Wonders: Images of the Ancient World, NYPL

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=all&col_id=682

This New York Public Library digital exhibition consists of over 1,700 images (paintings, engravings, photographs, etc.) depicting ancient civilizations (Egypt, Greece, Rome, etc.) taken from 18th to early 20th century. The collection is massive, and exploring it can be a bit overwhelming at first. The only options to browse through the collection are to display all the images at once (clicking through page after page, organized alphabetically by title) or by viewing parts of the collection grouped by subject headings. But since there are still a lot of different subject headings, this can still take some time. A general 'search' feature is also available, though you can't pick a specific category.

Pretty much all the metadata you could possibly want is provided with each image: creator (if known), format/medium, date produced, the original collection it was taken from, etc. The catalog number in the library is also provided, should you want to go and see that drawing of the kneeling Greek archer you like so much live and in person. Images can be enlarged to a degree, but zooming in is limited to roughly 5x the thumbnail size. A link located on the toolbar near each image lets you purchase a print, should you so desire.

The lack of browsing options would suggest that this is a site for people who know their subject (Classics Majors, I'm looking at you. Well, not at the moment. I'm typing, actually. But... never mind). And, with that in mind, this is a very successful collection. But people without a good background in Classics will have to be content to take their time to figure out the collection, or spend some time wandering around aimlessly (which, honestly, there's something to be said for. There are plenty of interesting things to discover here).

Chicago State University

The Chicago State University Collection contains historical photographs of the University. The site uses CONTENTdm, and is not at all aesthetically appealing. The about page for the collection establishes the University as an important witness to the demographic shift that occurred in Chicago during the 20th century. The collection does not reflect this. It contains only 16 photographs, some of the school seal rather than the students. Whether these photographs were the only ones they had or why they were chosen about the rest and why so few were digitized is left to the viewer's imagination.
The metadata provided is very thorough, with more than 15 fields including one for all the notes they have on the object. Metadata varies from object to object, but the information about the objects is substantial. The image itself is only visible in thumbnail or a screen-view size. The original scan is not available for viewing. The site provides no information about the digital object or what kind of technologies were used in digitizing.
I would guess that this collection is aimed at people with a casual interest in the university. The collection as a whole is too small for any real research and it does little to show the demographic change discussed in the about page.

The Pelican Project

http://www.thingsmagazine.net/projects/pelican.htm

This digital collection focuses on scans of book covers from Pelican Books, which was an offshoot of Penguin Books that was started in 1937.  Selection decisions aren’t listed, but looking through the collection, you can see that they made the choice to scan only front covers, which are in varying conditions.  Investigating further, I found out that it's not a complete collection, so it may be made up just of books they had access to, or perhaps just covers they liked.  There's no way to know, and the lack of information about selection decisions could be a missed opportunity.  If they let users know what books they were still looking for they could possibly elicit the help of other Pelican Book enthusiasts to lend books or send in scans to help complete the collection.  It’d also be interesting to know why the scans stopped in 1985.  Did the series end, or did they just not like the cover design styles of the late 1980’s?

Rights management isn't talked about, but I think it'd be safe to assume that they didn't get permission to post these.  Covers were scanned at 200ppi, which seems like a decent balance between not having high enough resolution that it would make rights owners feel threatened, but still displaying a quality image (though who knows really?).  At first glance, I thought they had added shadows around the books, which seems like it would be a bad choice for preservation.  On closer inspection, it looks like erasing the outer border of the scan is what gives the illusion of shadows.  This decision gives the collection a cohesive visual look, and displays great against the white background.   

The layout of the site is really clean.  Items are arranged by year, which is really the only metadata.  It's confusing that some books appear in two different years, and it would be helpful to know why that decision was made.  It would also be nice to know more about the graphic designers, although I don't know if that information was in the books.  Because of the emphasis on the visual design of the collection, I would say the collection is targeted towards fans of modernist design, or graphic design history.  The collection is a great representation of the changing eras of graphic design, but with even a little information about their selection decisions and collection, it could be a much better resource.

American Indians of the Pacific Northwest Collection

http://content.lib.washington.edu/aipnw/index.html

This collection is one of the University of Washington libraries’ special collections. The website provides an extensive digital collection of original photographs and documents about the Northwest Coast and Plateau Indian cultures, complemented by essays written by anthropologists, historians, and teachers about both particular tribes and cross-cultural topics. The digital databases includes over 2,300 original photographs as well as over 1,500 pages from the Annual Reports of the Commissioner of Indian Affairs to the Secretary of the Interior from 1851 to 1908 and six Indian treaties negotiated in 1855. Secondary sources include 89 articles from the Pacific Northwest Quarterly and 23 University of Washington publications in Anthropology.

It is easy to explore the collection. Users can browse by Images, Documents, Image Subjects and Image Subjects. For example, users can click the “Browse Images” button, and in the next webpage, the list of available items will appear in the dropdown box. When users find the image they want to see, they can click the thumbnail, and a large picture will load on the screen. Zoom in or out can change the view to see the big picture or to get in close. At the same time, users can use some special tools such as “Maximum Resolution”, “Fit in Window”, “Fit to width”, Rotate left, Rotate right, Hide/show thumbnail and Clip image in a new window. Especially, for “Clip image in a new window”, users can click the mouse and drag the box diagonally to select part of the image. In the new window, right-click to perform other browser functions, such as save, print and e-mail. The metadata will be found under the picture along with Title, Photographer, Date, Notes, Subjects, Location Depicted, Object Type, Negative Number, Collection, Repository, Restrictions and Transmission Data.

Like most online digital collections, the essays and digital databases may be accessed by using the keyword search at the top of pages throughout the site. Overall, this is a high – level digital collection, as part of the American Memory Historical Collections at the Library of Congress, it was 1997/98 Award Winner in Ameritech Digital Library Competition. The intended audience for this particular digital collection would definitely be K-12 teachers, researchers and anyone who may be interested in American Indians culture.

Kolloen Family Photo Collection

Recently a friend of mine discovered that his family is featured in a digital collection hosted by The University of Washington Libraries. The collection is only a sample of what the library/archive actually carries related to the Kolloen family. There is no explanation for why these specific images were chosen to be digitized but UW does offer some interesting background on the family, the historical context of the collection and the relevance for Seattle.

In total, the digital collection contains 34 images compiled in a ContentDM site. The images feature members of the family, the hotel they built and pictures of the Yukon Territory. The ContentDM format allows users to interact with the images in pretty interesting ways. The images can be viewed as many different sizes and rotated, although I'm not really sure why it would be useful to rotate the images as they are all right-side up. An interesting feature of the site allows you to select an area of the photo which then appears in a new browser window. The selected area does not show up any larger than the last view but it does allow you to crop the picture in the browser and then save the image as is. I think it's nice that you can interact with the images this way. I don't think I've seen any other digital collection that allows you to crop a photo within the browser.

Not surprisingly, UW does a nice job with the metadata which is displayed beneath each image. They provide detailed information about the image as well as hyperlinks in the title which allow users to view other images with the keywords in the title. The also provide information about the collection and the historical context. Users are able to save the images to their own computers as the copyright has expired on the images but they also have a service that allows you to order prints from the collection.

UW obviously has a great reputation and I like what they've done with this collection. I would like more information about why these items were selected over others but it's nicely done. Information is easy to find, images are clear and large and interactive. They really made the most of the ContentDM structure and put together an interesting collection that is important for the city of Seattle's history.

A Taste of Horton

A Taste of Horton

A selection of items from the Horton Collection of Children's Material.

The Horton Collection was created by the Aberystwyth University in Aberystwyth, Wales, located in the Thomas Parry Library Rare Books Collection and contains over 800 items showing the development of children’s literature during the two hundred years from the mid-eighteenth century to 1913. The collection is intended to be a research into juvenile literature, historical and analytical bibliography, publishing, illustration, costume and drama.

The archive is arranged in both a gallery format and an index format, which is organized into author, bookseller, engraver, general, illustrator, printer, publisher, series, and title indexes. Each book has an extensive metadata list, containing, when applicable, the book's call number, author, title, edition imprint, page size, collation, the printer, illustration details, binding information, annotations, collections, references, contents, and tracings. The images scanned from the book, only a handful of each, may be seen at a higher resolution. The archive further contains links to other children's literature archives, libraries, projects, and collections.

The gallery display is very well organized, with the books being listed in alphabetical order by title. The scans of the books are displayed on one side of the main table, and the book title, author, and illustrator are on the other. A handful of the images have some distortion from the scanning process, but the pictures overall are very clear.

Ball State University Digital Media Repository

Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana, uses CONTENTdm to create their Digital Media Repository, a resource housing 57 separate digital collections featuring a variety of materials. The repository's About page gives some information about the goals of this digital initiative (greater access, adding to international body of digital objects, etc.), but it also has a link to a video explaining the project from the perspective of those involved in its creation, maintenance, and use. I thought it was nice that the video conveniently had a link to the .wmv in Dial-Up or Broadband formats, by the way. The video does a good job of explaining the benefits of such an initiative to a relatively regional state school like Ball State, and to those outside of their community who may not get a chance, or may not think, to explore their collections.

Users can do a simple search of the collections or sort the collections by Subject/Geographic Area, Dept., Format, or Explore A-Z. Sorting by these categories brings up expandable mens from which you can further drill down to specifics. Two collections I enjoyed browsing were the Musical Instruments Collection and the Works Progress Administration Miniature Furniture collection. Both contain images, but also video and/or audio files to augment the item's display. As the repository uses CONTENTdm, the look and feel of browsing the items is relatively standardized. Each collection will display limited image thumbnails and descriptive information in sortable columns when listing the categories you are browsing. Metadata for each item in the collections is mostly descriptive with some administrative data. It is adequate despite a lack of technical data, which might be useful for the audio and video files. For all of the collections, audio files are Windows Media and videos are in Quicktime format.

The Musical Instruments Collection lists 141 objects to explore. The collection home page has very little background information about the collection or the intruments themselves. The images are simply digital photographs of the instruments. But each instrument image is accompanied by a short audio file of someone playing the instrument. In many cases, detail imags of parts of the instruments are available. When video is used, it is 3D rotation of the instruments with zoom functions. The audio files are great and let you hear everything from more cowbell to music boxes to didgeridoos. Fun.

The WPA miniture furniture was an unexpected find. This collections homepage has a link to an about page with a bit of background on the items. They come from an Indiana State Museum Project from the 1930's and 1940's centered in Evansville, Indiana, that sought to preserve in miniature typical furnishings of the era. The scale is reportedly 2 inches to 12 inches. The furniture was intended for display in libraries, museums, and schools throughout the state and the items were functional. The collection provide images of 33 objects and includes 3D rotating videos that you can manipulate, just like the musical instruments.

The repository contains several collections that include relative typical types of objects. The two particular collections above include 3D objects. Creating digital collections that come closest to recreating the experience of interacting with the real objects seems much more difficult with 3D objects. Augmenting with audio and video (especially that can be manipulated) is a step in the right direction.