ResearchBuzz

The Indianapolis Museum of Art has started putting its artwork collection online. And if they were any more hip about it I’d be intimidated — you can browse their collection via a tag cloud and they actually have video clips on YouTube. But there’s some pretty important information missing…

We’ll start with the tag cloud. When you first go to http://www.ima-digital.org/steve/ , you’ll see a cloud of the most popular tags. (There is a login to add your own tags but that’s closed at the moment.) Top tags included Japanese, landscape, and painting, natch. You can also browse a enormous tag cloud if you don’t want to be restricted to a subset.

When you click a tag you’ll get a set of thumbnails — from one to over a dozen. Click on the thumbnail, and you’ll get a larger version of the picture and the words with which it’s tagged. However what you WON’T get is any information about the picture itself — who created it, when, and other information. Where’s that? I’m guessing/hoping that it’s because this collection is in its early stages. Perhaps we’ll see more information later.

The other thing I missed looking at the pictures is how users can distribute them. I mean, if I can browse via a tag cloud why can’t I automatically tag interesting pictures in Del.icio.us? Why can’t I send a picture as an e-card? Again I’m guessing it’s because it’s early for this collection.

If you’re too old-school to browse with tags, you can also browse by set via http://www.ima-digital.org/steve/sets/ . Hint: Click on the name of the set, not on pictures within the set, and you’ll get more results at a time. Also once you’ve finished browsing through the set, refresh the page and you’ll see a different set of pictures. Actually after I was exploring this way I decided I wanted to try just randomly browsing. So I took the URL http://www.ima-digital.org/steve/images/800/ and changed the number at the end. (800 worked but 900 didn’t, so you’ll have to do some experimenting.) Change the number and you’ll get an image page with tags. If the number doesn’t exist you’ll get an empty template page.

Did I mention YouTube? The IMA has a YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/itsmyart . Currently it has a dozen videos ranging from employee profiles to exhibition previews.

You can see an overview of the IMA’s plans in this article at the Indianapolis Star . I liked looking at the pictures and the ability the explore tag clouds was useful (I never know what keywords to use when searching museums.) I can’t wait until picture details are added — I feel like I’m missing a whole dimension of information.

The Springfield Museums have announced an online database of one of the largest Currier & Ives collections in the world. This collection contains over 750 hand-colored Currier & Ives Lithographs. To access it, go to http://www.springfieldmuseums.org/museums/mfa/. While this is a very interesting exhibit, it’s not at all easy to use.

From the front page of the Fine Arts museum URL above you’ll get a search URL for the Currier & Ives collection. I did a search for “snow”. I got nine results, including prints like “A Clipper Ship in a Snow Squall” and “American Railroad Scene. Snow Bound”. Nice stuff. “More Information” takes you to a larger version of the print along with some commentary and a few additional details. You’ll also have the option from the detail page to send an e-card of the print you’re looking at.

Here’s the problem, though. Neither the search results page or the details page has a search form! So once you’re done viewing the search results, all you can do is back out to the Fine Arts home page, reload the Flash, and search again.

After some poking around and URL tweaking I found that this page will give you a plain search form.

There also doesn’t appear to be any way you can do advanced searching — say, by date by print title versus keyword in the commentary. And that’s too bad, because I came to this database thinking Currier & Ives prints were all adorable Americana, and a little browsing relieved me of that notion, showing prints that were active and dramatic (search for Clipper) or downright bizarre (A Bare Chance.) But it’s way tougher than it should be to search this site.

The Carnegie Museum of Art has announced a site tool which provides information about both items that are on display in the museum and items which are in storage or rarely exhibited.

The museum’s Web site is http://www.cmoa.org/ , while their new search tool is available at http://www.cmoa.org/searchcollections/ . At this writing the tool has information on just under 30,000 items.

Search is by keyword; you can choose to search by title or creator name, or search by approximate date. You can also choose to search the entire collection or only the works of Charles “Teenie” Harris (Charles Harris was a respected African-American photographer; for details see his Wikipedia article or the biography from the Negro League Baseball Players Association.) You can restrict your results to only those with images (most of the entries have images, but some don’t, apparently due to copyright restrictions.)

I did a search for streetcar and got six results, three from Charles Harris and three from other photographers. Search results include a thumbnail, creator, and creation date. (Strangely enough the Charles Harris picture looked like it was the same one repeated three times — an Oldsmobile from the early 40s.) Click on the thumb for a detail page with larger picture and details, then again for an even larger picture — which wasn’t large enough, really, to appreciate the details. Do a search for restaurant and you’ll get some amazing early 1900s photographs, and photographs from Charles Harris, which aren’t provided in sizes large enough to appreciate the detail.

Whine whine whine. Anyway, if you can’t think of something to search for try doing a highlights search , which’ll give you a good overview of things available at the museum. (And there’s way more than photographs — there’s paintings, furniture, silver, etc.) You can also view items new to the collection and items which are on display. A search form at the top of the results restricts your search to just those items.

If the photographs were a little bit larger, I would seriously spend hours here. As it is the database is full of interesting material but it’s frustrating to try to use it.