National Music Museum

National Music Museum

The website for the National Music Museum says that it is "America's Shrine to Music on the Campus of The University of South Dakota"

1. The physical museum itself contains 13,500 American, European, and non-Western instruments. However, they do admit that the online holdings are a far smaller number. I can't really tell why they chose what they did to put online but I would take a guess that it was their more interesting looking pieces (notice the sweet mandolin on the right).

2. Each picture came with a very nice explanation of what the piece was, when it was made, who it belonged to (if known) as well as the source they used to obtain all of the information in case a scholar wished to more research. There wasn't any metadata concerning the dimension of the instrument or anything physical about it but the website treated the viewer as if they were taking a virtual museum tour and gave them information accordingly.

3. The objects appear to be digitized very nicely. They are not simply photographed where they sat in the museum but rather against a solid background so that the viewer can appreciate the detailing of the piece. Some of the photos allow one click zooming but many do not. Still others have close up pictures provide of sections of the instrument that the museum belives are of the most interest. I was a little confused when I first arrived at the site. Navigation is daunting. There seem to be too many links and too many ways to view the collection and not enough order or direction. There is not a search engine of any king but rather lists of links. You can search by type of instrument, the maker, the archive that houses the instrument, or once you are viewing an object there is a icon that allows you to just proceed to the next photograph. Really very confusing but once you figure out the navigation the collection is quite nice.

4. musical instrument scholars, music history scholars, students, library patrons who wish to take a closer look at a particular instrument but mostly the students of the University.