City of Toronto Archives and Syracuse University Photo Archives

Not every library and archive maintains photographic materials; if they do, not all have finding aids or catalog records available online. When it comes to archives, even fewer have digital representations of their collection available for offsite viewing. This is a shame considering the internet is now constructed with multimedia viewing as its reason to be.

            Finding a repository that had photographic materials online and cataloged was somewhat of a challenge. I started off with libraries and archives I had familiarity with, ones that I knew had a photographic collection on site. However, was sorely disappointed when I realized that none of the collections were cataloged online, or even mentioned in their OPAC systems. From there I started trying to find institutional photographic archives and city office archives, thinking there may be better online representation.

            The first archive I found with cataloged photographic material was the City of Toronto Archives. On the City of Toronto Archives main page there were three ways to view the photographic archives holdings: Frist, there was a giant button to their Flickr site, arranged in a similar fashion to the BPL Flickr page. Second, there was a link to search the database with options to limit the search strictly to photographs. Finally, the third method leaded to a description of the archived materials, with a specific link for digitized photographic materials.

            The third method, description of photographic materials, was actually the route I ended up choosing first, even though it was the least noticeable or apparent method. Unfortunately, after browsing for a few minutes there seemed to be a reason why it was the least noticeable searching method. While there was a nice description of the archive holdings, when it got to the nitty-gritty of the photographic materials the list comprised of abstract and generic collection (or fonds) titles that related more to their physical location rather than intellectual arrangement, i.e.: fonds 2, series 8, file 3, item 4. Typically these listed titles of photographic collections were sub-series of a main series within a collection. Even more confusing is how the photographic collection list was separated from the main collection entries, which relinquished any general descriptive non-generic context. From the sub-series where photographs were placed, the individual photographs were grouped into sub-sub-series (or files), again, which seemed to relate more to the physical arrangement rather than anything intellectual. Delving deeper to the item level, cataloged metadata was scattered in quality, but overall lacking.

            On item level description of images there were a set of fields that existed throughout the various collections and series: “archival citation”, “title”, “date(s) of creation of record(s)”, “physical description of record(s)”, “form of material”, “forms part of”, “access conditions”, “copyright conditions”, “to request records at the archives”, and finally “location”. Unfortunately, a lot of these fields seemed unnecessarily redundant; information that should be maintained on the sub-series, series, of collection level of description. Copyright conditions, location, “to request records at the archives”, and access conditions, were all sections of cataloging information that should have otherwise only been mentioned if different from the overarching sub-series, series, or collection. Even more unfortunate was the amount of information available at higher-level description that should have been mandatory at the item level description. 

            A standard title appeared to be a treat for the photographs; something that was a sweet addition, but not a guarantee. However, images that did have titles were sometimes as helpful as those without. With ten or more images all sharing the same title, the uniqueness and usefulness faded away. Subject headings were another rarity for item level description. Subject heading assignment would have been more time consuming to assign at the item level, it would have been helpful if the subject headings of the overarching series were added. Copyright was most always seemingly copied and pasted from item to item within a series, why not the subject headings too?

            Trying to come up with some sort of explanation for this consistent lack of standard cataloging information, I had thought maybe it was only possible to search the database at the collection, series, and sub-series levels; making subject headings at the item level redundant. To test this idea I went to the database, and was immediately proved wrong when the advance search options allowed to specifically search for photographic materials at the item level. Browsing through multiple records the above judgment persisted. Some photographs have dedicated subject headings assigned to them, but they appeared to be the exception, not the rule. I stumbled across a few photographs that seemed to have subject headings attached to them, however, in sections of the cataloging description they should not have been. The most common example of this was found within the “form of material” section.

            Typically the “form of material” section was reserved for the generic physical material description, such as photograph or diary, with “physical description of record” containing the details of the print or negative type, size, color, etc. Occasionally within the form section there would be the standard “photograph”, but then beneath that a list of more detailed subject description such as, “photographs – buildings – exterior views” (i.e. Fonds 1231, Item 2). These surprise subject headings were pleasing to see when stumbling upon a photograph that contained them, they unfortunately were useless in searches. Testing out the database searching for this variation of subject headings appeared fruitless. Searching for “photographs – buildings – exterior views” came up with a photograph in the results, and not the photograph I saw with the heading in the “form of material” section. When subject headings did appear in their proper “subjects” section, they were not always presented in uniform fashion. A great example is Fonds 1268, Series 1317, Item 4 where “buildings” is shown in all capital letters, and “lawyers” is all lowercase, while the rest had only the first letter capitalized. Rounding back to the idea of individual items relying on the higher-level description subject headings was not always true either.

Note the lack of title!

            Take “fonds 2” as an example of all the follies that could be found within the cataloging for this archive. The collection itself was simply titled “City of Toronto archives collection”. Series 8 “photographs relating to Toronto” was where all the photographs were held. It is not until one reached the sub-series level, in this case “Photographs of Robert and Harold Stacey” did subject headings appear. There were two subject headings for all of the photographs in this collection: “photographs – buildings – exterior views” and “photographs – streetscapes”. The subject headings were consistent throughout the sub-sub-series levels, and were even placed in the wrong section (“form of material”). However, in the Scope and Content note, there were clear mentions of specific places and events where subject headings could have been created or most likely already existed (i.e. “University of Toronto” is in the LCNAF). Once finally at the item level, description is non-existent, there was: no title, no subject headings, no “form of material”, or “physical description of record”. The “to request records at the archives” tell the researcher to reference the location of the materials, when even a location section was missing from the records. 

            Although adding tags to photos within Flickr was easy, the tags that were used were inconsistent from image to image even when sharing the same subject mater/set. Using the built in search function in Flickr, only some photos from the “How not to drive in Toronto” set would come up with the search term “cars”, while the rest would show up when searching “automobile”. The one upside (or not), was that photos on Flickr shared the same name and identification number as within the main database. At least the easy to find Flickr photos with more subject headings/tags could still be found within the database, and link researchers back to more within the same proper collection. 

            With over 60,000 photographs digitized and over a million within the archives holdings, there were a lot of photographs the City of Toronto archives had to catalog. On a brighter side it was great to see the amount of photographs cataloged. However, it would have been even better if they were at least all cataloged to the same extent and consistency, or at least with somewhat unique titles.

            In searching for another city familiar to me, Syracuse, NY, I was unable to discover an online city photographic archive in the same manner of the City of Toronto Archive. What did keep coming up were photographic archives for Syracuse University. Considering the size of the school and importance to the city, I chose this photographic archive to look at and compare to the City of Toronto Archive.

            The City of Toronto Archives had three ways to search the same catalog; Syracuse University had three entirely different websites. There was the Syracuse University Photo Archives, Collage, and Syracuse University Archives. The Syracuse University Archives sounded like it would be the trunk to the website tree with the SU Photo Archives being an extension from this main website. Logically this branching off of websites would make sense; unfortunately this is far from the reality.

            Syracuse University Archives was a website that was very visually appealing with many images throughout the site. There were some traditional finding aids of collections available online (very few) and broken up into subjects. There were some digitized photographs attached with the finding aids that were available online, but none had more than a caption for cataloging information. The search function within the SU archives appeared to be of little help for photographs and only brought up results of photographs posted in their game of “Mystery Photo”.

Outdated, but with more information

            Syracuse University Archives and Collage were pretty much one and the same, although not created equally. Syracuse University Archives was a basic site that involved clicking on broader topic terms to eventually see the individual items. There was no search function, no typical finding aid, nothing older than 2001, sometimes a unique title, and really the only guarantee was of an exact date associated with the image as all the images were digitally born. On the main page was standard collection based information regarding access and use (opposed to the City of Toronto Archives displaying this information at the item level), along with links and a disclaimer that Collage was a newer version of the site.

            Collage was very much a 2012 based website in terms of appearance and usability. There was a very extensive advanced search built into the site, and took into consideration all details and limiters one may require and/or desire. Being able to select specific print type (not photographic process), equipment necessary for viewing, and even licensing arrangement were welcomed features. The only thing that was lacking was content and metadata.

            In browsing the collection it was very clear that most of the images included in SU Photo Archives were within Collage. Collage hosted newer materials that were not stored within SU Photo Archives, and contained some overlapping materials as well. Oddly, SU Photo Archives did not host all of the images that Collage hosted, but there were mentions and links to the newer images within Collage on SU Photo Archives. However, Collage does not even mention or link to SU Photo Archives for the older materials; instantly limiting the scope of the advanced searching tools.

            The advanced searching tools within Collage were further useless as there was only a tad bit more metadata attached to image records than what was available on SU Photo Archives. An example is searching for photographs brought up thousands of results, while searching for the delimiter of digital images (what all of the photographs were) brought up zero results. Similarly there were a lot of useless delimiters considering the Collage holdings only go back a few years. (i.e. It was pretty safe to say that lantern slides were not commonly used for presentations anymore, or within Collage.)

Not very useful without appropriate metadata

            Other than a creative and fun display of images, Collage did add standardized forms for metadata of their images: resource ID, access, downloads, uploaded by, who can view this, keywords, title, date, caption, credit, file size, camera make/model, image size, and licensing. For item level descriptive cataloging only title, caption, keywords, date and credit were worth mentioning. Similarly with the City of Toronto Archives title in Collage is practically meaningless as well, since all of the file names were the sequential order and basic titles given to the images upon creation/download from the digital camera. Keywords were helpful for searching, but lacked some functionality as one could not click on the keywords to find more like images (like some catalogs allow with subject headings). Date, credit and caption were all good to have, and in some ways more than what the City of Toronto Archives had, but not anything special to mention or used in providing access to the images and information.  Given that these are all recent digital images, it was disappointing not to see the embedded EXIF data being displayed. Although more useful for journalistic and individual photographer’s purpose, supplying the EXIF data would have been a nice additional bonus that film and scanned materials would always lack.

            It seemed like the theme of both the Syracuse University and City of Toronto Archives was “unfortunately”. Unfortunately City of Toronto archives did not include consistency or accurate subject headings. Unfortunately Collage did not have sufficient metadata and a usable search function. To end things on a positive note: Fortunately, both repositories have good potential; for City of Toronto Archives the content and some of the metadata is almost there; while SU Photo Archives/Collage has a great base for a highly searchable digital collection, but needs content. Whether one repository photographic catalog is better than the other is debatable, it is clear that both have potential and are halves to future greater wholes.   

As an additional note: While trying to put this blog post together with images, the City of Toronto Archives database cannot be search using their own provided citations for collection, series, or item level; making it almost imposible to find specific items again.