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.