The National Archives online photography exhibit "The Way We Worked"

http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/twww/

Collections Principles: This an exhibit of historic photographs telling a story about different kinds of jobs and people performing those jobs in the United States. Most of the photographs in this exhibition document the actions of a Federal agency or are a part of its work. When an agency no longer needed the images, they were sent to the National Archives. The National Archives houses 14 million photographs in the still picture stacks, 23 million aerial and satellite photographs among cartographic records and thousands of photos interfiled with textual records. The group of photographs selected for this online exhibit includes images that came from the Records offices of such Federal Agencies as Office of the Chief of Engineers, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, The War Department, the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the U.S. Navy and many others.

Object Characteristics: The time period the photographs cover ranges from late 1860's to late 1970's. Most of these images were taken by journalists for publicity purposes, while others were taken specifically for record keeping sake by a Federal Agency. The digitized photographs are often as large as 350 x 400 pixels in size, which is quite substantial for a digital object on the web. The viewer is encouraged to print images from the computer with a specific "print image" button that also includes a printer symbol logo. The design of the exhibit is quite beautiful, in my mind. It relies heavily on visual perception.

The exhibit is divided into several simple thematic sections like What We Wore to Work, Conflict at Work, Dangerous and Unhealthy Work. The introductory page features a compilation of historic film footage from the National Archives AV collections. The subject matter is sort of a medley of professions from different time periods, footage being both color and black and white. There is not a soundtrack for the video, just minimal text labels for each segment.

There is a sociological and historical context introduced by covering topics like child labor, poor working conditions and discrimination against women, African Americans and immigrants in the work place.

Each section features an introductory paragraph stating the aspect of employment that the images illustrate. The text is manageable to read, well-broken up into paragraphs and punctuated by bulleted lists, which helps the viewer stay focused on the information being imparted. I think this is great because most people's attention span on the internet is minuscule. The digitized photographic images are first introduced as thumbnails in a thematic group, but the viewer can click on each image and get an enlarged photo-gallery-type view with navigational buttons and a lovely reverse value design scheme. I would definitely characterize the exhibit design as user friendly and aesthetically pleasing.

Metadata: The amount of metadata associated varies depending on how much information the National Archives have on each particular image. Some of the journalistic photos include original text blurbs that the images had been published with. These original captions appear in bold type that is larger than the regular curatorial comments and object title information that is included with each image. Each photographic object includes the following information: image title, the name of the photographer if known, the date of production, most often a curatorial description of what the image depicts and finally, in smaller type, which Federal Agency Records Office the image came from. There is also a mysterious and fascinating catalog / ID number that is displayed in parenthesis after the name of each agency. Is this the agency ID number?? Not clear...
Intended Audience: I suppose that the intended audience of this exhibit are people involved in blue collar jobs. Yes, obviously anyone could be interested in the history of various professions, but the exhibit specifically pays tribute to the 'working person'.

"Most importantly, these images honor those who built this country—the working men and women of America."


The accessibility of textual presentation, the ease of site navigation and level of visual engagement and fineness make the exhibit appropriate for what I believe its intended audience is. Museums are always struggling to bring in new audiences, particularly groups that have traditionally not had the time or the money for such pursuits. I think the theme and organization of this exhibit is a step in that direction. Everybody has some sort of a story about how their Grandpa worked in the mine or how Great Grandma grew up on a farm. These photographs are a history of that and have the potential to be engaging for an audience with a broad age range.