A Finding Aid for a Photograph Collection
First of all, a lot can be said for the actual search
process when looking for a finding aid of a photographic collection, but for
the purposes of this blog post I will only go into an analysis of the description
in the finding aid I chose to look at. I
focused my attention on the finding aid of the Bettye Lane Gay Rights Movement Photographs at the New York Public
Library. This is no fancy finding aid,
but it is a very thorough one and I think it is a good example to look at to
see if finding aids can provide the necessary description for users.
An overview of the
finding aid:
The Bettye Lane Gay
Rights Movement Photographs finding aid begins with a title page with
repository information, collection title, collection dates, collection number, and
processed date. The second page includes
the fields: main entry, title, size, source, access, copyright information,
preferred citation, and special formats.
The finding aid continues with more information about the collection as
a whole with fields related collections, biographical note, and a scope and
content note. The remainder of the
finding aid describes the contents and container information. Most images are described to the item level,
however some images are only described at the folder level. I think this finding aid is very thorough and
provides a lot of information for a researcher.
But is a finding aid the best way to describe a collection of
photographs?
The Pros
Overall, I found the finding aid to be a good descriptive
tool for the photograph collection I looked at.
This may have something to do with the fact that I am familiar with
finding aids, but I think it does the job it sets out to do, letting a user
know that this collection exists and what they can find in the collection.
I think the context provided in finding aids is a helpful
tool for image collections. This
provides a researcher with general information that may be useful for
them. I this case it provides
information on the photographer Bettye Lane and an overview of the collection
itself. This collection level
description sometimes gets lost when we catalog photographs at the item level
and then deposit them in a database. I
think the context provided by a biographical or historical note is also
important when the creator is unknown or there are multiple photographers
represented in a collection.
In the finding aid it is stated that the Bettye Lane
collection is still protected under copyright.
None of the images have been digitized so the finding aid is the only
digital access to the collection. The
description in this finding aid provides enough information through the scope
and content note along with the description of the photographs to let a
researcher know if the collection is worthwhile to investigate further.
The finding aid for this collection does provide very
detailed description of most of the images.
All have folder level descriptions and most have item level
descriptions, however, in some cases images are collectively described at the
folder level. For example, in the folder
titled “Christopher Street March,” some images have titles and some do
not. The finding aid format allows for
flexibility in the level of description you want or need to go to when writing
about a photograph collection (or any collection really).
This finding aid includes a section that cites other related
collections. It lists three other
collections that have either only photograph collections of Bettye Lane or the
papers of Bettye Lane. This is
especially helpful in this particular case because this collection is not digitized
and this lets a user know there are more access points to Bettye Lane material
than this one collection. I looked at
another finding aid Bettye Lane
Photographs at Schlesinger Library and it does not have the related
collections information. Based on the
dates, I do think the Schlesinger Library collection is one of the first to
publish for Bettye Lane so this could be a reason why there is no related
information. I think it is a nice option
and a great informational tool for researchers.
The Cons
I did notice some aspects of the finding aid that do not
lend well to a collection of images.
First of all, I do think finding aids limit the searchability of a
collection. A finding aid may not be an
ideal discovery tool for individuals that may not know exactly what they are
looking for. There is no great browsing
feature with finding aids. I believe
that a browsing feature might be a good access point for many photograph
collections. This would be especially
helpful for browsing different topics.
That way you can find images in multiple collections, rather than
looking at photographs collection by collection.
Which leads me to the next downfall of this finding aid--the
lack of subject terms. This is not
always the case with all finding aids, however it is the case with this Bettye
Lane collection and the finding aid for the collection at Schlesinger. This leaves people working in reference and
researchers at a huge disadvantage with this collection. Individuals must read through the entire
contents list to find names of people in photographs and subjects that may be
depicted in the collection.
I noticed on both the NYPL and the Schlesinger finding aid
that there are notes on copyright and use restrictions. These notes state to contact the photographer
for copies of images, however the photographer passed away in 2012. This leads me to believe that these records
are not updated very often, if at all.
Once a finding aid is completed, it is often forgotten because people
have moved on to processing other collections.
The physical description of the collection in a finding aid
is not very informative. In the Bettye Lane Gay Rights Movement Photographs
it states there are three boxes, but how are we supposed to know how many
images that is? The only way is for
users to count the number of images that are listed. This seems very unhelpful for a
researcher. It would be much more useful for researchers if the finding aid notes the number of photographs in
the collection. The finding aid of the
Bettye Lane collection at Schlesinger does provide the number of images in the
collection, so this may not be a problem with all finding aids as opposed to the
lack of information in this particular finding aid.
I think the biggest drawback to using a finding aid to describe a
photograph collection is the fact that it is a finding aid. To begin with, most inexperienced users have
no idea what a finding aid is. And once
they actually get to it, it can be difficult to understand. A user does not even see the description of
photographs until the fourth page. It is
not the most intuitive of documents.
Conclusion
While I actually liked the format of the finding aid, this
may not be the case for people that are not familiar with them. As we have learned, photograph collections are
incredibly difficult to provide access to.
A finding aid may be more useful to users who want to study a particular
collection or photographer. An image
database may be best for users looking for a certain type of content depicted. I thought the format of the finding aid
helpful, however this format is difficult to read for people that are not
familiar with the format of finding aids.
I think one of the biggest pros for a finding aid is when a collection
has restrictions on digitization. This
allows a repository to give general and descriptive notes about the collection
for researchers to see online, which informs the researcher if they want to explore the collection further.
Sources:
Bettye
Lane Gay Rights Movement Photographs, Manuscripts and Archives Division, The
New York Public Library. http://archives.nypl.org/uploads/collection/pdf_finding_aid/mss17915.pdf
Lane, Bettye. Photographs, 1969-1981: A
Finding Aid. Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of
Women in America. http://oasis.lib.harvard.edu/oasis/deliver/~sch00230
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