Tuesday, September 11, 2007

"Drawing from Life"

"Drawing from Life" is an online exhibit featuring a selection of caricatures and cartoons from The American Art/Portrait Gallery, a branch of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries.

Selection Decision: The special collection at the gallery contains about 450 caricatures and cartoons in their special collection. It seems as though they digitized just a representative sample of their collection. Their selection includes the works of about a dozen historical influential cartoonists.

Metadata: There is very minimal metadata presented with this collection. Each cartoon image is shown with a list of subjects, the title of the book that the image came from, and the date of the cartoon.

Object Characteristics: The images initially presented are a cropped portion of the cartoon. The viewer has the option to click on a link to expand the image, which then shows you a scan of the full page from the book. From there you can zoom in on the image.

Audience: It seems like the intended audience would be history buffs specifically interested in this subject. They include a list of book titles for further reading on cartoons and caricatures in general, political cartoons, and biographies on the cartoonists.

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