For this blog assignment, I chose to
review and analyze the University of Southern California's Digital Library and the New York City Department of Parks and Recreation's Photo Archives.
The University of Southern California's
Digital Library is an extraordinarily well organized digital
repository with approximately 34 collections in its online catalog.
Not only does the digital library include photographs, but also
artifacts, street maps, and, most impressive to me, photograph
negatives.
Detailed collection level and item
level descriptions are available: titles, alternate titles, dates,
creators/contributors, publisher, subject headings, relationships,
physical description, access details, and item identifiers. Subject
headings seem to be sufficiently and accurately described, using LOC
authorities.
The best part about this online catalog
is that there is a comprehensive guide to using it. It's easy and
straightforward; clearly designed with the general public in mind.
The NYC Department of Parks &
Recreation's Photo Archives was a little more difficult to navigate.
It is a collection of over 200,000 photographs, from 1856 to the
present day, and contains images of “parks acquisition, development
and use, including design and construction improvements, special
events, significant features, general park activities, and aerial
views.” The main page of the Archives presents users with only
seven albums, with a combined total of 105 photographs, instead of
the 200,000 that the description states. It's a bit confusing, as at
first glance I thought that these seven albums were the only
collections available online. However, through further investigation,
I realized that there were, indeed, many more photographs that this
online archives had to offer, but you could only access these other
photographs through a “Related Albums” link and a search bar
(there did not seem to be a “Browse Gallery” option).
In a photograph entitled, “Lion
House, Menagerie, Central Park, Manhattan, 1895,” a
title/description provided by the Museum of the City of New York,
only the location and photographer are given (clicking on the
photographer's name does take you to other works). There is no
information on photograph process or materials, dimension, etc. This
goes for most of the photographs in this archive. Photographs are
tagged with “image keywords,” instead of subject headings, and
these “image keywords” seem to be incomplete and inconclusive. As
you can see in the image below, the only “image keywords” for
the photo is “central park,” completely disregarding the other
aspects of the photograph. The formulation of the keywords (lowercase
lettering) makes it seem as though they are user-tagged, but there
are no options for users to do so.
Testing out the search engine, I
entered “lion” into the search bar. The results were the image I
previously mentioned, as well as another (one that could not be
accessed from one of the seven albums on the archive's main page).
Users are given the option of refining search results by date and by
borough. “Lion” comes up in the “image keywords” of the
second photograph (one dated 2011), but not in the keywords listed
for the 1895 photograph. The description for the 2011 photograph only
gives details about the location and date. This leads me to the
question of why the photographer is unknown on the most current of
photos. As discussed in class, are there just too many “born-digital”
photographs floating around that it becomes harder to keep track of
who takes what? The method of describing photographs in this archive
is too inconsistent and any type of guideline for supplying keywords
of subjects seems to be lacking. However, there is a section where
users can leave comments and offer suggestions about each photograph,
much like Flickr, but it is unknown how the archive uses these.
The different goals and purposes of
each repository speaks to its different methods in describing and
organizing their respective online catalogs. The main purpose of the
USC Digital Library is to provide a digital catalog to the public--
it is their priority to provide a well cataloged and descriptive
service to researchers. On the other hand, the main purpose of the
NYC Department of Parks and Recreation is to oversee the public parks
of New York City.
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