I chose the Cornell University Library and the Metropolitan Museum of Art as my institutions, and I looked for pictures of Korea. I knew that Cornell had many pictures of Korea from our previous work with the Flickr Commons, since they had uploaded a large number of the Korea pictures there. I found the Metropolitan Museum of Art through Googling "art museum photographs of Korea," which, while not the most precise or elegant of searches, still got me some results.
The Cornell library website has a dedicated search for images. The image search can access three different sources - ARTstor, Luna, or the Flickr Commons. Since I have already used the Flickr Commons and ARTstor, I decided to search using Luna, which turned out to be unique to Cornell. Luna is designed so that the search results are on the right side of the page, while the side bar on the left allows you to limit your search. Searches can be limited by "what," "where," "who," and "when."
I started by searching simply "Korea" and then I hoped to narrow it down using the limits given in the left toolbar. The limits, however, were completely useless. For example, there were several countries listed under "where," so I selected "Korea," but this only got rid of the photographs of Korea that were on the first page of results and instead gave me atlas pages and maps of Korea. Also, the "what" categories were subject headings rather than medium or format, so I could not use that to limit my search to photographs. As a result, I would have had to look through results manually, which did include many items that were not related, like several illustrated digitized Japanese books.
Luckily, I was able to find many nice photographs of Korea, of various formats including some postcards. The main search result page gave a thumbnail of the image, the title, the "coverage" which seemed to mean location, the dimensions, and the date. Mousing over the image pops up a window which provides the title, coverage, and date. This mouseover seems redundant, since this information is already available right under the thumbnail. Clicking on the image opens it in the main part of the screen, while the descriptive information is moved to the left sidebar, replacing the search limiters. Each field is labeled, but it is still quite hard to read since the sidebar is quite narrow.
In the end, most of the Korea pictures were from the Willard Dickerman Straight papers, 1825-1925, collection. From the individual item page, you can click on collection name and choose to use it as a search, which effectively brings up all the digitized images from the collection.
The individual item descriptions are actually fairly robust. The titles are unique, and are generally descriptive of what was going on in the image. There are some titles that were less than accurate because they were directly transcribed from the postcards. For example, there is one image of Korean women playing the game go. However, go is the Japanese name for the game; Koreans call the game baduk or paduk, depending on the romanization. But the postcard itself is captioned "Corean women playing go" and that's what was used for the title. This seems a bit strange to me, however, since the cataloger changed the C to a K to match modern convention, but didn't change the game name. Other pictures also have some small title changes, most of which, but not all, are marked with square brackets. Entirely supplied titles are also bracketed.
The descriptions and subject terms are good. The descriptions capture both what is going on in the picture, as well giving historical and cultural context. To take the baduk example again, the description gives information explaining the game as well as describing what was going on in the picture. In another image which showed Korean farmers near a large vat that is used to crush rice, it explained what the vat is and what the crushed rice is used for. The subject terms are given much of the same individual care as the description, but I still found them somewhat lacking. For example, one picture of a Korean upper class woman in a palanquin, flanked by the bearers and a maid servant, is given the subject terms palanquins, transportation, servants, upper class, and costume. There is no mention of Korea in these subject terms, which seems strange to me.
Since these pictures almost all came from the Willard Dickerman Straight papers, I decided to look up the finding aid for the collection. This was a mistake, since the finding aid was terrible. It was easy enough to find, since I could just search the collection name in the regular OPAC search bar. The description of the extent of the collection says only that it is 28 cubic feet, with no mention of the type of materials. The main record links out to the finding aid. The finding aid has a link to a separate "visual material finding aid" pdf, but this does not include the photographs. The photographs are listed in the main finding aid in an extremely haphazard way. While it appears near the top of the list of pictures that they are organized using an almost series-subseries type of hierarchy, that quickly breaks down. Many image descriptions are entirely vague, and they are not grouped in a meaningful way (some are by object, such as boats, and some are by time period or by parts of Straight's career), and I honestly cannot tell if they are being described at the item level or at a group or folder level. There is no indication of the number of photos for each listing, not even on the ones that appear to be photo albums. In comparison to the rich, individualized descriptions of the digitized photographs, the finding aid is definitely lacking.
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For my museum, I chose the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I chose the option from the main page to search the collections. Like for Cornell, I started with a simple “Korea” search. Unsurprisingly, this brought up a lot of non-photographic items. Similar to Cornell, the Met allowed me to limit my search using “who,” “what,” “where,” “when,” and a fifth option for “in the museum.” Again as with Cornell, many results were not Korean, so I tried to limit by “where,” which lists different countries. The “where” Korea option seemed to work much better for the Met than for Cornell. “What” also works more to my needs than Cornell, since, instead of subject headings, it lists formats and mediums. The downside is that they are listed in a huge list of index topics that are not alphabetized, so finding “photographs” on the list was quite difficult. “In the museum” was a better “what” search, as it lets you sort by the part of the museum that it is located in, including a “photographs” option.
Unfortunately, combining a “where” of Korea and a limiter on photographs either from the “what” or the “in the museum” options only gives me one digitized image, and it is of a shoe. By removing the “Korea” limiter, I get seven results, 3 of which are relevant.
The secret to getting useful results is to uncheck the very small “show only artworks with images” box. This returned me 32 results, most of which seem relevant, judging by the titles.
The search results return thumbnails of the images, with the title in bold, the artist, the date, and the accession number. Clicking on an image directs you to that item’s record, which has a very small image, the same size as the thumbnail, and more information. The title and artist are near the top of the right hand column, and below are labeled fields for date, medium, dimensions, classification (photographs), credit line, and accession number. Further down, in collapsible boxes, are the inscriptions, provenance, and a “see also” box, which lists the who, what, where, when, and in the museum labels for the particular picture.
The Met definitely falls short of Cornell with regards to individual description in almost every field. There are many duplicate titles in my search results, many of which are of no use anyway. There are many titles that say simply “Seoul, Korea” or “Korea.” Some are more helpful, such as “Korea, 1952. Mother selling cookies in the market, Pusan,” but those are the exception rather than the rule. Since many of the results are not digitized and therefore do not have thumbnails, this is especially unhelpful, since I have no idea what the picture may be of other than that it is something in Seoul. No further description is available in the record, so these photographs are true unknowns.
The dates and medium are very specific, as are the “who” and “what” labels, but the “when” and the “where” are incorrect or overly broad. For a picture taken in Seoul by American photographer David Heath, the “where” is listed as “North and Central America” and “United States,” and the “when” is “A.D. 1900-present.” Korea should definitely be listed in the “where” category, and breaking down the 20th century would probably be helpful.
Not even the artist name can be relied upon. One item, “[Album of 46 Views of China, Korea, and Japan],” on the search results page and at the top of the record has the artist listed as “Unknown,” and yet right below that, in the labeled field “Artist,” there is a name of the photographer.
So the Met descriptions can be inaccurate, misleading, or vague, and as a whole, the search experience was frustrating and fruitless.
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As a whole, I definitely had the best experience with the Cornell Luna dedicated image search. It had in-depth descriptions for each image, and the titles were unique and descriptive. It was easy to tell at a glance whether the photograph was something that was relevant to my interests. The downside was that it also provided many photographs that were not relevant, and the options for limiting my search were not useful. But this was still much better than the profoundly unhelpful and confusing finding aid or the inaccurate and vague Metropolitan Museum searches.
This exercise really drove home to me how interconnected description is with access. The poor description on the Metropolitan Museum page meant that I could not find the images I wanted, even when my search terms seemed correct. And once I found images that I thought were related, I could not tell for sure since the description was not robust enough to make up for the lack of digitized images. On the other hand, the great description at Cornell meant that it was easy to choose my images, but the poor access interface meant that I had overly large search results. The finding aid had both bad description and poor access. It was long and seemed like it was in-depth, did not provide enough information for me to pick an image, and I was never sure if I had found all instances of a subject matter since the organization impeded access.
I think that both Cornell and the Metropolitan Museum of Art should focus more on this link between description and access. An institution should consider what options it has for access, and match description accordingly so that the items and the search work well together. If you have no field for a description, then make a more descriptive title. If you have a lot of individualized description, then make sure it is searchable. Have accurate and thorough subject headings so that the options for “who,” “what,” and “where,” and “when,” return the expected results. Consider that “where” can mean both where an item is about as well as where it was taken, and consider that “what” can mean both subject matter as well as form or medium. I believe that if both Cornell and the Met had considered these details, then both the description and the access would be improved. Because ultimately, it does not matter how good the description is if the user cannot find the item in the first place.
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