Photo Collections from UBC and SLV

University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada

The University of British Columbia's photographic collection is like many: some cataloged, some not, some digitized, some not. The university archives' website has several access points for the photographs in their collection. Users can access photographs through the Digital Collections, Finding aids, and Search Archives tabs.
Beginning with the Digital Collections, the visual aspect of this page is pretty interesting. There is a slide show with 15 seemingly random images, selected for viewing (the set changes each time the page is refreshed). This is an interesting feature, and perhaps would draw people further into the collection, though not useful at all for any searching.

UBC digital collections slide show

In addition to the digital collections, the finding aids allow textual access to the collection. Some of the items in the finding aids only have short descriptions, while others contain links if the photographs are digitized. Below is a section of a finding aid for the SLAIS collection (School of Library Archives and Information Science). This collection has a mix of digitized and non-digitized photographs.

Section of UBC Finding Aid

The photos in the SLAIS collection are not that exciting, but they do show typical images that one can expect to find in collections from university groups and student organizations (although the guy on the far left is a bit scary).

UBC Archives Photograph Collection; group photo at SLAIS 25th anniversary

I found these links in the finding aids extremely useful because the photographs were intellectually organized with the rest of the collections, but they could also be located through the digital collections page.
While the people in the photo to the left were identified, using the digital collections access point I found an image with an unidentified man. I am sure there are hundreds or thousands of images in the collection with unidentified people, but this photo was taken of a speaker at a significant event.  

Unidentified speaker at the opening of the Museum of Anthropology

It was strange to me that this man was listed as unidentified when the photo is of the opening ceremony for the anthropology museum. Surely, if this man was speaking at such an important event, he would be known. Perhaps the archives could/should look to other records (ceremony programs, planning sheets, etc) to find this out this information.
Overall, the photographs in the UBC collection are pretty well organized. I found some frustrations with some of the more basic descriptions. I was also confused by the structure of the subjects/controlled vocabulary used in the catalog records for the images and finding aids. They did not seem to follow one that I am familiar with. 

State Library of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia

The second collection I chose to explore was the State Library of Victoria in Melbourne, Australia. This is one of my most favorite places to visit, they always had excellent exhibits. They have an amazing collection of photographs, many of which are available on their flickr page.
According to the SLV website, their collection is the oldest and most extensive collection of images relating to Victoria. On the homepage of the library itself, the photographic collections can be found through a basic search bar (which can be switched to advanced search). Under the What We Collect tab, the collections by type are organized into a visual grid:

I chose to explore their photo collection through the "pictures" tab, rather than start with the general search tab on the homepage. This link leads users to a good overview of the collection, including links to multiple access points. According to this description, "The collection contains paintings, drawings, prints, cartoons, photographs, sculpture, architectural drawings, posters, postcards, ephemera and objects". However, towards the bottom of the page, you can access photographs on their own. On this page, users are given links to some highlighted collections, which contain digitized items.
Unfortunately, the only way to search the collection is by using the large "whole-collection" search bar. Once you begin your search you are given access to better search tools, but these are not available from the beginning.

SLV basic search bar.

SLV search bar with advanced search options and filters

To explore the catalog, I began with the search, "Queen Victoria Market". I immediately filtered by resource, to limit my search to pictures. I was given 73 items that fit my search, which included 25 images with the exact same title: Victoria Market, Melbourne. These 25 images were all taken by Ruth Maddison on various dates in the later 1970s and early 1980s.  While this title is correct, it is very far from accurate. Take these two images for example:

Victoria Market, Melbourne, by Ruth Maddison

Victoria Market, Melbourne, by Ruth Maddison

The first image, of a man and woman selling bread from a stall in the market is such a great photo. (I love this photo so much!) Here is an excerpt from the catalog record: 
Subjects:  
Queen Victoria Market (Melbourne, Vic.)
Markets -- Victoria -- Melbourne
Bread
Gelatin silver prints 
Contents/Summary: Shows a man and his wife behind the counter of their stall which sells bread. They both wear aprons, and the woman holds a plaited loaf with sesame seeds. Hanging from hooks are a circlet of bread and six bagels with sesame seeds.
The catalog record for this image also indicates that it is part of a current exhibit, Gusto!. I think this is valuable information that is often left off of records.

This second image is of children busking. It also could also have a much more descriptive title. The catalog record for this image included:
Subjects:  
Queen Victoria Market (Melbourne, Vic.)
Markets -- Victoria -- Melbourne
Street entertainers -- Victoria
Gelatin silver prints 
Contents/Summary: Shows a small boy busking, with his small sisters looking on. He plays the guitar and sings, and the guitar case is open to receive coins. A group of three Asian children look on.

Titling all 25 photographs by this artist with the same title is counterproductive, particularly a title that does so little to describe the subject of the photograph.  One redeeming quality is that I was able to locate these photographs by searching other key words. For example, I found the image of the children busking by using the term "busking" in the search bar. I attempted the same with the image of the market sellers. I tried several search terms based on what I thought I might use to find a picture like this. I used market seller and market stall; clearly I was successful with the second and not the first (the second term has words that appear in the summary). While the summaries are pretty good on the images I browsed, I found the titles frustrating. Other issues come from the subject headings; they seem to miss really great opportunities for more accurate access points.

Overall I like both collections, though I found that the SLV collection was much more fun to browse. I suspect that this is because the audience is more generalized (public/state library versus university archives). However, as an archivist, I like having the finding aids available and seeing the images in conjunction with related materials, as some of the UBC materials are arranged.