Digital Objects: Cameras

For my digital exhibit, I chose five cameras from my personal collection. These items relate to each other in that they are all cameras and more specifically, they are all film cameras. These are just a few cameras of the cameras I’ve collected over the years. The five cameras I chose to highlight for this exhibit are a Brownie Hawkeye, Video8 Handycam, 700x, H.S. Shutter CCD, and a Brownie Reflex Synchro Model. I grouped them in this item set.

I chose to describe my items with the following Dublin Core metadata fields: title, description, creator, date created, format, and contributor. Title, description, and a field to list my name (I chose contributor) were required by the assignment. I chose the rest of these metadata fields in particular because I feel they provide information that is crucial to know about these cameras. I used the creator field to list the camera brand. The date created field serves to list the year the camera was manufactured or, in the case of the cameras for which I don’t know the specific year it was made, the range of years the camera was being produced. I used the format field to list the type of film the camera uses. With these metadata fields I hope my audience is able to get a good idea of the type of camera they are looking at and what its functionality is. This information is also enough to get a basic idea of how and when the camera might have been used.

These cameras were fairly easy to describe, but I did face the challenge of deciding how to describe them. There are many different metadata fields I could have used to list the information I chose to include about the cameras. For example, I could’ve forwent the creator metadata field and listed the brand in the title of the item. I also could’ve used the type metadata field instead of format to list the film. I tried to choose metadata fields that were straightforward and didn’t complicate the item. There are also a lot of other pieces of information I could’ve chosen to include, such as the type of lens, viewfinder, or megapixels. I tried to choose the most important pieces of information that any audience would want to know and could make sense of, regardless of whether they know a lot about cameras or not. Including more information might overwhelm viewers with specifications that are not necessary to viewing and understanding the item.

Digital exhibits can do a lot for museums. They could broaden museum audiences by providing individuals that might not be able to physically visit access to materials. They could also provide opportunities to learn about museum pieces more in depth by having more information and resources about items than what is possible to have in the physical museum setting. Depending on the capabilities of the digital exhibit, it could also allow audiences to interact with pieces in a different way, such as by zooming into the item or clicking interactive elements on the item.

Digital exhibits also present collaboration opportunities for museums. Museums could curate digital exhibits with materials held at many institutions, which not only opens up more possibilities for exhibit topics and items, but would also bring a wider audience to all the museums involved in the exhibit.

It’s clear there are many beneficial implications of digital exhibits for museums, but there is a lot that has to go into actually creating these digital exhibits, which could present challenges. Museums would need to have digital versions of their items and knowledge of how to build digital exhibits. Digital exhibits also require a different type of marketing strategy. This would mean more training for those working at the museum and dedicating time to establishing a system for curating and creating digital exhibits.