Searching for two online catalogs to use in this analysis proved more difficult than I had expected. Perhaps this should not have come as a surprise to me, however, after all of my time spent studying library and archival catalogs in the past year. It can be very challenging to find the information you are looking for on institutions’ websites. Although I realize that not every library or archive has the resources to undertake the same kind of full-scale digitization or web projects, it seems like it is still possible to provide more quality catalog records for manuscript and photograph collections. In several places, these records, if available online at all, appeared to be buried deep within a library catalog. After searching, I finally settled on further exploring photographs in the catalogs of the University of Chicago Photographic Archives and the State Historical Society of Missouri.
In the University of Chicago Photographic Archives catalog, the images are divided broadly into seven categories, which form the “series” for the collection. Photographs can be browsed by these series, as well as “photographers,” “subject terms,” or “dates.” For example, when you click on “photographers,” it takes you to an alphabetical list of the photographers whose work is in the collection, each of which has a parenthetical next to it showing the number of photos in that category. If you click further on one of the photographers’ names, it shows you thumbnails of the photos by that photographer, along with the listing of which series they are a part of, and also what “view” it is.
This “view” is one area where I found the information to be less helpful. I only realized that the notation was the “view” after clicking on it. It was not clear to me how this would be relevant. I can imagine that if I was a researcher more familiar with the subjects I was looking at, or knew what the term view meant in this case, then it might be important to know the view for a particular photograph was “Washington House 1.” Yet I would also think that in that case being able to browse by view would be useful. In her article on indexing images, Layne discusses the importance of providing access by grouping, rather than only by individual images alone. She states that “although the searcher may indeed be interested in only one category of attribute; such a searcher may need to be presented with the possibilities in order to make a choice” (586). If view is going to be presented as one of the attributes of these images, then I think grouping them together should be possible, which it is not. Clicking on the live link for view only takes you to the catalog record for that photograph, and not other photos with the same view.
Record showing "View" information
Title
|
Commuter and Social Clubs
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View
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Washington House 1
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Series
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IV: Student Activities
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Subject Terms
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College students | Sofas
|
Photograph Date
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Undated
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Physical Format
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Photographic prints; 12.3 x 17.3 cm
|
Location
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University of Chicago, Chicago, Illinois
|
Collection
|
Archival Photographic Files
|
Repository
|
University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center
|
Image Identifier
|
apf4-02083
(Link to page)
|
The actual record itself gives quality description. On most photographs (not necessarily the one above) there is a lot of good information about the picture itself (format, dimensions, date), good (detailed) description of the subject of the photo, and seemingly relevant and diverse subject terms. One concern I had here was with the titles. Fortunately, I did not see anything as bad as “image not visible,” but many of them seem repetitive, making you really reliant on the additional identifying information that is given. For example, all of the photographs in the “convocations” subject area are actually titled “Convocation,” even though the other information is detailed and provides years, places, people, etc. This is one of the reasons that I think this catalog, while well designed and easy to both browse and search, has limitations on both functions. Continuing my use of the “convocation” example highlighted these problems.
If browsing under the “convocation” subject area only presents you photos titled convocation, as it appears to do, then there is a high likelihood that other relevant photos will be missed. I saw the effects of it later during a search, when I found a good photograph of a faculty procession to convocation which was titled with a former University President’s name. Although the President himself seems secondary to the depiction of convocation, this photograph would not have turned up when browsing under convocation.
On the searching side of things, there does not seem to be an advanced search; only one box that does not tell you what areas of the record are being searched. To a less advanced library user this might seem sufficient, but I wondered about the most effective way to do a search with so little knowledge about what I was searching. I did a search for “convocations,” which brought up 218 results. After looking through some of the photographs it appeared to be a blanket keyword search, as it was pulling convocations out of all parts of the record. Although I was pleased that my search was not limited to the pictures titled “Convocation,” this created some problems. One of the pictures was of an old man, who according to the description (but not the title) gave the address at one of the university’s convocations. This did help me find information about convocation, but I think most people using the photo archives are searching for images of convocation, and they would want a photograph of convocation or some aspect of it. I am reminded of Finnegan’s article titled in part “What Is This a Picture of?” in which she discusses the subjectivity of classifying photographs by subject, and the extent to which a photograph’s subject matter can be interpreted in very different ways that reflect the biases of the organization or person doing the classifying.
Links to another page for “technical information” explains the use of Dublin Core and various controlled vocabularies. In Jackie Dooley’s article, “Processing and Cataloging of Archival Photograph Collections,” she goes into detail describing the different available thesauri and when to choose each one. Reading through her reasoning behind each one, I am curious to know more about how they were used in this catalog, but this is information that would be difficult to figure out. Despite its issues, the University of Chicago Photographic Archives catalog, the digital images, and the search and browsing pages are very attractive and well-designed. The same cannot be said for the State Historical Society of Missouri’s catalog.
My first impression upon viewing this catalog was that it was definitely a work in progress. It is very clunky and, for lack of a better description, not very modern looking. Searching for photographs takes you to a different page, which is their “photo database.” This page displays a box to search by keyword or a box to search by year, which it helpfully(?) points out is “not on all photos.” It does not take me long to figure out that these two search functions can be limited to different collections by highlighting those collections in a box below. This is not very clear, however, and might be more difficult for another user.
Search function on State Historical Society of Missouri's photo database
Keywords: Year (not on all photos):
Restrict search within single collection (leave Keywords blank for entire collection):
Total Records in Database: 119029 / Total Scanned Images in Database: 29012
(Link to main search page for the catalog.)
After some initial searching, I can see that most of these collections are mixed material, and not simply photographs. Because of this, I wonder if reading finding aids or other guides elsewhere on the site would provide a more useful idea of what photographs are in these collections. Otherwise, I feel like I am having a hard time getting a sense of what it is I am looking at. A keyword search for “women,” unfiltered by collection, brings up 2,456 records. They are listed by “Photo ID #,” a brief “description” of the photo (which appears to be the section that was searched), something that tells you whether it is black and white or color, the print size, and a thumbnail that can be viewed larger in another window. Not all of the photos have the thumbnail, as not all of the photos are digitized.
When you click on the “Photo ID #” it opens up the collection’s finding aid in a separate window, including a folder list, and scope and content or historical note. There is also a link where you can click to see a list of images in that collection, and this is the part I find most useful. I think it is, however, more useful for the mixed material collections, and not just those containing all photographs, which already have the photographs listed in the finding aid.
Despite the lack of design and clarity, the information here is good in spots. They make it very clear that some things are stored off-site and take time to be retrieved, and have good lists of related photograph collections. Unlike the University of Chicago archives, though, there is no indication of subject terms or what, if any, controlled vocabularies are being used. I think part of this is because in many ways they have not really done item-level cataloging. Even though they have photographs listed on an item-level basis, this seems to have been more for the purpose of digitization than thorough cataloging. Even though Jackie Dooley says that “by arranging related images, the sort of group-level or folder-level description typically provided for textual archival materials can be equally successful for many archival image collections,” I think that if you are going to digitize photos and create a separate entry for each one, then the description should go beyond attaching a brief phrase or name to the collection level finding aid (89).
Looking at these two online catalogs, it is obvious how much they have both been created with a mind towards digitization and online access to the images themselves. I am curious to know more about catalog records for photographs before this current period
References:
Dooley, Jackie M. “Processing and Cataloging of Archival Photograph Collections.” Visual Resources, 11, 85-101.
Finnegan, Cara A. “What Is This a Picture Of?: Some Thoughts on Images and Archives.” Rhetoric and Public Affairs, 116-123.
Layne, Sara Shatford. “Some Issues in the Indexing of Images.” Journal of the American Society for Information Science, 45.8, 1994, 583.
Ritzenthaler, Mary Lynn and Diane Vogt-O’Connor. Photographs: Archival Care and Management, Chicago, 2010.
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