Photograph collections

This is a screen capture of the finding aid for a collection containing photographs at my Alma mater, McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Since Martha mentioned that Canadian's use a different cataloging system, I thought it might be interesting to compare in class. However, McGill seems to have rather paltry descriptions for their collections. The description for each collection is jumbled together in a rather lengthy list, which McGill calls "The 3 volume Guide To Archival Resources at McGill". The only thing separating each collection from the next is the size of the font. The description is collection-level, and provides some brief background information on the Canadian Training Officers Corp at McGill, the physical size of the collection, a general list of items included in the collection such as photographs, newspaper clippings, and pamphlets. However, none of the information is labelled. The location of the collection is only given as "University Archives" and there is no list of the series or approximate number of photographs given. Overall, considering that McGill has its own MLIS program, I am not impressed.

This is a screen capture for the photograph collection held at Mystic Seaport, located in Mystic, CT. Mystic Seaport has a rather substantial collection of naval photographs, including the prestigious Rosenfield Collection documenting the America's Cup race. However, once again, this repository provides only the bare minimum of description to create a collection-level finding aid. This description includes clear labels, and key information like the extent, scope and background of the collection. However, it jams nearly 1.3 million different photographs under one small paragraph. It does not break out or list any of the different photo collections that comprise the total 1.3 million. One nice inclusion is a link the the Rosenfield Collection website, which is digitized and stored in a separate database that is searchable by keyword.