Every other month, the staff of the Prints & Photographs Division (P&P) gathers for a midday event we call “Learning Hour,” an opportunity for knowledge sharing, training, or discussion. Prior to last month’s meeting, we were given a collections-based challenge to complete ahead of time: open an unfamiliar box and come ready to share your findings with colleagues.
Specifically, we were asked to find a new-to-us collection in the Prints & Photographs Online Catalog (PPOC) and consider it from the point of view of a researcher. How might they have discovered the collection in our catalog? What information about it would be available to them from home? Are there additional details we could have shared in advance to improve their research experience? What would they encounter when opening this box in the reading room?
Leah, an archivist, proposed this exercise during a brainstorming session about future Learning Hour topics. She had spent a morning escorting maintenance workers in one of our vaults and used the time to browse nearby boxes. She was struck by the value of stepping outside of her normal workflow to engage in serendipitous discovery. For the Learning Hour, Leah shared a collection of nineteenth-century proofs for banknote vignettes by engraver Albert Jones (above). Researchers will benefit greatly from a close-up view of this material.
Staff members took different approaches to launching their searches. Below, I’ll share a sampling. Cataloger Anne posed a question to herself about what areas of the world might have little coverage and landed on Siberia.
Tori, a cataloger and dog enthusiast, took the term “dog” as the starting point for her catalog search. Because PPOC is based around a keyword search, her results included a portfolio of prints by contemporary Native American artists entitled Dog Head Stew: The Second Course. The title derives from a short story by writer Dorothy Pennington.
Pete, a digital library specialist who loves to travel, took the opportunity to explore the World’s Transportation Commission photos. This collection is largely made up of black-and-white photos as well as glass lantern slides by photographer William Henry Jackson featuring forms of transportation around the world. The Library produced a set of prints from the film and glass negatives Jackson created for easier browsing in the reading room.
Adam, a curator of photography, took the opportunity to return to a collection he stumbled upon years ago and always meant to explore more deeply: photographs of a community in Brazil founded by Confederate veterans after the American Civil War.
Leigh, head of the reference section, shared a box containing a zoetrope, an early moving image device—an item she hadn’t expected to find in our collections, which focus on still imagery. The zoetrope quite literally blurs the line between still and moving image.
The exercise was more than just show and tell. It gave us an opportunity to think critically in a collaborative way about the care of our collections and their discoverability by the public. Importantly, the discussion brought together voices from the reference, curatorial, and technical services sections of P&P, some with deep institutional memory and some newer to the team.
Together, we were able to look, for example, at why records may have been made in particular ways at certain times in our division’s history. For example, was this part of a large-scale project to convert old card catalog entries to online records? If so, it may include as much information as fit on a 3×5 inch card. It also allowed us to identify collections in need of further attention. My selection for the event is a good example of this. But that is a story for another post! Stay tuned…
Learn More
- Take more glimpses behind the scenes with interviews with Prints & Photographs staff.
- Learn about the work that goes into making collections discoverable in our Ready for Research series.
- Read a series of blog posts on serendipity and catalog exploration.
Comments
A brilliant exercise!