NYPL Digital Gallery - The Floating World: Japanese Color Woodcuts by Kitagawa Utamaro

http://digitalgallery.nypl.org/nypldigital/explore/dgexplore.cfm?topic=arts&collection=TheFloatingWorldJapa&col_id=204

Collection Principles:
This collection consists of 56 original prints by Kitagawa Utamaro, a Japanes painter and woodcut desigern who lived from 1753 to 1806. All of the prints were selected from the NYPL's collection of Japanese ukiyo-e prints, most of which were donated Charles Stewart Smith in 1901. Smith had purchased the 1,763 prints from one Captain Frank Brinkley in 1829, and so the contents of the collection reflects Briknley's personal taste. Though the collection donated by Smith included prints by other artists, the NYPL chose only to digitize those by Utamaro. The reason for this, it seems, is that Utamaro is an important artist of the ukiyo-e school. Of the 123 prints in the collection that are by Utamaro, they chose to include 56 in the digital exhibit. The criteria by which these 56 were selected are not provided. There were not, strictly speaking, any collection principles involved in the creation of this digital exhibition. Rather, the NYPL chose to digitize what they felt were some of the most important pieces in an existing collection.

Object Characteristics:
Each digital image is presented on the left side of the page, with the metadata presented next to it on the right of the page. Below the image are options to enlarge the image, add it to selections, pan and zoom, display a printer-frindly version, and to purchase a print of the artwork. The image is identified by a digital ID number, not with filename or address. The user can even modify the image by cropping, and purchase this version as a print. This purchase page contains licensing information as well.

Metadata:
The metadata provided with each image include creator, image caption, created date, medium, specific material type, item physical description, subject(s), additional name(s), notes, provenance, standard reference(s), collection guide, digital ID, digital record ID, and NYPL call number. Notice that the digital image itself and the image's digital record have different identifiers. The main page for the NYPL's digital collections contains information on the conditions of use of these digital objects.

Intended Audience:
I suspect that the intended audience for this digital collection is the general public. The fact that the images are presented with a link to a page where they can be purchases suggests to me that they chose the most attractive/generally appealing of Utamaro's prints to digitize so that the digitial exhibit wold be widely marketable. No one wants to buy prints of ugly artwork, after all. I also don't think that individuals using the digital images for scholarly purposes would be that interested in purchasing physical copies of the images, since the digital format is actually more flexible since the image can be examined in greater detail. Personally, I think providing the option to purchase a print of the artwork, and advertising it with a link directly below the image, is a clever way to make money, and perhaps recoup the cost of digitizing the image in the first place.