The Mercator Globes at Harvard Map Collection

The Mercator Globes at Harvard Map Collection contains Gerard Mercator's terrestrial and celestial globes (from 1541 and 1551, respectively). Mercator's globes mark the transition from globes from exclusive scholarly objects to more commercially available items. The Web site, run by Harvard, includes descriptions of both globes, including some historical and conservation data, and images of the globes themselves.

There is little information about the representation of color (how do I know that my computer settings accurately reflect the globe color?) or for that matter what the original color and detail of the globes looked like versus what they look like now. I would have liked more detail on the restoration process. There are a few images and links to images with explanations (such as the dedication cartouche or the sea monsters), although the site is general and clearly intended for the layman. A serious researcher would need to look elsewhere for more context, although the detail afforded in the image might be enough to avoid a trip to Harvard. The copyright statement says only that the images are property of Harvard. There is no metadata to speak of.

The images are delivered via the Harvard University Library's Image Delivery Service, with a good deal of easy-to-use functionality. The size of the image can be manipulated, and the image can be zoomed in 57-200%. On the terrestrial globe, the 200% zoom is close enough to see the individual brush strokes and foxing. The full image allows you to see where you are in relation to the whole at all times. You can also rotate the image, very helpful for place names written on an angle.

The celestial globe page offers a helpful list of Mercator vs. modern place names for the constellations. The zoom here is 525 to 200%. Again the full image offers the opportunity to see how the detail related to the whole--but in this case, not the whole sky but merely the whole constellation. Another more comprehensive view would have been helpful. With this globe it was harder to see where you were in the context of the whole globe.

All in all, this site is very useful both offering access to fragile, one-of-a-kind items and providing descriptions for laymen as to what we are looking at and why it is important. Moreover, the panning and scanning function of the images allow closer examination of the items than we would be allowed in real life. A drawback is the fact that only Explorer can be used at this time, a lack which presumably can and should be rectified soon. Overall, this project seems to offer the some of the best features of digitization, in that it affords access to the user while protecting the fragile object. I would like to see more metadata on the digitization and conservation processes, however.

Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage

CLIOH

Purpose

The Cultural Digital Library Indexing Our Heritage (CLIOH) is a project of the Indiana University School of Informatics Informatics Research Institute (IRI). The project is a result of cooperation between various departments in IU as well as outside organizations such as the Mathers Museum and the Indiana State Museum. The purpose of CLIOH is to document and preserve world heritage sites in digital form for future generations. Currently, the collection contains multimedia from the Mayan city of Uxmal in Yucatan, Mexico, and the Angel Mounds Mississippian site.

Object Characterisitcs & Metadata

Currently, the collections consists mainly of still Image digitized in 1000x667 pixels 862KB JPEGs. The collection also includes Real media streaming video clips. However, as the collection grows, the library promises to include other QTVR, virtual reality and graphical recreations as part of the collection. The CLIOH archive is cataloged in compliance with Dublin Core and Open Archives Initiatives guidelines. The search system includes query searching and subject browsing.d.

Intended Audience

One of the goals of CIOH is to provide various technologies to researchers, students, and patrons interested in the subject mater to gain access to these items in order to aid in the development of “reports, investigative studies and other curriculum driven outcomes”. As such one CLIOH can be said to be for scholarly use and for future generations that may take interest in the contributions that ancient cultures left to humankind.

Le Théâtre

An exhibit of the Maine Memory Network, the online museum of the Maine Historical Society, Le Théâtre is a small collection of photographs and printed material relating to the cultural presence of the French-Canadian influx to Lewiston, Maine at the end of the 19^th century. The community opened several theatres in the mill-town and produced plays and opera for decades. This exhibit represents the theatrical activity with some photographs of key figures and a few pieces of ephemera from the period.

Collection Principles
The material for the exhibit came from the Franco-American Collection of the Historical Society, and focuses for the most part on several men such as Jean-Baptiste Couture and Alphonse Coté, who were responsible for establishing early production companies and acting in many of their own shows. Several of the prominent troupes are shown as well as posters and playbills from the period. Other than one or two later photographs (the theatre companies continued to stage productions well into the 1980s), the exhibit focuses on the late 1800s to the early twentieth century, when it seems the interest in theatre was at its height.

Object Characteristics
The scans here (and throughout the exhibits of the Maine Memory Network) come in three sizes, the largest of which is fairly suitable for study, but all scans are very heavily compressed, with artifacts from the compression marring the image, and each is typed over with a sort of watermark/disclaimer stating that they’re for education use only. This disclaimer is large, ugly, and intrusive. The scans have not been retouched in any way (no level correction, etc), and this sometimes makes them a bit hard to study. Since these are surrogates meant for informal viewing, there’s no reason the Society couldn’t have corrected them for easier viewing.

Metadata
There is some metadata included here. We’re given the photo’s title, creation and subject dates, place of origin, and dimensions. LCSH headings are also included as well as the internal item number. More information can be requested. Each photo and document also has a very brief contextual description.

Intended Audience
The audience for this and the Network’s other exhibits seems to be the casual browser. I’d imagine that the intent is to informally introduce users to the more interesting facets of the Historical Society’s holdings, and perhaps to increase traffic to the actual archives themselves.

Hallgren Papers

COLLECTION PRINCIPLES

• The goal of the collection is to give people a "small picture of life before, during, and after World War II." The collection sticks to that goal quite well; the collection is small but does offer some information that's not widely publicized. Nothing outside of papers and photos that were owned by Major Hallgren's wife are included.
  
• The individual pages within the site clearly state what has been digitized, whether it's all or part of that particular type of media within the collection, so the scope is readily apparent from withing the collection.
• There is very little or no information on the original file formats, resolution, or digitization process.
• The Restrictions on access statement – stated on the item search result detail page (only).
• Ownership – The information is included that the collection is owned by Combined Arms Research Library, which is part of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College
• Authenticity Information – The provenance of the documents is explicitly stated.
• Integrity & Interpretation Information – Not stated, there were a few likely errors in the text transcripts of handwritten documents, but most of it appeared to be accurate (although with the quality of the scanned images it’s impossible to tell for sure) and the transcripts were apparently complete, including text in the document that had been written and then crossed out by the original author.
• Sustainability over time – Probably a very high likelihood of sustainability considering the institution: Combined Arms Research Library of the U.S. Army’s Command and General Staff College, part of the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center (CAC), which is in turn a major subordinate headquarters of the US Army Training and Doctrine Command. The CAC and its predecessor organizations have been in existence since 1882 and the CAC is in charge of preparing the Army and its officers for war. In addition to being educational, this collection can also be viewed as being good PR for the Army.
  
• Broadly available, accessibility information – Broadly available, Section 508 compliance required by federal law but they may have fudged a bit on the alt text; the alt tags for the images is almost always either the name and size of the image file or, in the case of the thumbnails, the name and size of the image file linked to. The thumbnail image captions convey some of the information but not exactly the information that a visually impaired user would desire; the captions don’t convey the information that’s provided visually to the sighted user.
• Respects intellectual property rights – Yes (CARL has the rights), “Approved for public release distribution is unlimited.”
• Usage data mechanisms – None apparent though they almost certainly have server stats.
• Fits into larger context of significant related national and international digital library initiatives – Yes, part of the CARL digital library.
• 
  

OBJECT CHARACTERISTICS

• Produced in a way that ensures support of collection priorities while maintaining good interoperability and reusability characteristics. Interoperability is quite impaired by the poor metadata.
• The institution does apparently intend that the object will remain accessible over time despite changing technologies.
• The files are either jpeg images or web pages and therefore exchangeable across platforms and broadly available. No information is available on higher resolution images or the digitization process.
• The individual identifier is that web page URL; there is no apparent stable, persistent, unique identifier for the individual items within the collection; the identifier is the web page URL.

METADATA

• Metadata? What metadata?! The main body of metadata is only accessible through the initial search page and it consists of metadata for the collection itself, not individual objects; there is no such page for the individual components of the collection, blocking the search for individual objects and eliminating the possibility of searching for individual objects within the Hallgren collection itself.
  
  The metadata listed for the collection consists of the collection name, the collection title, an abstract, keywords, date of the original, year of digitization, resource type (“Textual, Photographs”), format (“HTML”), Call number (the URL for the collection homepage), language (“eng”), release statement, and Repository.
  
  The metadata accompanying images on the thumbnail and individual pages mainly consists of the caption and the basic image properties, nothing more.
• Good metadata supports interoperability.Not much help here!
• Hard to impossible to collocate individual objects from the search page.
• Long term management will probably suffer from the lack of metadata.

INTENDED AUDIENCE

• The intended audience is the general public; I feel the quality of the images, some apparent inaccuracies within the transcripts, and the small collection make it poor material for scholars and researchers if they're only accessign the material online.

Ann Dobbs

National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming featuring fine art depicting wildlife

National Museum of Wildlife Art in Jackson Hole, Wyoming featuring fine art depicting wildlife

This museum has nearly 4,000 works of art relating to nature and wildlife. They strive to enrich and inspire public appreciation of fine art by focusing on wildlife. The collection includes painting, sculptures, jewelry, photography, and furniture.

1. The museum digitized only a few of their holdings that are currently on exhibition. The items that were meticulously digitized were those that were for sale.

2. Metadata includes the creator of the piece, the title of the piece, the price, materials, and dimensions.

3. each object had a larger version for viewing. The pieces were photographed from one angle. the items that were not for sale where poorly digitized. They were photographed from an angle as opposed from straight forward. this caused the images to look slightly distorted. Many of the paintings were photographed too close to the image which cut off portions of the painting.

4. the intended audience appeared to be anyone willing to buy the art because these for sale items were of a higher digital quality.

Virtual Instrument Museum at Wesleyan University

Virtual Instrument Museum at Wesleyan University

After pondering the fact that I had never made a blog entry for this class on any subject besides digitized images, I actively searched for digitized sound collections, and found this online gallery of world instruments and ensembles from Wesleyan University. The online version of the museum, which is set to have a physical space in 2008, began in 2003. It is searchable in a variety of ways, including by material, type, geographic region, genre, ensemble, and alphabetically. The site also includes a world map to illustrate the distribution of the instruments’ countries of origin in the collection. The website is incredibly innovative, and allows the user to view certain instruments in 360 degrees by manual manipulation, as well as via still images, video and audio clips.

The site currently displays 116 instruments out of a collection of over 300, and advertises that they are continually adding instruments to the online museum and updating the photo, video, and audio files. I believe the curators selected the most interesting or exotic instruments to first undergo digitization, as more “normal” or Western instruments seem to be largely ignored in the collection. At some point it seems that the goal of the museum is to include digital versions all the instruments in their physical collection.

The metadata for each object, when available, is quite extensive. The metadata includes:

• History
• Physical Description
  
• Tuning
• Technique
• Notation
• Context
• References
• Further readings
• Geographic Region
• Country of origin
• Subregion
• Climatic type
• Time period
• Classification
• SvH No.
• Is an Ensemble?
• Genres
• Related Web Sites
• Author

Unfortunately this information is not always available with every object in the collection. Usually the object includes metadata from at least some of these categories, but occasionally (and disappointingly) nothing at all accompanies the name of the instrument. The collection as a whole is very well-documented, and includes full credits of all performers, students, faculty, and staff who helped in its creation. Additionally, a page on the website briefly explains the history behind the collection: “Among universities, Wesleyan University has one of the largest and most diverse collections of world musical instruments. It contains three classes of holdings: daily-use instructional instruments and sets of instruments (e.g. gamelan, Ghanian drums, steelband); instruments brought to Wesleyan by students, alumni and faculty; and donated instruments. Early in Wesleyan's history, Methodist missionaries and alumni brought back exotic curios from around the world. Among objects from Africa, Oceania, and Asia were musical instruments… The launching of the Wesleyan Virtual Instrument Museum begins a new era for the instrument collection.”

The digital objects are available to the user for viewing using a variety of methods. The audio files play as MP3s, compatible with Quicktime, WinAmp, Media Player, iTunes, OSX, and XMMS. The video clips of people performing with the instruments are in streaming Quicktime (.mov) format, and smaller versions are available for download in MPEG1 format. The QTVR 360 degree movies are also viewable in Quicktime. The thumbnails for each instrument are rather small, but the images can be enlarged and viewed at 1000 x 612 and 780 x 472, often with more than one view of the same instrument (side, back, front). The video clips are easily watched, and are much larger and less grainy than videos in YouTube. The sound slips are of good sound quality.

The intended audience is probably anyone with any degree of interest in world music, or really just music in general. Students may find the site useful if they cannot hear or watch an instrument being played in real life. I’ll be forwarding this site to my father, an avid world drum collector- I don’t think even he has heard of all of these unique instruments!

Geoff Schmalz 9th blog Studebaker from Horses to Horsepower

My ninth blog concerns the collection of Studebaker images at the Smithsonian in a collection titled Studebaker: from Horses to Horsepower
http://www.sil.si.edu/ondisplay/studebaker/cf/studebaker_allimages.cfm

Selection Procedure: 80 images having to do with Studebaker Corporation were chosen. They comprise photos, drawings, and renderings of book pages. The items cover everything from a photographs of one of the company's founders Clement Studebaker who started the company in 1852 and was joined by his brother John in 1858, to images of a catalog in the 1950s after Studebaker had merged with Packard and did not have alot of time left before folding in 1966 after 114 years.

Image Characteristics: The images are both black and white and color. They can be enlarged using the closer view links under each one. The all images page has captions for each one that disappear when the images are enlarged. However, even the larger images still indicate that they are part of the Smithsonian's collection.

Metadata: On the all images page, each image has a caption. Here is an example: About this Image:Light-Six two-passenger Coupe-Roadster
Source of Image:Studebaker Corporation of America The Studebaker Light Six: the World’s Greatest Light-Weight Automobile South Bend, Ind.: Studebaker Corporation of America, 1922. Images from the Trade Literature Collection. Both information about the content and provenance of the item is provided for each digital image. Another helpful metadata touch is that by each image is a link that allows the user to click to return to the previous page, letting the user quickly navigate no matter whre in the set of 80 images he or she finds himself or herself.

Intended Audience: The images include pictures of Studebaker cars, factories and clippings from brochures. Therefore, I believe the intended audience of the collection is Studebaker or auto buffs, but also people who are fascinated by the process of industrialization that occurred in North America, both in the United States and Canada, between 1852 and 1966, the years during which the Studebaker Corporation endured.

Schoyen Collection

Sch�yen Collection | Contents

Collection Principles: This website is devoted to documenting the Schoyen Collection, the largest private manuscript collection assembled in the 20th century. It comprises 13,642 manuscripts, including 2,242 volumes, originating from every regions of the globe and spanning over 5000 years. The principles guiding the inclusion of digital images on the website are, of necessity, the same as those guiding the creation of the physical collection. The introduction to the collection states that "the present website comprises a selection of digital descriptions of manuscripts with sample images from The Schoyen Collection. The whole collection comprises about 13,600 manuscripts and inscribed objects, of which about 720 are available on the present website. The selection, description and digitalisation are the responsibility of the owner of the The Schoyen Collection." Thus, the principles behind the selection of objects to include online are the personal prerogative of the Collection's owner. One imagines that he or she chose to include the manuscripts that he/she thought best represented the vital components of the collection.

Object Characteristics: Each manuscript is represented by a single image from the manuscript (or an image of the object, in the case of inscribed objects or papyri fragments). A small-scale image is placed next to a description of the object. This image can be displayed full-screen by clicking on it. From here, the user can zoom in once to see detail.

Metadata: Accompanying each image is information about its physical counterpart. Included are the shelfmark and "title" of the manuscript or object, a short description of the object (including language, date, etc.), a description of the context of the object origination, its provenance, a commentary on relevant aspects of the object, publication information (if the object has been published in a book, or the like), and information on exhibition history, if the object has been exhibited. Links to other relevant object are provided as well. Each class of object (such as "Pre-1450 printing" or "Patristic Literature") is also accompanied by a brief contextual/historical introduction to that category of objects. There is also a general introduction to the collection that includes information on the size and scope of the collection, the collection's history and future, its provenance, the conservation efforts, a statement concerning opportunities for research using the collection, and a statement of copyright. There is also a list of photo credits. There is no metadata concerning the digital objects themselves, except that the images were prepared for the web by Elizabeth G. Sorenssen.

Intended Audience: It seems that the indented audience for these digital objects is both the scholarly community and the general public. The capabilities associated with each object are not extensive, and only one image of each object is included, resulting in a relative paucity of material for the serious researcher. The introduction the collection states that "by giving access to parts of unique materials, the present web presentation contributes towards the publication and availability of this internationally important part of the world's cultural heritage, independently of the physical location of the original objects." The intended audience, then, seems to be anyone who is interested in the cultural heritage of humanity. An extensive audience, indeed.

Black Panther

Black Panther: The Revolutionary Art of Emory Douglas is an exhibit put together by the Los Angeles Museum of Contemporary Art. It follows the progress of his visual work for the Black Panther Party, spanning just over a decade.

Collection Principles

This website, designed to accompany the exhibit, features not only a wide sampling of Douglas' art, but also digital audio of him talking about his art (1, 2 ). In addition, there are several images of the exhibit itself within the gallery space.

Object Characteristics

Viewable on the site's front page are the actual political posters that make up the Emory Douglas exhibit. Here can be found a sampling of what is featured at the MoCA. Clicking on each thumbnail will pull up an enlarged scan of the poster along with pertinent information regarding that particular piece--for instance, a quote from Douglas himself regarding its significance--and the metadata.

Metadata

The metadata provided for the posters include where and when the poster is from, via what printmaking method it was made, and the collection from which it came. With regard to the digitization of the posters, the only information provided by the MoCA is "digital imaging by Echelon".


Intended Audience

The intended audience is anyone interested in African-American history and art, specifically from the Civil Rights era to the present, or those interested in researching the Black Panther Party.

Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930

The Immigration to the United States, 1789-1930, is a collection of digitized material from various collections at Harvard University's libraries, archives, and museums. The collection chronicles voluntary immigration into the U.S. from the Declaration of Independence through the beginning of the Depression. It includes 1,800 books and 9,000 photographs, 200 maps, and 13,000 pages from manuscript and archival collections. It is part of the Open Collections Project, which offers access to Harvard collections--as such, it may the most sustainable of all of the digital projects we have so far examined, since Harvard has tremendous resources.

The site includes a basic timeline of events in US history, but the bulk of the site is made up the material itself rather than explanatory material. There is both a search and a browse function. The search offers full text for the manuscripts and catalog terms for the visual resources. I searched for "somerville" in visual resources (you cannot search both simultaneously) and pulled up visual 4 records that have the site listed somewhere in the record. The full records include extensive metadata, although one of the records I looked at had the fields filled out incorrectly (the Place of Creation was "1930"). The records appear to have been assembled from multiple different sources, which would make sense given the diversity of the museums, archives etc that comprise the collection. The Form/Genre field for my item ( http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUAM:925807 ) includes text/letter/Letters/and print: presumably to aid discovery by any of the above terms, and/or because that is how they were originally described in the holding institution. The Subject and Note fields are quite extensive and inclusive of much hand-generated metadata. It must have been quite labor intensive.

The images themselves are displayed via Harvard's Page Delivery Service, which offers a good deal of functionality. The images have text behind them and are searchable and displayable that way as well. The page can be enlarged or zoomed in upon, or rotated. The zoom feature includes a map of the whole image so that you can keep track of your location in relation to the whole--a feature I have seen in only a few of the digital projects this semester.

The full text search for "somerville" returned 659 items, ranked by relevance (though what this means is not explained). A quick scan through the results show that the bulk of these records are government documents from the of Bureau of Labor Statistics. There is no information as to why exactly these would be included in the online collection--it is all implied--and no metadata record that I could find.

The browse function allows for search by item type or subject, including a long list of topics. Topics include genre (like songs) and type of work (miners) as well as topics such as housing and unions. There is no information included on the ranking of the results or the criteria for inclusion: the results for "Assimilation" include only 17 records, which seems somewhat arbitrarily narrow in a collection of 20,000 pages.

The collection could benefit from more transparency then, in some of these areas regarding the nature of the decisions made both on digitization (what criteria was used for choosing items, and what the methods used were) and the organization of the site. More context would be helpful. However, the primary function of the collection is to display some of the material that resides at Harvard, and presumably for more information the user may contact the institution. For use beyond the strictly educational, for example, users are instructed to get permission from the holding institution within Harvard. In general, this open collection is a useful if somewhat superficial window into these vast holdings. It would be useful for the casual user or the student, or perhaps a researcher at the very beginning of his/her project. As with so many archival digitzation projects, however, serious reserach would still require a trip to the institution for a search through the paper holdings.

Early Manuscripts at Oxford University

Early Manuscripts at Oxford University

This site provides digital versions of a number of manuscripts belonging to Oxford University and dating from the 9th to 16th centuries. Manuscripts in this collection came from Balliol College, the Bodleian Library, Corpus Christi College, Jesus College, Magdalen College, Merton College, and St. John's College.

Collection Principles: The page discussing the Imaging Project by which these manuscripts were digitized states that "manuscripts were selected as major treasures from their respective libraries, to create wider availability for originals which my otherwise be too fragile for handling." Thus, manuscripts were chosen for digitization based their condition and appeal.

Object Characteristics: Each manuscript is presented in its entirety (except for those that are incomplete by mistake, as noted on the website). All of the digital images were made by scanning directly from the original manuscripts at 600 dpi using a Dicomed 7520 scanback. The first page that appears when one clicks on the link to view a particular manuscript is one that deals with intellectual property rights, including a copyright notice and a list of allowable uses for the images. The individual page images are huge. I mean huge. There is no zoom capability because there is no need for one. One can also view the folios as facing page images with the verso of one folio and the recto of the next displayed.

Metadata: The metadata associated with each object is concerned primarily with the physical object, rather than the digital object. As noted above, we are told that the manuscripts were scanned at 600 dpi with a Dicomed 7520 scanback. Each manuscript has associated with it an "About this manuscript" page that contains a description of the manuscript, technical information about the digital image, and catalogue information. There is less information for some manuscripts than for others, and the technical information is limited to the statement about scanning rehearsed above. Each image is also accompanied by a heading that indicates who own the manuscript (i.e. which college) and the manuscript's shelfmark.

Intended Audience: It seems that the high resolution at which these images were scanned would be of most benefit for scholars, who would need to minutely examine the folios of these manuscripts. The images would not, perhaps, be particularly accessible to casual interested parties lacking a background in medieval studies, since translations and background material are not provided.

St. Laurentius Digital Manuscript Library

The Lund University Library (in Sweden) is working on a digitization of all their medieval manuscript holdings.

http://laurentius.lub.lu.se/


Selection Criteria

They are digitizing all of their medieval manuscripts for preservation purposes and to make them more widely available. Their collection is 67 volumes and they are digitizing every page as well as the bindings (front, back, spine, top, side and bottom.)




Metadata

The catalogue entries give as much information as is known. Usually this is: title or subject, date of origin, and language. Many also include author, alternate title, place of origin. Once you click on an entry you can get a detailed description including physical description and measurements, provenance, and sometimes a bibliography.

Object Characteristics

This site has one of the best descriptions of the digitization process that I have seen. They list the types of cameras, types of lenses, type of light, the manuscript cradle and type of computer. Images are loaded to the server using FTP; master files are tiff, viewing files are jpg and thumbnails are gif. Image sizes are 1024x1536, 72 dpi.

Audience




I think the intended audience is, first, scholars; the website and image database (and in English!) will make it easier for scholars around the world to discover what this library has and do research from a distance. I think the image quality and certainly the number of images make detailed research possible via the internet. Of course, being on the internet, a secondary audience is the general public or at least a wider range of scholars (including college and graduate students). The site is certainly informative yet easy enough for anyone to use.

Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project

Cylinder music recordings (the first commercial recordings) were produced in the decades around the turn of the twentieth century. In an effort to preserve this period in the history of music, UC Santa Barbara Libraries, with funding from IMLS, has digitized most of over 7,000 cylinder recordings and made them freely available online.

Selection Decisions
About 6,400 of the physical collection has been made available online. In some cases, the cylinders were so moldy or damaged so as to be uncapturable. These cylinders have been gathered from donors and existing collections at UCSB. However, the library has not yet partnered with other libraries that have cylinder collections. The initial grant (2005) allowed for 5,000 cylinders to be digitized and they have been added incrementally since then. Given there date, all of the songs are in the public domain.

Metadata
Users can browse or search across the collections. The browse option allows one to search by genre, instrument, topical subject, or among ethnic and foreign cylinders. The search option allows one to search by keyword, title, subject, author, or year. Each song is accompanied by a basic catalog record including the performer, year of release, subject, collection, etc.

Object Characteristics
For each recording, users can choose a streaming recording of the song, or they can download the song. Downloadable songs are available in both MP3 Unedited 24-bit WAV formats. The streaming songs use Apple’s Quicktime format. While the sound of the cylinders has been captured, the digitizers have not captured the objects themselves. Perhaps digitized images of the cylinders and their labels would be even more useful. There is also an option for a live stream of cylinder recordings through “cylinder radio.”

Audience
The audience for this collection could be anyone from a casual internet surfer to a researcher interested in turn-of-the-century music. There is a FAQ section for the less-technically-proficient.

John Novak Digital Interview Collection

John Novak Digital Interview Collection

The John Novak Digital Interview Collection is an online collection of audio interviews of African-Americans living in Detroit and those who participated in the Greensboro Sit-ins of 1960. The Interviews were done by students who were asked to interview their relatives. The subsequent interviews were collected by Michael Barnes of the Marygrove College Library and made available online.

The interviews are made available online in MP3format. Included with these interviews are Interview Index and transcripts. The site also provides simple browsing or search functions. The browsing function links to a page that indexes all the interviews. The search function leaves much to be desired. It seems as if the index does not include enough searchable features to provide an ample search. Keywords such as sit-in, and Jim Crow do not produce any results despite the fact that these two words are directly related to the themes of the interviews.

The archive allows users to quoted and reproduced use all sound recordings, transcriptions, and images from the collection so long as they are for private or educational purposes. The only stipulation is that proper citation be provided. More so, under fair use policy, the library allows users to create reproductions of single copies of all items.

Holt-Atherton Special Collections :: Digital Collections :: Muir Photographs

Holt-Atherton Special Collections :: Digital Collections :: Muir Photographs

Collection Principles

• Composed of all of the photographs of John Muir that are in the Special Collections unit of the Pacific Library and the University of the Pacific.
  Contain photos from the John Muir Papers, Muiriana Collection, and the James Eastman Shone Collection of Muriana.
• Project has sustainable funding through the UOP.
• They restricted the objects to those of John Muir himself; many more photos are in their posession but would be too diverse in subject matter; "thousands of photographs of other people and locations that are not included in this online collection" are in their posession.

Object Characteristics

• mostly jpeg images
• good quality thumnails
• Good, large online main image that's resizable and also navigable by using an exploration marquee on the accompanying thumbnail.
• Alt text provided, good accessibility features and pages
• Rotatable images

Metadata Included

• Title
• Photographer
• Subject
• Date Original
• Date Digital
• Format
• Resource Indentifier
• Rights Management
• Publisher
• (Media) Type
• Language
• Relation (to what collection/group)
• Contributing Institution
• Brief but descriptive entries for above, easy to use with other systems (currently online via CONTENTdm)

Intended Audience

• Researchers
• Scholars
• Fans of John Muir & environmentalism

Holt-Atherton Special Collections :: Digital Collections :: Muir Photographs

Collection Principles

• Composed of all of the photographs of John Muir that are in the Special Collections unit of the Pacific Library and the University of the Pacific.
  Contain photos from the John Muir Papers, Muiriana Collection, and the James Eastman Shone Collection of Muriana.
• Project has sustainable funding through the UOP.
• They restricted the objects to those of John Muir himself; many more photos are in their posession but would be too diverse in subject matter; "thousands of photographs of other people and locations that are not included in this online collection" are in their posession.

Object Characteristics

• mostly jpeg images
• good quality thumnails
• Good, large online main image that's resizable and also navigable by using an exploration marquee on the accompanying thumbnail.
• Alt text provided, good accessibility features and pages
• Rotatable images

Metadata Included

• Title
• Photographer
• Subject
• Date Original
• Date Digital
• Format
• Resource Indentifier
• Rights Management
• Publisher
• (Media) Type
• Language
• Relation (to what collection/group)
• Contributing Institution
• Brief but descriptive entries for above, easy to use with other systems (currently online via CONTENTdm)

Intended Audience

• Researchers
• Scholars
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Museum of Biblical Art

Museum of Biblical Art

The Museum of Biblical art has temporary art exhibitions that not only exhibit art of purely religious themes but it showcases are through the lens of religion.

1.They digitized very little of the past and current collections. I can imagine they only digitize what they have money to digitize seeing as how the museum is a non-profit organization that relies on monies from private individuals, foundations, businesses, as well as donations from the public.

2.metadata includes a brief paragraph about the collection and each item includes: the artist, date of birth and death of artist, title, date of creation, how the piece was created (engraving, painting, etc.) or materials used, the name of the collection it originally came from, location of original collection, name of the person who owned it before it was in the museum, and dimensions.

3. The collection is shown in the form of slide shows without the capability to zoom in on the item. Also, the site is easy to navigate while in the middle of the slide show.

4. The intended audience is scholars and the community. The museum also offers many community programs such as children photography lessons and art show.

Geoff Schmalz 8th blog Musee d'Orsay Paris

This blog concerns the digitized architectural drawings at the Musee d'Orsay Paris.
http://www.musee-orsay.fr/en/collections/works-in-focus/architecture.html?S=0

Selection Procedure: Twenty fascinating architectural drawings were chosen. They range from a cross-section of a church to a monument to the French Revolution. Some are color images and some are black and white. Most of the architecture in is Paris or France, but an image of the entrance to the reception room in the Wiesler Hotel in Graz, Austria is included.

Image Characteristics: The images are first seen in thumbnail size. Next to each one is a brief paragraph describing the image with a "more" link underneath. When the user clicks on this he or she is taken to a new page dedicated to the image and from which the image can be enlarged if clicked upon. Furthermore, an extensive description of the architecture and architect involved is also present. This places the architecture in its historical context, a most helpful feature.

Metadata: On the first page is just the small caption and "more" link. When "more" is clicked upon the page has the longer description. Once the image has been enlarged from its dedicated page, it is then possible to zoom into or out of the image using the magnifying glass tool on its bottom right. Also on the enlarged image page is information about the architect, the architecture, its context, what materials were used in the drawing's production, its height and width and the fact that it is at the Musee d'Orsay. For example: Alphonse-Nicolas Crépinet (1826-1892)New Opera House, perspective view. Project for the competion opened in 1860 for the new Paris opera house1861Black lead and watercolour H. 51; W. 69 cm Paris, Musée d'Orsay.

Intended Audience: I believe the intended audience for the architecture drawings and sketches at the Musee d'Orsay is quite broad. I come to this conclusion given the great deal of context that the long descriptions give about the architect of each project, the project itself and its place in history. As a result, I believe that historians, architectural historians, people interested in French history, and artists could all be interested in this collection. Not to mention the great joy it could undoubtedly bring architects looking for inspiration and/or understanding of the buildings or their designers.

Japanese Ex-Libris Stamps

Hosted at the National Diet Library of Japan (that's diet as in legislature), the Japanese Ex-Libris Stamps exhibition is a well curated sample of thirty ex-libris marks culled from the 7.7 million items owned by the library. The stamps are analyzed from the prospective of provenance, but they do offer an interesting view of readership as well. As the site's introduction says with wonderful hyperbole, "by looking at the design and text of an ex-libris stamp, we can grasp the spirit of the book lover in the deepest reaches of the owner's heart." There are some really lovely, and sometimes strange stamps here. The Kamono Mabuchi on the left is my favorite.


Selection Decisions

The owners have been chosen for their historical interest and curiosity. There are several important feudal lords and samurai represented, but also interesting characters such as an Astronomer punished for helping a Dutch visitor smuggle maps out of the country (a serious offence), an 'enlightened' artist who committed suicide over government suppression, a British expat and book-collector, etc.

Metadata

There's a fair amount of metadata about each owner and stamp. For the stamp itself, we get sizes, character translations, and information on variants. For the owner, we get various forms of name, occupation, a short bio, and often other historically relevant information, as well as some information about the collection marked with the stamp. Throughout the exhibit there is also a good amount of information on the history and characteristics of (Japanese) ex-libris stamps in general.

Object Characteristics

The stamps themselves are represented in just one size. They are clear (and sort of striking in their well-reproduced regal vermilion), but often somewhat small and feel cluttered by the text on the page. A larger, separate image should be linked to, which would make study and simple appreciation much easier.

Audience

This exhibit is certainly intended for a general audience who are unfamiliar with the subject. As such, I think it's very successful. I was engaged throughout and did find myself pouring over the images longer than I'd imagined I might.

United States Digital Map Library

The United States Digital Map Library is a project developed by USGenWeb Archives. It offers researchers and genealogists free access to maps to aid in their work. The site includes State and County Maps, United States Maps, and Indian Land Cessions to the United States Treaty Maps.

Selection Decisions

The maps in the United States Digital Map Library were either published prior to 1923, produced by the United States government, or both. The master files are TIFFs while the online representations are Jpgs--submissions are in digital format, and there is no assistance offered for the scanning process. Therefore it can be assumed that there is variation in the scanning. In general the selection decisions appear to be severely constrained by the limited resources of the project.

Metadata

There is a full page of copyright information, the gist of which is that the goal is to offer an organized, permanent place to make the work available to researchers. The Archives are intended for information that is in the Public Domain, or the copyright has expired. The main page of the each section offers simple metadata (as much as is available): the creation date, file size, author/publisher, location of publisher, and digitization information. Some maps have links to the digitization project information, which contain further technical details on the scanning process

Object Characteristics

There is no search function. Each of the 3 types of maps has a main page. The main page of the State and County Maps contains links to each state, and the state page offers simple metadata (as much as is available): the creation date, file size, author/publisher, location of publisher, and digitization information. The maps themselves have a single zoom function, which seems to be adequate to read the data in most cases. The maps themselves are in fairly good condition, from what I saw.

Audience

The main audience for this digital archives is genealogists. Some good early maps can be valuable to genealogists in finding locations that no longer exist. Visitors are allowed to use all maps from 1923 or earlier for any purposes they see fit. The site runs on contributions and volunteers, so sustainability may be an issue, although the site has been up since 1999. In general the site may be useful to casual visitors but lacks the resources (grants, sustained funding) to be developed on a larger scale, and lacks necessary functionality useful for serious researchers.

Civil War Maps, 1861 -1865

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/civil_war_maps/index.html

This collection is part of the Library of Congress it brings together maps from the Library of Congress Geography and Map Division, the Virginia Historical Society, and the Library of Virginia.

Selection decisions
This collection contains “2,240 Civil War maps and charts and 76 atlases and sketchbooks that are held within the Geography and Map Division, 200 maps from the Library of Virginia, and 400 maps from the Virginia Historical Society”. As far as I can tell everything they had in the three collections was digitized.

Metadata
Included metadata is: Item Title, Created/Published, Notes, Subjects, Related Names, Medium, Call Number, Repository, and Digital ID. They also give extensive information on how the collection was built and all the rights and reproduction information, and creation details; there is different information for each of the three sources of the images.

Object Characteristics
Objects can be viewed by the Library of Congress zoom viewer. It has a maximum of a 640 by 480 window that allows for extensive zooming in on the object. The images are jpeg2000. The original master images were created differently depending on the institution. Standards are similar however Master images are 300 dpi TIFFs, reference images are 300 dpi SID, thumbnails are small GIFs.

Intended Audience
This is an extensive high quality collection; it is quite adequate for scholarly work. Anybody who wants to have Civil War maps to display could use this site as well.

Historic Cities Maps

http://historic-cities.huji.ac.il/historic_cities.html

This is a site hosted by the Historic Cities Center of the Department of Geography, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the Jewish National and University Library. They write, "The site is intended to contain maps, literature, documents, books and other relevant material concerning the past, present and future of historic cities and to facilitate the location of similar content on the web."




Selection Criteria

Selection Criteria is not explicitly stated, but it seems they want the site to be as thorough as possible, with digital images of objects from their own collections as well as from collections around the world. On the "about us" page they have a plea for collaboration, asking people, whether scholars, collectors, or anyone interested, to submit more digitized historic maps and materials to be included in the site. They want their database to be rich, not curated or limited. They say they have document and other materials on the site too, but I did not find any other digitized information besides the maps.

Metadata

The information about each map varies a little bit. But generally for each map they give the place that the map depicts, the date it was created/published and the original source, whether a book or the name of a mapmaker. A link about the original source takes you to another page with more background information. Sometimes there is not much metadata because, it appears, they simply do not know any longer the details of the maps' production. The maps of Jerusalem seem to have the most metadata--including things like physical size, how it was made and additional notes. I imagine this is because these are from the University's own collection and are of most interest to the people who run the site.




Object Characteristics

Each map is viewable in thumbnail, low resolution and high resolution jpg files. Some maps have another view option--such as a detail of the text in the map. After reading that this was somewhat of a collaborative effort, I didn't expect the images to be very good. But even the low-res images are very good. One, for example, was 386 dpi, 800x652 while the large version was same dpi, 1842x1494. There was no information given on the scanning process. As it is a collaborative effort, I really wonder if they themselves do all the scanning or how they regulate quality if other people are submitting things to them. One annoying thing about their images is a copyright line they have put on all images.

Audience

The audience is the general public, including scholars. The images and metadata are good enough for study and the site is easy enough to browse for anyone with a little curiosity to learn about historic places. They say, "We would like the site to be a meeting place for the lovers of historic cities." They facilitate research by linking to other sites.

The Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Image Collection

University of Pennsylvania Library
http://imagesvr.library.upenn.edu/s/smith//


Collection Principles
The Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection is devoted to the history of chemistry! The Smith Collection contains books, manuscripts, images, and chemical apparatus, including works on alchemy, distillation, pyrotechnics, metallurgy, dyeing, and pharmacy. The Smith Image Collection consists of over 4,000 prints and photographs of eminent scientists, their laboratories, and the apparatus they used. No specific information is given as to how the items in the collection were selected.

Metadata
This collection offers metadata. The metadata for each item is: Title, medium, created/published date, creator information, “notes,” subjects, collection, call number and order information if the user chooses to order a photograph or scanned file from the collection.

Object Characteristics
Most of the materials are scanned black and white scanned images of engraved documents. The user is able to view the images at 4 different sizes: thumbnail, small, medium, large and extra large (that being 2655 x 1497 pixels). The images are also viewed by a “zoom in” and “zoom out” option.

Intended Audience
This collection doesn’t seem to be a browsing collection. The search options are by scientist, tool and laboratory which could seem over whelming if completely unfamiliar with chemistry. The images are interesting but seem very specific.

The Fitzwilliam Museum : Cambridge Illuminations

Collection Principles: The main page for the Cambridge Illumination online exhibition states that the exhibition provides a "representative selection" of the manuscripts displayed in the Cambridge Illuminations exhibit at the Fitzwilliam Museum in 2005. The online exhibit seems to have been created before the physical exhibit opened. Thus, it would seem that the selection principle guiding the inclusion of manuscripts in the online exhibition was their ability to attract people to the physical exhibit. For this reason, the most beautiful and "sumptuous" images were chosen to be put online. The website does not describe how the manuscripts for the physical exhibit were chosen.

Object Characteristics: Each digital image in the online exhibit can be enlarged using Zoomify, which also allows the user to pan around the image. The images can be accessed in various ways. One can browse by theme (ex. "The Bible and Its Study: From the Cloisters to the University"). Or, one can look at the manuscripts created by a certain scribe/illuminator or those commissioned by a particular patron.

Metadata: Each image is accompanied by a description of the manuscript from which it comes, as well as the the author of the work (ex. Bede), the title of the work (ex. Super cantica canticorum), where the MS was produced (ex. England, St. Albans), and when it was produced (ex. first quarter of the twelfth century). Also associated with each image are the shelfmark of the manuscript (ex. King's College, MS 19) and the folio from which the image is taken (ex. fol. 21v). The viewer is not provided with information about the digital object itself, only about the physical object. Information about copyright is provided through a link at the bottom of each page.

Intended Audience: Given that the online exhibition was published before the physical exhibit was open, I would assume that the purpose of the online exhibit was to showcase the best specimens from the collection in order to attract people to the physical exhibit. Thus, the intended audiences are probably patrons or potential patrons of the Fitzwilliam Museum.

Historical Math Monographs

The Historical Math Monographs digital collection was created and is maintained by Cornell University Library. This project began in 1990 as a collaberation between Cornell University and Xerox, and consists of 465 general monographs, 42 Cornell dissertations, 576 math books, and 691 New York State Historical pamphlets and monographs.

1) Selection Decisions
The monographs included in this collection have expired copyright (so they can be made available to the public online), and are all related to the field of mathematics. It is stated that these monographs were chosen because they were brittle, and were in need of digital preservation. The name and title of the person responsible for making project selection decisions is not provided.

2) Metadata
Little descriptive metadata is provided, with only the author and the document name given. The date of publication is not provided in the metadata, but can often be determined from the scans. Some administrative metadata is provided about the collection as a whole (as information on scanning techniques and standards is given), but not for individual scans. Structural metadata is provided, as you are informed of what page number you are looking at within a document. You can also see what collection the document is in (whether it is a math book, a monograph, a dissertation, or a pamphlet). It is possible to jump to certain pages within a document.

3) Object Characteristics
Items are digitally scanned and stored as 600dpi, bitonal TIFF images, and compressed for use on the internet. Facsimile editions of the monographs are printed and kept as an alternate preservation copy. The files on the website are GIF files. Suggestions for the best viewing conditions include a monitor with 800x600 resolution and 256 colors.

4) Intended Audience
The intended audience of this collection is students or scholars who need access to these useful math documents. Context and explanations of the materials are not given, so the user would need previous knowledge of the subject to understand and get proper use of the materials.

Oregon Multicultural Archives Digital Collection

Oregon Multicultural Archives Digital Collection

Selection

As stated on the home page, the digitized images represent a portion of the holdings in the Oregon Multicultural Archives. They have included a variety of different minority groups in the selection.

Metadata

Each image contains title, date, description/notes, (hyperlinked) subject tags, type, format, item number, original collection, restrictions, file name, and a link to a full resolution image that requires a password. The site is created with CONTENTdm. Images can be browsed or searched. If you choose to browse, you will see the list of images alphabetically by image title, which doesn’t make much sense (e.g. “At the Chicano Cultural Center” precedes “Barracks from Japanese American Internment Camp”).

Object Characteristics

I can’t tell what image format is used for either the thumbnails or the full-sized images. The About section offers no help as it contains the canned instructions from CONTENTdm for changing the About content. The images can be zoomed and panned although the process is clunky. All images contain alt text.

Intended Audience

Persons interested in their own cultural heritage and history at it relates to Oregon might appreciate this site. Historians or persons interested in particular Oregon events like the Pendleton Round Up might could find some good stuff.

Australian Sheet Music

This is a collection of Australian sheet music digitized by the National Library of Australia. Most of the material comes from the 19th and early 20th centuries.

Selection

The selection policy is stated clearly on the website: "The Library aims to digitise all Australian sheet music in its collection. This includes sheet music created by Australians, published in, performed in, or otherwise associated with, Australia." So far they have made it through roughly a quarter of the holdings they intend to digitize--just over 10,550 items. In addition, the website states that out of copyright materials can be systematically digitized and they hope to have 900 pieces scanned in 2007-8. That which remains in copyright may be digitized and made available via the website according to licensing agreements. They hope to have the entire project completed by 2020.

Metadata

For each item the metadata includes information regarding the composer, contributors, title, date and location of publication, as well as a physical description and any other notes that may be pertinent.

Object Characteristics

The images are all of a high quality, and you can zoom in to enlarge them. The Library website itself is well laid out, and has an infrastructure made up of the Digital Object Storage System and Digital Collections Manager, as well as a delivery system. On the front page is shown a number of sample pieces, and one has the capability to search within the larger collection if one is looking for something specific.

Intended Audience

Anyone interested in the history of music in Australia, music publishing, post-colonial studies.

Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection

The Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection is part of the University of Washington's Digital Collections. The online database is a selection of different types of decorative papers from Europe. Most of the papers date from the 17th to the 19th centuries in France, Italy, and Germany, and are either loose samples or the covers or endsheets of books. The database was created using ContentDM, which is a digital collection management software.

The user can either browse through the pattern examples or conduct a keyword search. However, I found that the basic search function does not work and it is very difficult to go back to the home page for the collection. If browsing, the user would find that all of the samples are organized alphabetically by pattern type. Alternative names are also given. A brief written description of the pattern and its history is provided. Most of the descriptive metadata was culled from two books: The art of marbled paper : marbled patterns and how to make them and Marbled paper: its history, techniques, and patterns : with special reference to the relationship of marbling to bookbinding in Europe and the Western world. When the users clicks to view examples, s/he is presented with various thumbnails and descriptions of examples within each decoration type. The metadata includes a description from one or both of the above books on how the pattern was created, the colors used, and so forth.

It is unfortunate that the search features do not appear to be working on this site because the metadata for each sample is very impressive. When the user clicks on specific sample, s/he will get a large, high-quality view of the image and the following metadata information: title, artist, date, descriptive notes, collection notes, paper process/medium, prominent pattern type (keywords such as a escargot, tourniquet, schnecken, etc.), secondary pattern types, object type, physical description, references, digital collection (Decorated and Decorative Paper Collection), unique digital image number, respository (University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division), repository collection, unique reference number, digital reproduction information, and full resolution file name. Some of the metadata is obviously automatically generated while others such as collection notes must be manually entered.

As I mentioned earlier, the image quality is very high. The images are not JPEGS but are PHP files (thus, I was only able to link the lower quality thumbnail images to this blog). Users can rotate the images, view them at maximum resolution -- good enough to see the grain of the paper! -- or to fit them on the screen at different size percentages, and view them in a separate window.

This web database is clearly for people who have a deep interest in decorated and decorative papers. I imagine that most users are interested in creating these patterns for themselves and/or want to be better informed in historical decorative paper-making. The collection is particularly nice because it provides users with detailed descriptions on the colors and techniques used for each pattern, the pattern's history, and a variety of vivid images to give artists ideas for their own creations.

Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains-Online Image Database

Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains-Online Image Database

The Indian Peoples of the Northern Great Plains online digital image database is a collection of over 1,500 photographs, stereographs, ledger drawings, and sketches. The project is a joint partnership between Montana State University Libraries and the Museum of the Rockies. As such, most of the materials were pulled from The Montana State University campuses, the Museum of the Rockies in Bozeman, and Little Big Horn College in Crow Agency, Montana.

Native Americans, educators, librarians, and historians collaborated to decide which items from the various collection would be digitized. Indexing is done through Dublin Core. Software used to digitize the items includes the Oracle, and Adobe software bundles, Agfa T2000XL scanners and are currently stored in a Sun Enterprise 250 Server with Solaris 2.7 that is housed in the Montana State University Information Technology Center. Files are backed up on UPS and Tape Backup Drives. The photographs resolution of most materials is roughly 640x480 dpi.

The sites copyright protection statement restricts use strictly for educational and research purposes. The ultimate aim of the IMS funded project is to provide access to students, researchers, and the general public to important materials concerning Plains Indian cultures which previously were only accessible by traveling to Montana.

CalPhotos: Alfred Brousseau Project

CalPhotos: Alfred Brousseau Project

Collection Principles

· This collection is comprised of over 12,500 35mm photographs of about 2000 species of California wildflowers, fungi, trees, and other plants taken between 1925 and 1988 by Brother Alfred Brousseau F.S.C. (1908-1988) and has been incorporated into the CalPhotos project, also known as the U.C. Berkeley Digital Library Project.

· "Brother Alfred Brousseau, F.S.C. (1908-1988) produced a collection of 35mm color slides of Native Wildflowers of California which consists of over 12,500 slides of over 2,000 species.

· Original collection goal was to provide a ”comprehensive, organized and widely disseminated database of native California flora."

· Production costs for digitizing the Brousseau images were funded in part by the Digital Library Project and by the State of California Department of Water Resources. Funding for the continuing online presentation through CalPhoto comes from the University of California at Berkeley, so the online collection is sustainable.

· CalPhoto makes the images available using a system that respects the intellectual rights of the contributing organizations, is accessible, and provides the images in a good format (jpeg).

Object characteristics & Metadata

· The images are displayed as jpeg thumbnails with links to higher resolution photos.

· Metadata acommpanying the photos includes date, location, contributor id, photo id, usage restrictions, contact information, etc.

Intended Audience

Pretty much everyone!

Ann Dobbs