Digital Objects: The Innovations of Louis C. Tiffany

Louis Comfort Tiffany was remarkable for his ability to use materials in new ways. Digital Objects: The Innovations of Louis C. Tiffany provides a small sample of Tiffany’s works which embody his innovation and versatility between mediums and types of decorative art.

Metadata

After comparison to similar digital collections, I chose the following base metadata fields.

Title, Date: Help keep things organized and accessible.

Description: This is helpful for adding extra detail, including additional phrases that consumers may be searching for.

Creator, Rights: Essential for giving proper credit for any intellectual property.

Medium: Provides more information about the materials used in the artwork.

Type: Provides information about what the object is and how it is used.

Contributor: This is where I have indicated that I am the contributor to this digital collection.

Relation: When relevant, helpful for connecting consumers with artwork and information that is related to the object. 

Facing Challenges

When creating my metadata framework for this project, I came up against several challenges. Precise, descriptive language is difficult to achieve, particularly when keeping diverse learners’ needs in mind. For my next project, I would like to focus on making two overall improvements:

• using research based methods to anticipate how visitors search for objects, so that my metadata can be more detailed and relevant
• consciously adding meaning through creating digital collections, creating thematic threads and connections with additional resources to engage different types of learners and researchers

Broader Implications

Through digital objects, museums and other institutions are able to share and collaborate in new ways, creating a compounding effect of benefits.

• Inviting the public and other institutions to explore collections digitally can facilitate more curiosity and engagement on the whole.
• Linking collections between institutions through common threads of knowledge to create a fuller experience for visitors and stakeholders
• Promoting equity accessibility to digital objects to all people