For this blog
post, I chose the finding aid for the Thomas Anshutz papers, which I located on
the Smithsonian Institution website under their Archive of American Art. http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/thomas-anshutz-papers-5816/more
Thomas Anshutz was
an American painter, photographer and art instructor who lived from
1851-1912. Anshutz worked with a man
named Thomas Eakins at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts (PAFA), and it
was there, in 1882, that they started to use photography as an aid in their
artwork, and as a teaching tool for their classes. They used the medium to study nature and life
and to pose models and students for the camera to make prints that were
available for study. The photographs range
from informal photographs and class portraits to posed studies of nude or
classically-dressed figures. This
collection holds vintage, original print photographs and glass plate negatives
that were made between approximately 1880 and 1900.
The finding aid
written for this collection, which also contains correspondence, writings,
financial records and other printed material in addition to the photographs, is
set up as a typical finding aid used by archives for various types of
collections. It has biographical
information, a scope and contents note, arrangement and series note, series and
subseries descriptions, along with all of the other usual categories such as, provenance,
how the collection was processed, restrictions on use, etc. It also has a detailed description and
container inventory that not only lists out the photographs and negatives within
each folder or box, but also provides the link to the digital images available
for them online.
There are many
pros to the set-up of this particular finding aid. One is the wonderful context that is provided
for these photographs and negatives. This
finding aid has a very rich and detailed biographical note. Describing Archives: A Content Standard
(DACS), the content standard used by many archives, lists the biographical note
as an optimum element add that enhances value by, “providing information about
the context in which those materials were created” (34). The biographical note for this collection is
filled with information on Anshutz’s life, which very nicely sets the
background for the goals he was trying to achieve using the photographs that he
took. In addition, the lay out of this
finding aid allows us to be able to see each individual photograph separately,
while also enabling us to see them in the context of the larger collection, providing
a sense of the overall composition of his body of work and how each individual
photograph fits into the overarching theme.
In addition to the
biographical note, the scope and contents note and the subseries description
notes are also very thorough and have detailed information about what is
contained in the photograph collection and where the objects came from. The combination of all of these sections, which
are rich with information, makes for a wide array of access points that are
useful for researchers when searching via the web. The more information that is available, the
more likely that someone is going to hit on a keyword contained in the finding
aid as part of their search. This is
particularly useful since the subject category section of this finding aid,
where the controlled vocabulary is listed, is fairly brief and does not come
close to covering everything that is identified elsewhere in other
sections. One study has shown that this
is an issue for finding aid records in general; many of the sections of a
finding aid are underrepresented in the terms that are used in subject
categories. Less than half of important keywords
from the scope and contents note and the series descriptions are noted as
subject terms, and the results are even lower for the biographical note and
container list (Czeck, 439). If records
for these photographs were only being created based on subject terms, with no
backup from detailed narratives in the other sections of the finding aid, a lot
of researchers could miss out on finding relevant work from this collection.
As mentioned
previously, this finding aid contains a detailed description and container
inventory that lists out the photographs or glass plate negatives within each
folder or box, and also provides the link to the digital image available for
them online. There is a huge benefit to
this in that it reduces the need for researchers to handle these very fragile
photographs. In our textbook,
Photographs; Archival Care and Management, Helena Zinkham suggests that
description of photographic material can/should involve more item level
description when there is a need to cut down on the over handling of
photographs that are fragile or popular (187). The digital images of these
photographs and negatives are of a very good quality and should suffice for
many users in place of the original.
However, if someone still needs to see the vintage print, the container
list shows exactly where each photograph can be found. There is no need to rifle through the many
folders or boxes to find what is needed, resulting in unnecessary handling of the
other photographs. The glass plate
negatives are closed to researchers due to their fragile nature, so the
digitization of these are very helpful so users can at least see an image of
what was previously unavailable to them.
Lastly, this
finding aid shows a good hierarchical relationship among the photographs and
negatives and has details about the number of each in the collection, as well as
the type and format of each. It lists
that they have albumen prints, cyanotypes and platinum prints and it discusses the
relationship between the prints and the negatives. All of this is good information for a
researcher to understand the extent of the collection and to help cut down on
the need to see the actual prints.
There are also
several cons to this finding aid as well.
First and foremost, the series designated for photographs is listed last
as series 5. The photographs and
negatives make up the majority of this collection; they are housed in seven
boxes, versus the material in the other four series which is small enough to be
housed all together in just one box. The
photograph series is the only series important enough to be broken down into
subseries to show the various subject matter represented, and the vast majority
of the scope and contents note is information on the photographs and negatives. When producing a finding aid the most
important subject matter, and/or the subject matter with the most material,
should be listed first. Placing the
photograph series at the end seems to diminish its importance and relevance. This series should be moved to the top to
make it a priority so that researchers can easily see and access it.
This finding aid
has a lot of information for users to digest.
It is very lengthy, especially for a collection that only has three
boxes of material open to the public. Some would say it is information
overload and that a short, to the point, finding aid is all that researchers
need to find what they are looking for. Zinkham
says that, “the finding aid should be an efficient and practical tool that is
smaller than the records it describes” (184). While I disagree with the thought
that shorter is better, there is something to be said for getting to the point
and providing the pertinent information in a concise manner that is easy to
browse. This finding aid does attempt to
remedy this by providing an alternative to reading through its contents. There is a collection summary tab that can be
accessed, which greatly pares down all of the notes regarding the collection
and provides direct links to the container inventories for each series, as well
as the digital images. This seems to be
a good solution to please both camps; the researcher can use whichever method
best suits their need.
Another potential
con to the finding aid is the way the photograph series is divided into
subseries. They chose to divide into: photographs
that were taken by Anshutz and Eakins, as well as other colleagues at PAFA; photographs
taken just by Anshutz; unattributed photographs; professional studio
photographs; and photographs of Anshutz and works of art. I see the reasoning behind this schema, but
an unintended consequence is that a researcher cannot see the photographs by
subject matter. If someone is looking
for a particular subject they have to work through every subseries to match up
pictures to suit their needs. If there
was a way to pull them together by subject in the finding aid or digital
display, that would ideal.
Lastly, doing item
level description and imaging is very work intensive. A lot of time and effort was put into the
writing of this finding aid, and the digitization of the photographs and
negatives, and that is not a luxury that most archives have. Larger collections, with photographs that are
not as fragile, are typically not a good fit for this type of detailed work and
this should not be a practice that is used across the board. Luckily, this collection is fairly small and
was well suited to this type of work.
The end product was worth the effort and the result is a finding aid
that is useful and relevant and a valuable aid to any researcher.
Works Cited
"Part 1 - Describing Archival
Material." Describing Archives: A Content Standard. 2nd ed.
Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2013. 34. Print.
Czeck, R. L. H. "Archival MARC
Records and Finding Aids in the Context of End-User Subject Access to Archival
Collections." American Archivist 61.2 (1998): 426-40. ProQuest. Web.
19 Mar. 2014.
Zinkham, Helena. "Description and
Cataloging." Photographs:
Archival Care and Management. By Mary Lynn. Ritzenthaler and Diane
Vogt-O'Connor. Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2006. 184-87. Print.
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