Online image access

For this assignment I chose to compare the photographic description processes at the Museum of the City of New York and Circus World’s Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center. I was somewhat familiar with both repositories’ holdings after doing undergraduate research in the history of the sideshow, as both have impressive photographic collections documenting that subject matter. Their access tools, however, are sometimes less than impressive.

This photograph from the City Museum of New York is titled “[Crowd watching Palace of Wonders performers from the midway].” dated ca. 1938, and identified as an acetate negative, protected by copyright, taken by Reginald Marsh. The assigned keywords are Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.), Coney Island (New York, N.Y.), Lighting, Sideshows, Signs and signboards, and Spectators.

The Museum of the City of New York has a sleek, modern-looking website, with a search bar prominently displayed at the top of the page. This searches the Museum’s digitized holdings, with multiple display options for your results as well as a sidebar with the option to sort by photographer, object type, and the borough in which the photo was taken. I searched for the term “sideshow” and got 69 results, displayed as large, titled thumbnails with the option of adding them either to my lightbox or my cart. Clicking on a photograph creates a pop-up window with a larger image and more information, including the photographer, date, restrictions (if any), dimension, type of photographic process, and keywords. The example photograph record has a variety of helpful keywords, although a few more could be useful, and neither a (currently non-existent) description nor the keywords repeat the various words found in the image. Clicking on a keyword or photographer’s name brings you to a new search for that term; however, there are no obvious collections of photos, other than a series that were taken as part of the Federal Art Project as noted under the photographer’s name. Because this is a museum’s interface, it is not surprising that they have not organized their holdings into what we think of as standard archival collections – the only collection-like structures in place seem to be separate pages of photographs by borough. Since they have allowed for so many types of searching, though, it is easy to browse all available images by a single photographer or of a single subject, or even all available photographs made using a particular process.

This photograph from the Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center is titled “Ringling Bros and Barnum & Bailey Circus,” dated 1935 and identified as a glass plate negative taken by H.A. Atwell. The description reads, “Two boys watch as a midget female performer stands atop a podium as a grinder announcues [sic] a sideshow performance.”

The Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center is a slightly different story. I was confused when first browsing the Circus World site, since I remembered using online finding aids of their collections during my undergraduate research, but could not find a link anywhere. I was able to locate a link to their library catalog, which does not contain any mention of finding aids. I was eventually able to locate them by Googling “circus world finding aids,” and discovered that they were hosted on a third website not linked on either the main site or the library catalog, and seem to contain few mentions of photographs. Using the library catalog, I searched for “sideshow,” which brought up 14 object records, 17 library records, 4 archive records, and 71 photo records. A checkbox system in a sidebar allowed me to view only their photo records. The results are displayed as small thumbnails with the item’s type (mostly listed as either “glass plate negative” or “photograph”) along with the title and description. Clicking an image brings the user to a pop-up window, where they must click again on “full data” to view information such as the date and photographer. Oddly, while there is a “collection” data field, this is where the item’s type is listed. There is no interlinkage between the library catalog and finding aids, and no indication of provenance. While there is an “associated records” button, I could not find a photograph for which this brought up anything other than the single record I had already been looking at. There are no keywords or tags, meaning that while my “sideshow” search brought up many performers who worked as sideshow freaks, a search for “freak” brings up only photos of “Circassian Beauties,” which all have the same generic description that includes the world “freak.” (At the City Museum of New York, the same search turns up a single, non-sideshow result, which is at least standardized.) This example photo has a unique (if not proofread) description, but a generic title that would not help a user locate or identify this particular photograph. In addition, given the year, particular circus, and look of the woman standing on the ticket box, even I would feel confident identifying her as a member of the Doll Family, which I imagine could be confirmed using documentary evidence.

Overall, the Museum of the City of New York offers a far better searching experience than the Robert L. Parkinson Library and Research Center. While neither offers an archival collection framework, the images from the Museum are easily associated with each other via hyperlinked keywords and photographer names, while each image at the Library exists more or less in a void. The images at the Museum appear to be described according to a single standard, while the images at the Library sometimes have unique narrative descriptions and sometimes a description shared with other similar images. While the Museum’s photographs could benefit from more narrative description, or even transcription of the signs depicted in them, they are relatively well-described. The Library’s system, by contrast, seems to have virtually no pros. The images are isolated from each other, not well-described or titled, and some of them commit the sin of being identified as “undated.” The Library’s “random images” button is a fun way to view the breadth of their collection, but the lack of meaningful connections between images makes every one of their images seem “random.”