Wisconsin Decorative Arts : Home

This week, I looked at the Wisconsin Decorative Arts Database, a digital collection of photographs of material culture artifacts used and made in 19th and early 20th century Wisconsin. This project is a collaboration of several historical museums and organizations throughout Wisconsin.

Selection Decisions: The information on this Web site suggests that the purpose of this collection is to provide a resource for studying Wisconsin's material culture artifacts. Since the project is a collaboration of several organizations, I would assume that entire collections aren't being digitized. Therefore, the staff of the project is most likely making selection decisions based on what they think will be the most effective research materials for their user base, such as unique or iconic artifacts of the time period.

Metadata: The database website gives a good description of the kinds of technology used to produce the digital objects, including the camera model used to take the photos of the items and the software used to adjust the images. It also names the software used to create the database. The project's metadata standards are based on Dublin Core metadata elements. The finding aid of the collection is very thorough for each item, providing detailed descriptions, locations, and information about creation, and the location of the original item. After observing all of the different types of artifacts and all of their variations, I was glad to learn that keyword search terms are standardized, even if they do come from two different vocabularies.

Object Characteristics: Overall, the photographs of the material culture objects are very thorough, often providing shots of several different angles, including detail shots. I was impressed with the clarity of images when zooming into the detail shots. I'm not a professional photographer, but I have a feeling that the quality of photography could be a little better; many of the images have lots of shadow and reflection that distract from the objects themselves.

The Intended Audience appears to be anyone with and interest in either Wisconsin specifically or in material culture objects in general. The site allows the user to browse by object type, being furniture, metal work, ceramics, etc, so it would be a good resource for someone interested in a specific style of historic craft works. Since this collection is specifically based in Wisconsin, I imagine that it expects a lot of attention from amateur researchers simply interested in learning about their local history.