Digital Objects – Exploring Roadside Attractions from Florida’s Historic Highway 19

By: Rebecca Schwandt

I chose five items that I digitized from the May Museum of Natural History’s private collection. Each item is related to the history of roadside attractions in Florida. More specifically, each location that each item is related to could be visited by driving on highway 19 in Florida, that runs from Saint Petersburg to Georgia. After the Skyway Bridge was completed in 1954, South Florida could also easily access this highway. The May family collected these brochures after traveling the highway, when they were trying to find a suitable location to house a selection of their tropical insect collection. They decided to partner with Weeki Wachee and opened the May Museum of the Tropics at the springs. Additionally, John Hamlet, who operated the roadside attraction Birds of Prey, Inc. in Ocala, also decided to partner with Weeki Wachee and eventually brought his falconry show to the park. I curated this collection around the brochures related to both U.S. 19 and Weeki Wachee, because the May family has many other brochures from other attractions. I chose Weeki Wachee as the main focus because it is one of the last of Florida’s post-war roadside attractions that is still in operation.

Metadata Fields Chosen:

• Title: A name given to the resource.
• Rights: Information about rights held in and over the resource.
• Type: The nature or genre of the resource.
• Creator: An entity primarily responsible for making the resource.
• Date: A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource.
• Description: An account of the resource
• Format: The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource.
• Language: A language of the resource.
• Source: A related resource from which the described resource is derived.
• Has Format: A related resource that is substantially the same as the pre-existing described resource, but in another format.

Metadata Methodology:

I chose ‘Title’, ‘Date’, ‘Description’, and ‘Language’ in order for readers and researchers to better understand the pieces of ephemera. I wrote these fields keeping in mind that viewers who are unaware of the significance of the items need as much relevant context as possible to learn about them. The ‘Title’, “Date’, and ‘Description’ fields all give viewers wider context of the items and how they relate to each other. They were gathered in the same decade, the 1950s, which was the height of roadside attractions. I wanted this information to convey that this era before major interstates were completed, before airline travel became more widely accessible, and before Disney World opened in Florida, was when roadside attractions were most popular. The Skyway Bridge connected South Florida to U.S. 19 and U.S. 19 connected Florida with Georgia, making its 262 mile length a prime area for roadside attractions. I also wanted to convey that the May family understood this significance, which is why they decided to partner with a roadside attraction in Florida located on U.S. 19 when deciding on a secondary location for their museum.

I decided to include ‘Rights’, ‘Type’, ‘Creator’, ‘Format’, ‘Source’, and ‘Has Format’ to fully illuminate where the items originally came from, who currently owns the items, and my role in digitizing the items. I wanted to credit the original creators of each item, while also crediting the May Natural History Museum for allowing me access to their collection. I also wanted to make it clear that I only hold the digital reproductions of the items and that I scanned the items myself. I wanted to avoid as much confusion as possible as to who owns what items, which is why I went so into depth in these fields.

Challenges:

One challenge I faced when choosing the items is making sure I selected items I have not used in a prior project, while also choosing items that relate to a theme. I scanned the chosen items, along with hundreds of others, when conducting research for the thesis I completed in 2018. I took a trip to the May Museum of Natural History in Colorado and the family was gracious enough to allow me access to their collection in exchange for giving them a copy of the digitized items. The scans I did not use have been in storage for so long and wanted to share more of them. In order to avoid plagiarism, I had to cross-check my thesis to the items in the collection. At first, I wanted to choose only items related to the May Museum, however I found that I had few to choose from. To overcome this obstacle, I broadened my perspective and found I could create a theme around U.S. 19, which allowed me to be able to choose from a wider pool of images.

Giving proper credit to the items is where I faced the most challenges. I picked more fields than I needed to because I wanted to be thorough, however, I found that the metadata is redundant in some areas due to this decision. I also am still struggling to decide if the metadata I provided does clearly explain the information I want it to. I kept asking myself while writing, “I know what this means, but would a stranger understand?” Trying to write what I think a stranger would want or need to know is definitely the most challenging aspect of writing metadata for me.

If I focused more on describing the original items rather than focusing on describing the scans, viewers could get a better understanding of how they relate to each other and their original significance as well. My goal in using the description field is to include as much as I could about the original item, however I believe the objects would be better understood if all the description fields were about the objects themselves rather than the scans. The subject field, source repository field, and external reference field could have better described who owns the items and why they are important, for example.

Importance of Digital Collections:

Digitization is so important for accessibility. For example, with this project, the items I scanned are located in boxes, in the attic of a museum in Colorado whose primary focus is on tropical bugs. None of these items related to Florida tourism history will ever make it to their physical exhibits.  The only reason the family still has them in the first place is because the current owner’s grandparents never got rid of records. For all I know, by now, they have gotten rid of some or all of these items. Projects like the University of Central Florida’s RICHES Program, who collect scans of items in personal collections related to Florida history that most likely will never even make it to a museum’s collection are integral in showcasing wider perspectives of history. Someone does not have to be a researcher with money and connections to travel across the country or the world when digital collections and exhibits exist that offer free access to knowledge. Diversity is the mother of innovation, and monetary roadblocks have always limited the amount of perspectives that publish history. Structural racism and classism exist in both academia and museums. These issues are only getting more rampant the harder it becomes to make a living wage in these careers. With more free access to information comes more perspectives which creates a better understanding of our world.

Funding and keeping up with technological advancements are the main challenges I see in museums implementing digital exhibits. Smaller museums who have a difficultly in even staffing a full time director are not going to have the money to publish digital exhibits online. And if they do get a grant that funds a project, it could become unusable if not maintained. Dead links, outdated media players that are not supported anymore, etc. are all roadblocks for smaller institutions that cannot afford to hire the staff needed to run a website.