software is more common that lets a web user outline an area on a map with a mouse, and the catalog would bring up all maps in that area (for instance, outlining Somalia, and all maps within those latitudes/longitudes would come up). The map cataloger is usually in charge of this information, so not all maps in this project have it.

Because this project was focused more on the high-quality images, I will cut the library some slack in the dismal metadata. But it seems that all aspects of a project should be figured out during this pilot. Since the project is 10 years old, I looked up a few online maps at the library, and it seems basic MARC fields still apply.

Intended Audience
The idea to digitize these rare maps appears to be access-oriented, so anyone anywhere can view the library's rare maps. There are many map aficionados in the world, so perhaps digitizing the rare maps will bring prestige to the collection. This is also helpful to GIS students or researchers.

Geoff Willard Blog #9: The Hand Drawn Map Association

As far as ideal digital collections go, this archive of hand drawn maps is not one of them. However, the archive's singular, off-the-wall vision is so intriguing I thought it deserved a second look. Ephemera collecting is the kind of collecting I can really get behind.  

Collection Principles

The specificity of the archive certainly binds their collecting policy. Save for a stray post-it note, they will generally only accept images of hand drawn maps from users, preferably in high resolution (300 DPI or higher, and at least 700 pixels in any one direction). Under the terms and conditions, users retain the copyright over their submissions, but the archive can effectively do whatever they want with it once it's in the collection.  

You'll notice there's no way to search or browse the 98 maps. Not surprisingly, none of the maps have been OCRed. There is also no option to zoom on any of the images (a second click brings you back to the main collection). 

Object Characteristics

It looks like the curator of this archive has imposed some level of name control on the submitted jpegs. Images are labelled with delimiter-separated words, beginning with 'hand_drawn_map' and ending with some word that summarizes the image. No other authority controls in terms of upload format, image size, or descriptive metadata are enforced, only suggested. I do wonder though what the process is - in terms digitization & description - when a user snail mails a map rather than sending it digitally. "We actually prefer this method," they claim, "and will even pay you for your submission to help cover postage costs (limited time offer). We prefer your actual, physical map on paper because they are so much more interesting and fun to archive."  

Metadata

Like the sample archive from last week, almost all the metadata falls on feet of the submitter. The archives provides the image with a number, the location (if known), the submitter user name, and the date uploaded. The curators occasionally describe how the map was submitted; a physical description is noted if they received the map in hard copy.  

Intended Audience

Saying that cartographers would be interested in this collection might be stretching it a bit. General connoisseurs of ephemera would probably see the appeal in this noble activity. It's the type of website that's enjoyed by BoingBoing readers (and I say that as one of them).

Tami Blog #8: The Conner Prairie Museum Textile Collection

Textiles were once an important element in American homes. As The Conner Prairie Museum Textile Collection’s home page states, “having enough textiles to keep warm during cold winter nights could mean the difference between life and death.” The textiles in this digital collection are preserved and housed at the Conner Prairie Living Museum in Fishers, Indiana. Conner Prairie was donated to the Quaker liberal arts school, Earlham College, by Ruth and Eli Lilly in the early 1960s. The museum eventually became independent of the college and preserves the historic William Conner home and recreates 19^th century life in Indiana on the White River. The textile collection was founded in the 1940s by the Lillys.

Collection Principles

This collection contains 41 digitized images of quilts, samplers, and coverlets. While the jpegs of the textiles are quite beautiful, the site itself has a few problems and was irritating and frustrating to use. There was no discernable “about this collection” section so the process taken to digitize the collection is unknown. In addition, there is no information indicating whether this is the complete collection maintained at Conner Prairie or why this particular collection was chosen for digitization. A creation date of March 19, 2008 is found on the bottom of the collection’s home page.

Object Characteristics

Each full object jpeg can be zoomed in or out to provide quite a bit of detail. In addition, detailed jpegs are provided that are crisp, clean, and zoomed in so tight as to provide easy viewing of individual stitches and weaves. The site maintains the usual ContentDM functionality with the ability to add the object to a Favorites folder, compare and rotate objects, and enlarge the sections you particularly want to view.

Metadata

This collection provides very good metadata. Once you have clicked on the textile image and are viewing the enlarged versions, you can click “Go” next to the words “document description” and you are provided with the metadata for that object. The metadata is very extensive and includes such criteria as title, object ID, description, creator, date creator, type, condition of the object, notes from the curator, digital date, and digital specifications. The descriptors for each object can then be clicked on to bring up more items with these same characteristics. Even the individual words in the descriptive text can be clicked to single out items with that particular quality.

The “advanced search” feature of the site allows you to search across as many of the Indiana digital collections as you like. There are 43 of them, ranging in topic from an art journal entitled Umbrella 1978-2005 to the Crispus Attucks Collection. The default setting has all of the collections checked but “select all” and “clear all” buttons are provided.

Intended Audience

This collection would be useful to researchers of early American history and textiles. I believe that the general public would find this site interesting due to the extensive amount of metadata provided. The notes from the curator are especially revealing. The university also provided a link to a document entitled “Quilts Across Cultures and for Many Reasons,” which is essentially a teaching aid, that can be accessed through the home page of the collection.