Oklahoma History Center, Photo Archives
I had high hopes for what the Oklahoma History Center had to
offer in terms of a digital photograph collection. I was immediately drawn in by the compelling
image on the research center home page.
From the start the page looked very professional and was pleasing to the eye . There was a fair amount of white space, a good color palette, content was well organized, and I was confident that navigation and usability would be top notch. That being said, what was most important to me were the catalog records for the photographs, so I clicked the Search Catalog button, excited to see what I would find. This took me to the Oklahoma Historical Society portal with a selection of four catalogs to search. I clicked on "Archives Catalog."
This took me to the main search window which looked similar to a library OPAC. Th confidence that I had when I started at the OHC homepage began waining. I was already on a third page and the appearance of the pages seemed different every time. What started as the Oklahoma History Center changed to the Oklahoma Historical Society, color schemes changed, and although there was an attempt at branding this too fell short because the society's logo went from color to white. At this point I was convinced that the collection was going to be disappointing. So, I decided to perform a search on “children,” one of my personal interests and the subject of some of my favorite photographs.
I was pleasantly surprised at the search results and excited to see some glass plates! A cursory glance revealed a fairly sizable and interesting collection of what appeared to be local donations and publicity documentation. My confidence was restored!
A less cursory examination quelled my excitement. Aside from having a skillfully digitized, interesting and accessible collection of photographs, the catalog
records are abysmal. It’s difficult to
decide where to begin discussing what is lacking in the catalog records, so I
will continue to recreate a search and attempt to describe how the catalog
records fall short as I go along.
Notice the first line on each record. The results reveal a ranking order and
display that ranking order as a textual part of the record. Unfortunately, there is no indication as to
how the results are ranked and there is no option for changing the type of
rank. For example, I’m not given the option
to “rank” or sort by date or format. The number at the beginning of the title is the accession number and the only reason I know this is because I read the pdf from the home page that explained how to successfully search and navigate through the online catalog. Following the accession number is a title. The same title seems to appear for all of the photographs in this collection. I was particularly interested in the image
that was ranked 2 and had hoped to learn more about it after clicking directly on
it.
Unfortunately, this only reveals the image without any metadata. So, I returned to the search results to see if there was another way of finding more information about the image through the object record. I clicked on, “See more about GLASS PLATE,” hoping this would reveal more metadata that would describe the item more thoroughly.
This resulted in a description of the Oklahoma Historical Society’s policies on rights and reproduction and which collection and box the photograph is physically stored in, but little information about the photograph itself. I’m also not sure what “Box. 1 Box 1.” means. Is this a box with no folders or a glitch with the software used to catalog the collection? Does the lack of metadata mean that no information came with the donation of the collection or did the cataloger not see fit to include it in the object record? Interestingly, this is also what appears when I clicked on “Display Finding Aid.” Where is the description about what a glass plate is? There are no listed subjects or tags. The image is beautiful, but what are we looking at. If the Oklahoma Historical Society doesn't know, perhaps they should consider mentioning that they have no "bibliographic" information about the Ward Brothers Collection. If OHS doesn't have any information, it begs the question as to whether or not it makes sense to make the images accessible. Are users of the site actually taking away any useful knowledge about the photographs? Or is this an opportunity to just look at pretty pictures?
At this point, I was curious if there was at least a descriptive summary about the Ward Brothers Collection that would reveal more information about the photographs included. I started by clicking on “Show Hierarchy.”
A new window popped up with the title of the collection and the name of its only series, “Format 1. Photographs.” I was hoping it would lead to a summary about the collection. It did not.
I decided to take a look at an example from the Ray Jacoby Collection. Perhaps something more contemporary would lead to more information?
First, why are so many ranked 19? Very curious. Again, instead of having a well organized and delineated selection of metadata, we have a long title that begins with the accession number and is followed by as much information about the photograph that can possibly fit. I clicked below one of the photos to "See more about PHOTOGRAPH (BLACK AND WHITE)," hoping to find out more. This simply led to more confusion.
Suddenly, what was once described as a black and white photograph has become a negative and all of the metadata is in the title. Clearly, OHS is not employing any recognizable metadata standard or schema. Displaying the Finding Aid also lead to an explanation of restrictions of access and use and preferred citation. I debate the need for this, since I don't think anyone will learn enough from the records to find them useful for their publications. What to try next? I decided to go back to the search page and access one of OHS's core collections to see if more attention was given to those records.
I chose their Indian Archives because this is another personal interest of mine, being Native American myself. This immediately opened up to an extensive Finding Aid. Optimism restored!
Obviously, this is a part of OHS's collection that has high research value in the community and certainly received attention from the archivist. I would be interested in finding out whether the information came with the collection or whether the archivist performed the research necessary for this level of information-rich record.
Series are listed on the left hand side and at the bottom of the Finding Aid. Access to the individual series is done through the links on the left. My hope was that this would lead me to some photographs with rich metadata content. I chose the Chilocco Indian School Records to see if I could find some photographs of Indian children. This series alone contained 224 boxes! Great, so are there any photographs? I was unable to find any through the Finding Aid, so I decided to go back to the search menu and search on Chilocco children. There was one photograph.
The metadata is in the title, but lacks the date, which is given in the title on the search results page.
So far, what I've discovered is that photographs are removed from their original collections and placed in a sub series of Photographs, which is why I didn't see it in the Chilocco Finding Aid. This is assuming that the photograph came with that collection originally.
Okay, one last try. I decided to do a search on "fashion," a research interest of mine. Topped ranked items were from Aunt Bettie's Album Collection.
This is what I was able to find out from clicking on the image and on "See more about PHOTOGRAPH (BLACK AND WHITE).
This revealed that at some point, the archivist was thinking about Subjects and Creators and using them as cataloging tools. Something I didn't see in other examples. So it's possible, just not used consistently. I like that they have a metadata field for Media, but what about format. Clearly, we have a CDV or a Cabinet Card. It would be nice to see this information somewhere in the record.
As stated in the beginning of this blog entry, I entered the Oklahoma History Center's online portal with high hopes. My first impression was that I would be impressed with what they had to offer both in terms of it's visual presence and its content. As you may have been able to tell, I was disappointed. The OHC's page was full of great information, but the OHS's photographic records were missing a fair amount of information. I support access and I really enjoy the visual experience of photographs in a digital archive environment. I do however expect, that if a collection is going to take the time to digitize and upload to the internet, then they should also take the time to give the public as much information as they possible can. Even if that information is "Creator: Unknown," or anything that reveals an attempt was made.
example of the useful information on OHC's site.
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