Online Photograph Records

I chose to compare the Museum of Fine Arts Boston and National Galleries of Scotland online photograph catalogs. I was interested to see how two large, relatively well-funded institutions handle cataloging of their collections – what the differences and similarities are and whether one does a better job than the other. I also wanted to know if the catalog shows any evidence of the difficulties of cataloging such massive collections. My example photos are both contemporary (taken in 1986 and 1993), of well-known subjects by well-known photographers. It stands to reason that these photos generate a high level of interest, and that the cataloging would reflect that in terms of thoroughness. 
  
I chose two specific photographs to analyze in addition to looking at the collection level descriptions. The MFA Boston photo is a portrait of Jack Nicholson taken by Herb Ritts in 1986. The National Galleries of Scotland photo is of Sean Connery, taken in 1993 by Annie Leibovitz. The Ritts photo is part of the MFA’s photography collection, where Ritts has his own subdivision containing 41 images. The Leibovitz photo is simply part of the NGS Online Collection, which is organized by photographer name; there is only one other Leibovitz photo in the collection. Both are of famous, highly regarded actors and were created by photographers well known even to lay persons. I’ve attempted to remove as many variables as possible in selecting these specific photos and collections, in order to focus more closely on the differences in cataloging practices.

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/jack-nicholson-los-angeles-313553

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/artists-a-z/L/6126/artist_name/Annie%20Leibovitz/record_id/2974

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/scottish-national-portrait-gallery/

In searching for collection level information about the Leibovitz photograph, the only information I found at first was a very brief overview of the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, a subcollection of the National Galleries of Scotland, which I found under a heading titled About the Collection. It states that the gallery “pursues an active policy of acquiring and commissioning portraits of celebrated living Scots,” (National Galleries). The overview only mentions a few prominent items in the collection and there is nothing in the description or on the Connery photograph’s page to indicate that it is associated with the Portrait Gallery collection, but it seemed like a logical connection to make. It was only when I took another look at the photograph that I found the Scottish Art designation. Scottish Art is not identified as a specific collection within the galleries and seems to cover far too many subjects and items to be a useful division of materials. The Scottish Art collection includes a huge variety of media and time periods, and even a fairly varied definition of what makes a work Scottish. The Scottish Art collection can be browsed by a small number of themes prevalent in the collection, such as Scottish Art Movements or Episodes from Scottish History. Scottish Art items will also come up in results of the keyword search which covers the entire National Galleries website. Finally, items in the collection can be browsed by a category titled Scottish Artists A-Z. The problem here is that the works are all indexed by creator, even though it may only be the subject of the work that’s Scottish, and not the creator. For example, Sean Connery is Scottish, and Annie Leibovitz is not, but you’d have to search the Scottish Artists list for Leibovitz in order to find the photo.  But first you’d have to figure out if Scottish Art is even the right place to look for that image, since there could be basically anything about Scotland or created by a Scottish person in this collection, according to its description, and the only way I found any of that information was working backwards from a specific image. This experience has been frustrating, to say the least, and I can’t imagine it would be any less so for most museum patrons.

http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/scottish-art/

The Scottish Galleries seem to have focused more on item level description, though they still don’t provide many details. The item record shows the photograph’s creator, title, year, accession number, medium, and credit, as well as a caption. There is a field for the photo’s measurements, but none are listed. There is a See related artworks section of the record as well, which gives a link to two works by the same artist, one of which is a repeated listing for the same Connery image. No other works about Sean Connery are identified as related to this one. There is no kind of subject access other than Sean Connery’s name in the title of the work. The issue of subject access seems to be the main source of my frustration. The only way to find an image by subject is to use the keyword search that covers the entire website, which returns results in exhibitions, press releases, products in the gallery gift shop, and finally at the bottom of the page, specific works in the gallery’s collection. As Helena Zinkham writes in P:ACM, “description is the art of writing summaries of archival materials to make them accessible to researchers,” but nothing about the Connery image is easily findable, either at the item or collection level (p. 164).

http://www.mfa.org/collections/photography

http://www.mfa.org/collections/photography

http://www.mfa.org/collections/object/jack-nicholson-los-angeles-313553

The Ritts photograph is part of MFA Boston’s Photography Collection, which has only a very brief description and a limited selection of categories by which to browse, including six specific photographers (including Herb Ritts), as well as Curator’s Choice Selection and Selected European Photographs. However, the Herb Ritts category only leads to 41 photos taken by him, while a keyword or advanced search for his name brings back 156 results. The item level cataloging of the Ritts photograph is more comprehensive than the Leibovitz. In addition to the same fields as the NGS record, the MFA includes notes on the photo’s inscription, provenance, copyright, place depicted, and a notation that the photograph is not on view at the museum. There is also an option for user tagging of the image, though no tags are listed. The MFA cataloging has lots of useful information about the image, but little of it serves as any kind of useful access point. However, the MFA keyword search is much more efficient than NGS’s because it searches only the museum collections; the results are all works in the collection, rather than hits from miscellaneous website content. The user tagging option seems like a great solution to the problem of subject access, but only if users take advantage of the opportunity to provide tags. 

In the case of both images, searching by creator seems like the easiest way to find specific items. While this is undoubtedly helpful in many instances, I can imagine many others in which these images would be near impossible to find. For example, keyword searching by proper names will locate both images, but searching for more general subject terms (such as actors) does not. Neither museum had any kind of option for browsing by subject. Both museums have huge collections, and subject cataloging can be difficult and time consuming for collections of any size. I think user tagging is one potential solution to the access issues at both institutions, and could be an invaluable tool for improving access to photographs, especially in the case of images from popular culture such as these, but only if institutions can enlist enough users to actually provide useful tags. If the key to description is that users must be able to identify, select and obtain items, as it stands neither collection is particularly helpful in that first step (Mahard). The collection level records are equally unhelpful. As Jackie Dooley says, collection level records should “arrange related images […] in a useful browseable sequence,” which again is accomplished by neither institution (p. 89). I have to acknowledge that the current arrangement is probably adequate for many users who wish to browse the collections out of curiosity or a general interest in portrait photography, but I believe researchers looking for specific images on a given topic would have some trouble coming to these photographs.

  
References
Dooley, Jackie M. (1995). Processing and Cataloging of Archival Photograph Collections. Visual   
        Resources, XI, 85-101.
Mahard, Martha. LIS 471 class lectures, week 6.
National Galleries of Scotland. Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Retrieved from 
        http://www.nationalgalleries.org/collection/scottish-national-portrait-gallery/.
Ritzenthaler, M. L., Vogt-O’Connor, D.,  Zinkham, H.,  Carnell, B.,& Peterson, K. (2006). 
       Photographs: Archival care and management (4th ed.). Chicago, IL: Society of American
      Archivists.