Stamps Take Flight

http://www.postalmuseum.si.edu/stampstakeflight/index.html

Stamps Take Flight

An exhibition of selected materials from the Postmaster General's Collection

This is a Digital Collection apparently made in conjunction with a physical exhibit of the same name that was up from March 15, 2005 - March 19, 2006. Its purpose is to use US stamps and related artifacts in the Postmaster Generals collection, depicting air and space subjects to illustrate the process of creating and printing stamps. It is presented by the National Postal Museum.

1. Selection decisions
It looks to me that everything that was in the actual exhibit is also in the digital exhibit. In addition there does not appear to be any stamps on the air and space topic missing from the exhibition. I should know, I have a collection on the same subject at home. In addition to the stamps themselves, it also shows, amongst other things, earlier designs, proofs and production methods.

2. Metadata
In the Gallery of Air and Space stamps meta data is limited to Subject, year of issue, Scott number and method of printing. File name is the Scott number, the unique identifier. The Illustrations available to illustrate the rest of the online exhibit have at the very least denomination, year and subject. Plus a standard caption in some cases. Captions themselves are short as most of the information is available on the exhibition page the image is linked to.
There is a bibliography and credits page for the exhibition itself.

3. Object Characteristics
The Stamp images in the Gallery are small and cannot be zoomed in on. They are there only to show what the stamp looks like not to allow detailed analysis. The stamps used as illustrations are in JavaScript and are slightly larger at 100% and can be zoomed in on, but there is a corresponding reduction in quality.

4) Intended audience
The intended audience is amature Stamp Collectors and any members of the general public who are interested in the subject. The exhibition is of no use to experts who probably know all the information presented already and own most of the stamps shown anyway, except for the really rare stuff.