William Silverman Photograph Collection: Smithsonian Institution

For my finding aid, I chose to look at the Smithsonian Archives. I found a lot of mixed media collections initially, but then I limited my search to photographs and I received much more helpful information. The collection finding aid I chose to focus on is one for a collection of William Silverman photographs. Going in, I had no idea who William Silverman was or why his name would be considered important, so the only reason I found this amazing collection was due to completely random happenstance. As it turns out, when I actually looked through the record, I discovered I had hit the jackpot!

As it turns out, William Silverman was a college student at Georgia Tech when he decided to take a field trip to the 1925 Tennessee vs. Scopes evolution trial in Dayton, which became the basis for the famous play and movie, Inherit the Wind! These photographs are a part of American legal and scientific history and here they are, hidden away in an endless list of finding aids.

Therein lies my first critique: I had no idea who William Silverman was and I stumbled onto this collection completely by accident. There is no mention of the famous trial he chronicled or the important topic that was decided on in the title of the record. Now, that would be defendable if William Silverman was a famous, household name and he very well might be to people in the biological or photographic communities, but the fact is that myself as a lay person in this subject matter has zero idea what I had stumbled upon until doing my own research.

Now, an argument could be made that since the Smithsonian makes a point to mention evolution as a topic and the main players in the trial as subjects, they don't need to have a comprehensive title. I disagree. Here's why. I did a search for "evolution" on the Smithsonian website, and while the proper collection did come up, I would have absolutely no reason to click it unless I knew what I was looking for. I would just assume that the search had yielded nothing but junk.

I think it's our responsibility in the digital age to create as many access points as possible, because it's collections like this that really pay the price. But enough about the title. Let's move on to the rest of the record...

It looks as though they might be using LC Name Authority files and LCSH for proper names, but I can't tell. I like that they give people the option to search via links, as seen below, because it promotes helpful searching and the order of the names (last name, first name) does not prohibit effective searching (I checked). However, below Evolution is listed as a subject, where above it was listed as a topic and the proper names were listed as subjects. This could be potentially confusing for readers. 

One aspect of the record I really liked was that they gave you a preferred citation for the collection; however, it was only in one citation format. 

One thing we've talked a lot about in class is collection-level description vs. item-level, and this record seems to walk the line. They have a summary and appropriate metadata for the collection; however it is a small collection (10 photographs), so they have also described each photograph in vivid detail. I am kind of split on such a small collection. On the one hand, it's an important collection, but on the other, I'm wondering if it maybe should have been incorporated into a larger Scopes v. Tennessee or court cases collection. 

Example: "Image number 2009-21079. Arthur Garfield Hays reading the scientists' testimony into the record, Scopes trial, Dayton, Tennessee, July 20, 1925. On Monday afternoon, Judge John T. Raulston declared that court would adjourn to where the temperature might be cooler and spectators accommodated more safely. When court resumed on a platform outside the courthouse, defense attorney Hays continued reading the sworn affidavits of scientists and other defense experts (whom the judge had refused to allow to testify in person). Visible on the courthouse wall is one of many "Read Your Bible" signs hung in Dayton during the trial. Attorney Dudley Field Malone can be seen behind Hays. Photograph by William Silverman."

I'm not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand, I feel like if you're going to trek all the way to the Smithsonian to look at a collection, you should know what you're getting, but on the other hand metadata is expensive. Then again, the Smithsonian is relatively rich in the library world, so maybe they can afford to do that. It all depends. 

Finally, the thing that I really liked about this record is that you could ask a question and find out how to get access to the collection all on the same page as seen below:

However, my main complaint is that this record doesn't give me a reason to care about it. Because I was doing a project on it, I did my own research and realized its importance on my own, but I had I been a normal patron, I probably would have moved on quickly, which is sad because this is a small yet important piece of American history and I would hate to see it disappear from misuse. Were I given the opportunity to re-catalog this collection, I would do the following:

Title: Scopes v. Tennessee [1925] Evolution Trial [Photos by William Silverman]

Subjects: Evolution (Biology), Inherit the Wind (drama), Church and state--United States--History

Names: Darrow, Clarence; Scopes, Thomas; Bryan, William Jennings; Silverman, William

Description: Ten photographs taken by Georgia Tech student William Silverman, who travelled to Dayton, Tennessee to witness the historic Scopes v. Tennessee trial on evolution, which later became the basis for the play and movie Inherit the Wind. The defendant, John Thomas Scopes was charged with teaching the Darwinian theory of Evolution and Natural Selection in schools, which was in violation of Tennessee's Butler Act, which made it unlawful to teach the theory in schools. This trial is viewed by many historians as the a major turning point in the growing evolution vs. creation debate. You can learn more about this historic trial here, or you can see the trailer for the movie here.