About the Project
The Project
This website was created by Emily Caspari, as a midterm project for the INFO 684 Museum Information Management graduate course at Pratt Institue School of Information, in spring 2019. The course is taught by Professor Jennifer Cwiok and Professor Iris Lee.
Why the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House?
I work for the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society (GRHS) and I wanted to help them create a digital collection of historic photographs depicting the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House. GRHS does not currently have a digital collection of historic photographs available for internal access. Additionally, there are very few digitally accessible historic photographs of the house in general. A quick google image or wikimedia commons search yield a few historic photographs; however, most lack any metadata. I figured my mid-term project would be a great starting point in remedying this void.
Sources:
Item 1 (House in 1903) is from the Brooklyn Public Library website. I chose to use the image because it was the only photograph I could find of the house before the dormers were added. A reproduction of this photograph is in an exhibit at the Vander Ende-Onderdonk House. When I was initially searching for the image, I could only find low quality versions from secondary sources- even when doing a reverse image search. Thankfully, I remembered there is a photocopy, with the date and source information, in a binder at the house. I was able to find the photograph in the Brooklyn Public Library digital collections. However, it took some digging- as the photograph does not appear with the other items in the search results for the photographer nor the collection. I used the date, creator, and citation as listed on the original source. I based my description off of their "Summary" and "Notes," my dimensions from their "Format," and my medium from their "Genre." I got the rights from the source page and from further looking in to the specific rights regarding the collection.
Items 2-4, the Historic American Building Survey, are from the Library of Congress website. I chose to use this collection, because it is the largest (and best quality) collection of photographs depicting the house. A few of these prints are on display at the house. Additionally, the survey was used as a blueprint for the 1981 restoration of the house. I chose the specific images that I used because I thought that they provided a varied and complete view of the house from different angles and highlighted all of the different architectural elements. I got the information for creator, date, medium, dimensions, and rights from the original source; however, I categorized some of that information into different fields than the Library of Congress.
Items 5-10, the Aftermath of the 1975 Fire and the House in 1991, are from the Greater Ridgewood Historical Society. I found item 5 on the GRHS computer; this was the only photograph of the fire damage that had been scanned and uploaded. I was unable to find the physical print of item 5. Items 6-10 were physical photographic prints in a collection at the GRHS. I scanned these photographs, uploaded them to my computer, and measured the physical prints. As far as I know, this is the first time these photographs have been digitized. I chose the images used for items 5-9 (1975 fire) to either mirror the images I used from HABS or because of how they depicted the fire damage. I chose image 10 (House in 1991) because I wanted a photograph depicting the house as it looks today. Additionally, item 10 has a similar look to items 1 and 2. I created all of the metadata for items 5-10 myself.
Resource Template:
Class: Default I cataloged all of my items as "Images," rather than "Works," as the context of each of the items within the set is about the house, architectural elements, and events surrounding what is depicted in the image rather than each photograph, taken as a whole, as a work of art in itself.
Identifier: Default The naming convention I came up with for my items is formatted as such: (# in order I wanted the item to appear in the set)_(abbreviation of the source)_(collection/call number). The HABS items differ slightly, instead of abbreviating the source I used the survey ID. Additionally, item 5 did not have a call number so I put the date the photograph was taken. I wanted to make my identifiers similar to the names of the media files used, searchable in the original context of the items, and consistent within my item set.
Title: Default I based my titles off of the original item titles (from their sources), edited for consistency, added the name of the house, and the date the photograph was taken.
Description: Default I came up with the descriptions on my own (other than using part of the source’s information for item 1). I tried to summarize the main elements of the metadata, add brief context, describe the image as if someone could not see it, and then give credit to the source/collection.
Type: LC: All “Type” seemed like a common field in the examples we went over in class. Additionally, it added a broader context to each item than the “Subject” field. Originally, I had LC: Subject Headings in this field, then I played around with a few different Getty Vocabularies, but I could not find what I wanted. "LC: All" is a bit of a cheat, but I was able to find “Architecture.”
Subject: LC: Subject Headings Four of my Items are from the Library of Congress. Additionally, my item set is not specifically art related- so I decided to go with LC: Subject Headings.
Medium: LC: ALL Similar to with my reasoning for "Type," I was having trouble finding "Photograph" in any of the controlled vocabularies I tried- so I went with LC: All.
Format (Dimensions): Default I wanted to include the dimensions of my items because they were included in my sources. I used "Format," and renamed it "Dimensions," as per in our class discussion.
Creator (Photographer): Getty: ULAN I changed “Creator” to “Photographer” because all of my images were photographs. I used Getty:Ulan because it seemed to be a complete list of various artists and photographers. However, neither of the photographers I cited showed up in the drop down menu.
Date: Default This field seemed like a standard and important field to give context to the item.
Is Part Of: LC: ALL I included this field because I wanted to name the different collections in a standard way- HABS is technically not the specific collection but those items are a "part of" HABS, so I thought this term worked well for all of my items. I used LC: All in case any of the collections would show up; they did not, so I used links to the collection's webpage as the URI and the title of the collection as the label.
Spatial Coverage (Location): Default I included this field for my item set metadata because I wanted to state the house street address as “1820 Flushing Avenue” as opposed to the old street address listed on the HABS photographs. I changed the name to “Location” to be consistent with my other coverage field. Originally, I had included this field for all of my items. I decided that was redundant and unnecessary, so “Location” is now only in the metadata for the item set.
Coverage (Geographic Location): Getty: TGN I included this field because it gave essential context to my items. I used Getty: TGN because it was used in a class example and also because it yielded the correct search result for “Ridgewood.”
Provenance: LC: MARC Countries I included this field because it is commonly used and I thought this was the best place to state that the items were from the United States. I went with LC: MARC Countries because the HABS items are from the Library of Congress.
Alternative Title: Default I included this field to show the original titles of each item in my set. I used a URI to link the original source of the item, when possible, and listed the alt title as the label. Originally, I had the URIs linked to “Source” but I decided to remove that field for redundancy and a cleaner look to my item pages.
Publisher: LC: ALL Initially, I had the publisher information in several different fields- including source and as a second line for creator. I decided this field was the most correct and consistent way to present the information. At first, I used the default setting and linked web pages as URI for each item. “Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division” came up in a search in a different field using LC:ALL, so I decided to use LC:ALL for Publisher, remove my URIs, and instead link them in that way.
Source: URI Removed as stated previously.
Rights: Rights statements, Default I first used the controlled vocabulary “Rights Statements,” picked the applicable statement from the drop down menu for each item and saved. Once I had assigned a statement to each item, I went to back into my template and switched back to default so I could add URIs, linking more details on the access rights for specific items, to the Rights section. Originally, I had the links to additional rights information in the "Relation" section. However, once i realized how to get a URI option back for "Rights," I consolidated the two.
Bibliographic Citation: Default I included this field for item 1 because the source requests anyone using image to cite it as such.
Relation: URI I included this field to provide additional content and links. I played around with what to include here and where to include the field. Ultimately, this field is only used for my item set.
short title (Short Title): Default I wanted to include this field because my item titles are quite long. I wanted a shorthand version of the title, in addition to the identifier, so that each item is easily searchable. I changed the field namely slightly by capitlizing it for consistency.
Contributor: Default I added this field so that I could credit myself in the item set because I had changed the “Creator” field name to “Photographer.”
Walk Through:
Item: West Exterior and Rear Facade After Fire, Vander-Ende Onderdonk House, 1978
Process:
I chose to include this item in my set because I did not yet have a photograph depicting the rear facade and west side of the house, the photograph clearly shows the side of the house after the wood addition was torn down, and the photograph shows the extent of the fire damage to multiple parts of the house. Additionally, I thought the photograph was striking, high quality, and possessed an interesting composition. I found this item in the GRHS print collection and digitized it myself.
I used the fields: Class, Identifier, and Title as outlined above in my resource template.
For the Description, I tried to match the wording in my previous items- particularly when referring to the sides of the house. The directional terms I used in my descriptions came from both the HABS metadata and the labels in the GRHS collection.
After searching through many entry options for Type, I decided that “Architecture” best described the context in which I was grouping my various items. I used the same type for all items in my set.
For Subject, I initially listed “Historic Sites.” Later on, I decided I wanted to be more specific and added in a second line that listed “Vander Ende-Onderdonk House.” A couple days into the project, “Historic Buildings” popped up in the drop down menu and I decided that was a better fit than "Historic Sites," so I replaced the term for each of my items.
For Medium, I decided "Photograph" was the most accurate description because I knew it was a photograph but not what specific type.
I measured the physical print to get the Dimensions.
The Photographer was not listed on the back of the print or on the label, so I listed “Unknown.”
The Date was listed on the back of the print.
For Is Part Of I put "GRHS-OND," which is how the call numbers in the print collection began.
The Geographic Location is “Ridgewood,” which is the neighborhood in Queens where the house is located.
The Provenance is “United States.”
I found the Alternative Title on the print label underneath the call number.
I used “Greater Ridgewood Historical Society” for Publisher, which I was surprised to see was part of a LC vocabulary.
Rights was a little tricky. The GRHS would have to decide if they want to outline any specific terms to how these items can be reused. I played between using “Copyright Undetermined” and “No Known Copyright” and decided on the latter because “undetermined” would have meant, inaccurately, that I had tried and failed to determine the copyright (according the Rights Statement website).
Short Title is a shorter way of describing the actual title. Initially, I did not include the year on my short titles. In the end, I decided to include the date because many of the short titles I used for different items sounded too similar.
Emily Caspari, Pratt Institute, Spring 2019