Brooklyn Visual Heritage Website
About the Project:
One cultural heritage collaboration project I found was The
Brooklyn Visual Heritage website, which was a part of the Project CHART (Cultural
Heritage, Access, Research and Technology). The Brooklyn Visual Heritage
website is an online digital history website resource that serves as a combined
repository for several institutions. CHART was a three-year collaboration
project, from 2010-2013, funded by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
The institutions involved were Pratt School of Library and Information Science,
the Brooklyn Historical Society, Brooklyn Museum, and Brooklyn Public Library.
[1] IMLS provided around a million dollars to fund the project, through a grant
sponsored by the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian program. [2]. The
team consisted of museum, library, and archives staff, as well as Pratt
postgraduate students, who worked together to digitize and provide access to
museum and library collections. [3].
The goal of the project was to digitize over 13,000 historic
photographs and materials from all involved institutions and make them all available
in one repository, the Brooklyn Visual Heritage website. [4]. The Brooklyn
Visual Heritage website is hosted by the Brooklyn Public Library, and pulls
data from the collaborating partner institutions. From the Brooklyn Public
Library and the Brooklyn Historical Society’s online catalogs, metadata and
images are extracted and added to the website. [5]. The Brooklyn Museum did not have a system
readily available to add images to the website immediately. As a result, the
Brooklyn Museum constructed an API (Application Program Interface) which
allowed images and data to be pulled dynamically into the website. [6]. One important aspect of the collaboration is
that each institution maintains full ownership of both digital and physical
copies of their images. [7]. Each institution was responsible for the images
they chose to scan and send to be posted on the website. This helped to avoid
problems that could have emerged regarding ownership of material.
The site launched in November 2012 and currently provides free
public access to thousands of newly digitized 19th and 20th
century historic photographs of Brooklyn. [8]. CHART students were integral in
testing the usability of the website, as well as helping to devise a social
media plan that included blogs and the use of Google Analytics to measure
statistics of the website. A Twitter account for the page also was created.
Personnel from all involved institutions are also able to create blog posts on
the Brooklyn Visual Heritage website. [9].
Issues:
The website took some time to perfect. CHART students
enacted a usability test for the original website, directed by Craig MacDonald,
a full-time Pratt SLIS faculty member. There were issues revealed during the
usability test. Problems included excessive scrolling, ease of use, options on
the navigation bar, and the presentation of metadata fields. [10]. These issues
were promptly rectified.
Other than the minor usability issues, the Brooklyn Visual
Heritage collaboration was overall a great success.
Success Story:
The collaboration project was a very successful endeavor. It’s
amazing that four different types of institutions- a museum, a historical
society, an academic institution, and a library- were all able to work together
so cohesively to achieve one goal. All institutions involved were able to
discover numerous areas of commonality. Common areas to all institutions
included collections, community, preservation, curation, exhibitions, audience,
user experience, education, and outreach. [11]. All institutions involved were
also able to make their collections more accessible to potential users and
patrons. The Brooklyn Visual Heritage is a great and efficient repository available
for these institutions to add their collections to, in a way that provides free
public access to all.
At the time of the writing of the article, "The Brooklyn Visual Heritage Website:
Brooklyn’s Museums and Libraries Collaborate for Project CHART" by Tula
Giannini and Jonathan Bowen in 2014, the Brooklyn Public Library and Brooklyn
Historical Society were still adding new images to the website. The website itself
is very interesting to explore. A user can browse the collections on the
website by selecting a specific institution. There is also a basic search
engine tool that allows the user to search amongst all the collections. The
Twitter account for the website has not been updated since 2013, which is
around the time the collaboration officially ended. The last blog post on the
website was also in 2013, by the Brooklyn Museum. This suggests that the involved
institutions decided not to continue on with the collaboration following 2013
when the project ended. However, the website is still running and contains
wonderful collections, like the Anders Goldfarb collection of Brooklyn life and
decay in black and white photographs. The website also includes links to
explore other websites with resources about Brooklyn.
The biggest beneficiaries of the collaboration project were
students at Pratt-SILS. One beneficial aspect was Pratt developing a new
Digital Management for Cultural Heritage postgraduate program designed to
educate and prepare students in the library, museum, and archives fields for
working with digital materials and program, in order to meet the educational
goals of Project CHART. [12]. The Digital Management of Cultural Heritage
curriculum is now an important part of their SILS program. Pratt also wants to
connect their students to digital cultural heritage and digital scholarship and
services, and has added relevant courses to their academic program in order to
help achieve these goals. One major goal for the project was to begin using the
Brooklyn Visual Heritage to enhance and support K-12 education in libraries,
museums, and archives with the goal of engaging students in Brooklyn history.
[13]
A big reason why I think the collaboration project was successful
was that each institution was able to exercise control over their respective
images, and were ultimately responsible in making sure they were added to the
website. Through this collaboration, each institution was able to uncover
commonalities shared amongst all involved. This kind of project serves as model
for successful collaborations between different cultural heritage institutions,
and represents what can be achieved through such partnerships. Brooklyn historical
photographs from the 19th and 20th centuries are now
readily accessible for users to view and see metadata on. The Brooklyn Library,
Brooklyn Museum, and Brooklyn Historical Society all have in common their area
of interest in preserving and showcasing Brooklyn history. By working together
with the Pratt SILS students, these institutions were able to work together and
showcase their collections in one single repository.
[1] Giannini, Tula and Jonathan Bowen. "The Brooklyn
Visual Heritage Website: Brooklyn’s Museums and Libraries Collaborate for
Project CHART." MW2014: Museums and
the Web 2014. Published January 31, 2014. Consulted February 20, 2016. http://mw2014.museumsandtheweb.com/paper/the-brooklyn-visual-heritage-website/
[2] “About Brooklyn Visual Heritage and Project CHART”. Brooklyn Visual Heritage, accessed
February 20, 2016, http://www.brooklynvisualheritage.org/about-brooklyn-visual-heritage-and-project-chart.
[3] Giannini and Bowen, “"The Brooklyn Visual Heritage
Website: Brooklyn’s Museums and Libraries Collaborate for Project CHART”.
[4] “Tech Info”. Brooklyn Visual Heritage, accessed February
20, 2016, http://www.brooklynvisualheritage.org/tech-info.
[5] “Tech Info”
[6] Ibid
[7] Ibid
[8] Giannini and Bowen, “"The Brooklyn Visual Heritage
Website: Brooklyn’s Museums and Libraries Collaborate for Project CHART”.
[9] Ibid
[10] Ibid
[11] Ibid
[12] Ibid[13] Ibid
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