Digitizing Photographs - Week 3

            Well we are slowly making progress with item level description (metadata) for our photograph collection. Yea!!! Our new approach of a mini-assembly line seems to be working. I’m still choosing photographs, re-housing as needed, and I started doing a little research on the individuals in the photographs. That’s making the metadata go quicker and allows my partners time to do a more in-depth research on some of the photographs.  That’s paid off because they have found name errors and were able to indicate the correct name (Jorge, not George, for example). 

            The problem as I see it is the subjective nature of picking photographs that should be digitized.  As I talked about before we have criteria for choosing what to digitize, but whether that will meet the needs of researchers we have no way of knowing.  In some respects we are doing an on line exhibit that gives a sample of what the collection contains.  At this point we have no way of determining the possible uses this collection might have – genealogists, alumni looking for friends, history researchers.  Perhaps in the future we can devise some test of what photographs are used and why – the way a museum tests to see the value of a exhibit to its patrons. 

            I do think one important consideration is the precision and accuracy of the search engine.  At first we did not choose a photograph if it had been in the campus newspaper or yearbook. The exception were the older photographs from the twenties.  We are rethinking that.  Although the photographs may be up on line unless you know exactly what publication they are in and where in that publication, the search engine is not able to find them.  For example, college catalogs have photographs of activities around campus.  Rarely do these have the individuals identified.  When we digitize the same photographs we can add names and dates and location as part of the metadata so the search engine can see it.  An example is a group photo of a singing group. In the university catalog the group has no identifying information.  Our metadata does.  It’s something to consider if you have similar situation.  If it’s up on line, but a search engine can’t find it that doesn’t help anyone.