[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

FW: Organization of Photo Collections



One more response from the crowd.

DS

______________________________________
Daniel Sokolow, Archives Coordinator
David Taylor Archives
North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System
155 Community Drive
Great Neck, NY 11021
mailto:dsokolow@nshs.edu


-----Original Message-----
From: Tara Riese [mailto:triese@ohiohistory.org]
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 10:43 AM
To: 'dsokolow@nshs.edu'
Subject: Organization of Photo Collections


Well I am not in Birmingham, either.

I am not and expert on photographic collections.  However, I was a New York
State Documentary Heritage Program Arrangement and Description advising
project archivist for a while and maybe again when the project am currently
on is finished.  I also took a photo identification class while as student
in the University of Maryland's College of Library and Information Science.
So, I will give you what I do know on the subject of processing photographic
collections.

2) Is item level cataloging essential for proper control over photographic
materials?
To this I would say eventually item level cataloging would be useful, as
photographs can often fall into more than one category, and so making cross
references would be nice for researchers. Many archivist and photo
cataloguers jump right to the item level, and get bogged down there.  The
bottom up method may be okay for small institutions who have received
photographs with no obvious order.  HOWEVER, it sounds like you may be
dealing with thousands if not millions of photographs.  It also sounds like
there is some order.  So let me suggest a top down approach.  If you can get
the researchers down to the subject levels, they usually don't mind looking
through a couple dozen images to find what they want.


1) My understanding of the aaa-bbbb-ccc system was an attempt to create a
system that would allow insertions, when new (or long lost, but suddenly
found) material arrives.  By the sounds of it the aaa level for you would be
the individual hospitals, as you stated that you want to keep them separate.
Next you say that your "collections are the result of public relations
offices at our various facilities, who donated their generally
subject-driven, alphabetically organized photo files."  This statement in
and of itself tells me that there is provenance and original order.  So
respect pour les fonds!  (Use their system don't fight it!)  If each
hospital/health facility had/has more than one department that gave/will
give you photographs then the name of that department will be your bbbb
level.  Then their method of organization is your ccc level and if they
subdivide their categories, I would suggest that you follow suit.  I short I
guess I am saying that the aaa-bbbb-ccc is okay in my mind as long as there
is a rhyme and/or reason for each level.  I determine what levels already
exist and actually spell them out then assign the numbering scheme.  BTW if
you are using a computerized database, I would stick with all numbers (no
lettering schemes) as computers have an easier time keeping numbers in order
than they do letters.  The other thing that I found was that when working
with multiple institutions, so places have more complicated systems than
others.  In order to mesh the systems together you may need to create
placeholders or use a variety of symbols to distinguish the levels, if you
want to create one large database/system for them.  This is where things
could get messy, but if you map out the levels in set plan before you start
assigning numbers, it may not be so bad.

Next, unless your PR departments were better than any I have seen so far,
you are going to find many photographs with no information on the item
level, so this is where you get lots of gloves and soft leaded pencils and
big white erasers and several volunteers who can follow instructions.  Many
people like to be photo detectives, but lack the understanding of basic
preservation concepts.  Explain to them why gloves are important.  Explain
that they should use pencils not pens and that they should not press too
hard when writing on the backs of photographs.  Then assign one packet (one
subject level set) at a time, so they do not mess up the levels that you
have already assigned.  You may give the younger volunteers photos of recent
events, and give people who have had considerable experience with the
individual institutions photographs with more distant past events.  Explain
that they are trying to identify events, people and dates of events, and
that you need accurate information not wild guesses.  Being PR photos, many
may have been published and the information about the purpose of the
photographs in those publications.  However, PR departments sometimes re-use
photographs, so more recent publications with older photos may not give the
original purpose of the photograph, just their artistic interpretation of it
to serve their current need.

3) any particulars of information that I should try to capture in our
database beyond people, facility, event, medium, photographer, etc?

Before I was an archivist, I trained to be a database designer.  It sounds
like you are planning to use a relational database (like Access, DB2 or
Oracle) rather than a bibliographic database (like OCLC or RLIN), right?  If
that is the case I would assign a field to each level that you mapped out in
your plan, as you can always run a query to concatenate the fields into one
number, but it is more difficult to split them out latter.  You may want a
memo field, in which you can put everything you know about the photograph.
Then create separate fields for people, events, medium, format,
photographer, dates, and maybe even subject headings from a controlled
source like LCSH and/or MeSH.  You may also want to include a field with
publication information for photographs that were used in publications, on
TV or instructional videos.

Wow, I did not realize how long this email had gotten, I hope it helps.
Good Luck!

Sincerely,
Tara Riese
Siebert Digitization Project Archivist
Ohio Historical Society
1982 Velma Ave
Columbus, OH 43211
614/ 297-2638  Fax: 614/297-2546
triese@ohiohistory.org

A posting from the Archives & Archivists LISTSERV List!

To subscribe or unsubscribe, send e-mail to listserv@listserv.muohio.edu
      In body of message:  SUB ARCHIVES firstname lastname
                    *or*:  UNSUB ARCHIVES
To post a message, send e-mail to archives@listserv.muohio.edu

Or to do *anything* (and enjoy doing it!), use the web interface at
     http://listserv.muohio.edu/archives/archives.html

Problems?  Send e-mail to Robert F Schmidt <rschmidt@lib.muohio.edu>