Picturing Words at the Smithsonian

Picturing Words at the Smithsonian consists of a collection of book illustrations. I'm not sure how new it is but it seems fairly recent as the "About the Design Principles" page is still under construction.

Collection Principles
- designed around the theme of book illustrations. They were divided based on inspiration, influence, information, and process
- seems to be an online-only exhibition
- from the Smithsonian's current collection (not borrowed/bought for the exhibit)

Object Characteristics
- all images are JPEGs
- the images are named it appears with sequential numerical names
- no search functionality

Metadata
- metadata for the original object: title, year published, author, and page source are pretty good
- minimal metadata for digital object - no info on process or tools use; perhaps this will be part of the design principles page

Audience
- This would be interesting for someone researching book illustrations, though probably more for inspiration. It's an attractive site, but the usability is somewhat limited - no searching, and lots of scrolling down. Someone who Googled their way to the site would enjoy it - I liked the images, but I kept feeling like I got virtually lost in the exhibit. I think the typical user would be a museum-goer visiting the Smithsonian site who explored the site and stumbled across this. That's how I found it.