NYPL Blogs: Design by the Book

The Great Difficulty in Assigning a Subject Heading is to Get the Pleased Expression

Jessica Cline, Picture Collection, Stephen A. Schwarzman Building — Wed, 09 May 2018 14:49:46 -0400

When choosing where to place an image among our 12,000 or so subject headings in the Picture Collection, we often feel like the painter in this comic from 1919. We have to entertain the many different themes of the picture to find its best fit.

“The Great Difficulty in Child Portraiture is to get the Pleased Expression.” Source: Picture Collection, Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, NYPL

This Punch Magazine comic was drawn by George Stampa, a regular Punch contributor who often chose children and animals as his subjects. As you can see from the handwriting on the border, this image is located in our "Artists" subject file here at NYPL. But, it could have also been placed under a variety of other subject headings: "Children-Cartoons", "Paintings-Process", "Cartoons (subdivided by century or artist)", or "Portraits-Drawings and Prints".

This image of Mrs. Rabbit and her children being painted by a centipede is from the September 14, 1911 issue of the satirical humor magazine Life. It has similar themes to Stampa's comic, but is located in our "Animals - Rabbit" file.

Source: NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 823447

But, Mrs. Rabbit could also have been filed under "Artists, Cartoons (subdivided by century or artist)", "Painting-Process", or "Animals as Human". In our physical location, unless we have two copies of an image, we can only choose one subject category in which to file a picture. However, within the Library’s Digital Collection, a picture can be tagged with many different subjects. For example, this one has been assigned topics of "Painting", "Rabbits", "Animals in Human Situations", and "Centipedes".

"The Extinct Animals." Illustrated London News, December 21, 1853. Source: Picture Collection, Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs, NYPL

And, while you may think a picture of a dinosaur would be an easy image for which to choose a subject, we don’t even have a file called Dinosaurs. That subject would be "Extinct Fauna - Reptiles" to us. But, of course, this picture could also be placed within the subjects of "Models", "Monsters", or "London-Crystal Palace", where these dinosaur models were on exhibit.

When we don't have the luxury of the Digital Collection, how do we choose just one subject heading for an image? We weigh several factors including the dominant feature of an image, the popularity of a theme included in the picture, how many items we have in a certain subject compared to another, patron requests for more pictures of a certain subject, and whether we have more than one copy of the image.

While the subject headings give an overview of the richness of the collection, the subject terms assigned to pictures are often different from what you would expect. If you have any questions or need assistance, please consult the staff in the Picture Collection, who are always happy to help you locate files with pictures on the topic of your choice.

Manufacturing Impact: Why We Digitize

Josh Hadro — Mon, 06 Nov 2017 15:49:55 -0500

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

On October 17, I spoke at the 2017 Smithsonian Digitization Fair on a panel titled "Manufacturing for Impact" (rescheduled or "rebooted" from March 14, due to a massive blizzard that cancelled the conference the first time around!). Below is (roughly) what I covered, and some links to the sites and projects I mentioned.

NYPL digitization copy stand

Access --> Impact

Why do we digitize? My initial instinct is to say something like "to further our mission of access to cultural heritage materials," or "to give people around the world access to things that otherwise would require people to travel to New York City." This is right, I think, but not sufficient: why is access important?

Access is important because we want people to use our collections to enrich their lives and the lives of others. I believe that's the reason we collect and process the materials in the first place, steward them over centuries and decades, and then do things like digitize them.

Put another way, particularly in the parlance of the conference theme: access is just a waypoint toward impact.

NYPL Digital Collections site

Access, analytics, and signal loss

Institutions like NYPL have been digitizing for decades (and we were reformatting to things like microfilm for decades before that...). That's tremendous, because it means that there are now millions of items that are now more findable than ever before -- just take a look at sites like Europeana and the Digital Public Library of America to see the evidence of the robust body of digitized cultural heritage works.

But I think there might also be an interesting signal loss now that we've been digitizing for more than a generation. If other institutions are anything like mine, we're killer at counting digitization throughput, and measuring analytics around the performance of the materials we put online in our Digital Collections platform, or the HathiTrust Digital Library, or DPLA, etc. But those are just shadows on the wall compared to what we're really after, which is meaningful engagement with and use of the materials.

Try the following absurd thought experiments -- I think these situations would be a bummer, but see what you think: imagine all of our digital collections offerings across the industry were all available via one infinitely scrolling page. People could spend countless hours scrolling through the images we've made available! People -- millions of people -- would totally do this. This would be a marvel of access, and would make almost no impact on anyone's life. Intuitively, this feels like it would be better than digitizing things that never get seen or clicked on, but ... not by much.

Now imagine a similar thought experiment, ratcheted down one notch of absurdity: imagine if Facebook decided to do a massive pro bono partnership with libraries and museums, and suddenly decreed that 5% of all newsfeeds would be digitized items from the cultural heritage sector (say, via DPLA's metadata aggregation...). Tens of millions of people would see millions of images that might otherwise never get as many views. But this would still essentially be a bummer, in my opinion (though I'm sure the analytics bumps would make a lot of administrators very happy in the short-term): there would be hundreds of millions of eyeballs engaged, but nary a heart string tugged nor a neuron fired.

Why are these (admittedly absurd) situations a bummer? Because they do almost nothing to further our mission. If showing people these images then leads them to reuse the material in a creative work of some kind, that's what we're after. If showing people these images leads them to reflect on their personal circumstances, broadens their perspectives and influences how they engage with the world and others in it, then that's what we're after. But no matter how I slice it, it seems to me that the basic principle of flashing images in front of people's eyeballs isn't doing much to advance our missions, let alone make good on the investments we've made in digitizing our collections.

Visualization tool for the
NYPL Public Domain Release

Beyond analytics: impact approaches

Now, that all said, there's a great reason for the primacy of analytics and aggregate metrics: it's really hard to measure use and impact! It's much easier to highlight aggregate analytics on views, which imply potential impact rather than measuring it directly.

During the run up to NYPL's Public Domain Release in 2016, my former colleague Shana Kimball and I spent a lot of time talking about how to encourage "use and reuse" of our materials, and solicited feedback in a number of ways, including the hashtag #NYPLremix, among other efforts.

The following are three ways I've come to think about our approach to "manufacturing" impact, based on that work with Shana and delving into our analytics in the last few years. The first two of these approaches were specific tactics deployed as part of the Public Domain Release, while the last is a broader, long-term approach that in some ways builds on the others.

From a photo essay juxtaposing early 20th c. immigration through Ellis Island with the Syrian refugee crisis

The "honeypot" approach

Perhaps the simplest strategy we employed was what I like to call the "honeypot approach." Basically, this is the notion of putting out the raw assets and metadata and scripts in thoughtful and easy-to-use packaging and UX, to make it simple and appealing for people anywhere in the world to make use of our collections materials. It can also come in the form of simply packaging or repackaging existing assets in a way that is "irresistible," directing people to the curated sets of materials that are most likely to pique their interest. Even simple "recently digitized" sets might fall into this category, though I think there needs to be something to make the materials more appealing and easy to work with than just a raw listing approach.

For example, Shana worked with staffers across the institution to create a series of blog posts called "Spotlight on the Public Domain," which targeted a wide variety of audiences.

Here are a few instances of people making use of the materials we highlighted:

A moving photo essay, juxtaposing "Photos of immigrants on Ellis Island and today's Syrian refugees"
A look at "What Beyoncé's 'Formation' might look like if it were set in the 1930s," using Farm Security Administration photographs
An original historic New York City coloring book, based on the photos of Berenice Abbott
An art skateboard design company that creates original prints for skateboard decks
Ongoing works, tagged on various platforms using the hashtag #NYPLremix (e.g., Twitter, Instagram)

Example project approach

In a sense, one of the problem statements we started with for the Public Domain release was, "how do we encourage people to make meaningful use and reuse of the materials we are making freely available?"

One answer is, "show them what kind of things can be done." The tactic here was releasing example projects based on our collections that would hopefully serve as examples of things others might do. These three "Public Domain Remixes" ("Street View, Then & Now: New York City's Fifth Avenue", "Mansion Maniac", and "Navigating The Green Book") created by some of the developers on the team ended up being the stars of the show, challenging our audience to carry on with the effort and create even more creative and important works, all done with the basic raw assets we were making available.

Though all three projects served this purpose well, I'll focus here on the one that seems to have the broadest and deepest appeal.

Navigating the Green Books public domain remix

Navigating The Green Book

The project, titled "Navigating The Green Book," took as its source a series of publications known as The Green Book, which "was a travel guide published between 1936 and 1966 that listed hotels, restaurants, bars, gas stations, etc. where black travelers would be welcome."

(Read more in the Green Books blog post from when we first digitized the materials.)

The tool, developed by my former colleague Brian Foo, takes the OCRed addresses from the listings and displays them on a familiar maps interface. It also lets users plot routes from one address to another, or one city to another, and in doing so, you can see the complex and sometimes circuitous routes that would have been required of Black travelers in the 1940s and 1950s to find food or lodging at one of the listings in the guides. On the landing page of the project, Brian wrote: "We encourage you to explore these books; map them in your mind. Think about the trips you could take, can take, will take. See how the size of the world can change depending on the color of your skin."

NYPL digitized the volumes in 2014 at the suggestion of Maira Liriano, the Associate Chief Librarian of the Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture. And while the materials saw a lot of visits from the day they were published online, it was clear that this important set of volumes could be showcased in an even more powerful way. Brian took notice of the materials, and applied a critical lens similar to that which he's used to pursue a number of personal software art projects.

Facsimile reproduction a Green Book volume, using images made available via the Public Domain Release

Meanwhile, since the Navigating The Green Book tools was published, we've heard from many educators who have used the materials as part of curricula that touch on Jim Crow-era America and related topics, as well as from Digital Humanities instructors in college and graduate programs who hold it up as an example of an impactful use of historical text. Beyond that, this familiar 21st century interface to mid-20th century discrimination has prompted numerous mentions in blogs and news articles because it provided these materials a modern digital hook that the digitized pages otherwise can't really provide on their own as images embedded on web pages.

It's even prompted a small California press called "About Comics" to reprint one of the issues as a facsimile edition, based on the images released from NYPL's digitization efforts.

Platform approach: The NYC Space/Time Directory

The final project I'll touch on is The NYC Space/Time Directory. The approach here is a bit broader, but also largely focused on setting up the circumstances to encourage greater use of our collections materials.

I should acknowledge upfront that this is a more resource intensive approach to making our collections more useful and more meaningful, and has been generously funded for the last two years by the Knight Foundation.

Here's how we describe the NYC Space/Time Directory on the project's homepage:

The NYC Space/Time Directory will make urban history accessible through a set of resources including: a searchable atlas of New York past, an historical location directory and geocoder, a set of APIs and data sets, and a discovery tool linking NYPL collections together in an historical and geographic context.

These explorations will provide a way for scholars, students, enthusiasts, and librarians to explore New York City across time periods and to add their own knowledge and expertise.

The platform described here essentially builds on the process NYPL has been undertaking for years in an attempt to "unlock" the data latent in images of maps, city directories, telephone books, genealogical records, mortgage records, and much more. Previous tools include the Map Warper, which allows users to geo-rectify atlas pages to align precisely with mapping interfaces, and Building Inspector, which applies computer vision to insurance atlases and then supplies identified sections of images to a crowd-sourcing interface so users can help the Library verify and correct building footprints through the decades.

All of this data and more, along with links to the original digital assets, enter into the Space/Time platform through an "extract, transform, and load" process, and will be made available through a constellation of tools and interfaces to help people integrate what we know about the urban landscape of New York City with their own data sets, tools, and historical/genealogical research efforts.

And it gets better: once we get a set of base layers of urban geography for each year, with all the evolving street names and address schemes, we'll be able to accurately pinpoint things like photos of buildings not just to particular street address, but also to a particular point in time. Or as we like to think of it: Google Maps with a time slider.

The Maps by Decade home page

One example tool that's already proven useful to casual researchers and dedicated genealogists is a historic map interface titled "Maps by Decade." It's "a new way to view more than 5,000 digitized street maps of New York City from our collection, published between 1850 and 1950... With Maps by Decade, finding and viewing georectified maps is easier than ever. Use Maps by Decade to browse and compare the streets of New York City, one decade at a time. See how your neighborhood looked in a hundred years ago, and download maps in high resolution, most of which are available in the public domain." You can see more in the blog post by Spacetime Engineer Bert Spaan.

Another tool is called "Surveyor," a tool to "to make it easier to find NYPL’s digitized photos by the location where they were taken." Surveyor invites users to "try and determine the locations depicted in these mostly unlabelled photos ... [to] create a database containing the geographic locations of our photos, [where] this data will be available for everyone to use and download." (Read more from Bert's announcement of the Surveyor tool.)

Beyond helping users make easy use of digitized maps and collections, since this project is still in flight, it's a bit premature for us to say precisely what impact it will have. But based on what we've seen with other platforms and example projects we've put out in the wild, the first adopters are likely to be the geodata wonks eager to get ahold of any and all historically accurate data in order to fill in gaps in their own data sets, and draw important connections to tools they've already created. Likewise, commercial and non-commercial genealogical organizations like ancestry.com and others are keen to see what materials we make freely available, that might be incorporated into their offerings.

Screenshots from the Urban Archive app

One example is the non-profit software development outfit Urban Archive (disclosure: Bert Spaan and I have advised on the development of their app, and it felt good to know how easy they found working with the open data sets we've already released via the Space/Time Directory website, but we were not compensated in any way other than good feelings). According to their site,

Urban Archive is a location-based mobile app that empowers New Yorkers to learn about history where it happened.

The app brings together the digital collections of New York City’s museums, archives, and libraries in an easy-to-use resource built for discovery.

Though it's still in beta, it's useful for folks who want to see nearby historical points of interest, particularly photographs of buildings pinpointed on a mobile map interface. The thing I love about it is that it incorporates our data and connections to our digitized collections, and synthesizes those with similar offerings from many other institutions. What's more, they do it in a way that's really compelling and engaging, via a mobile app that we could never have developed ourselves, but that's still useful and openly available to our patrons and researchers.

Sewing it all together

Perhaps the novelty of digitized collections has worn off a bit, especially as we enter an era of "mass digitization." Without delving too deeply into the economics of it all, the supply of high quality digital surrogates of incredible cultural heritage primary sources is increasing at an incredible rate. There's a lot more work to be done to flesh out more complete impact models and tie our digitization priorities to measurable outcomes, but in the meantime I hope the description of these three more proactive approaches to manufacturing impact spark some ideas and prove useful at other institutions.

Final note: I'm very grateful to the Smithsonian Digitization Program Office folks for putting on a great event that prompted some reflection. For more about the Smithsonian Digitization Fair, see the #SIdigi hashtag.

Mad Men Fashion

Dina Selfridge — Thu, 04 Jun 2015 10:47:52 -0400

MEGAN (Zou Bisou Bisou!)Image ID: 5232079

The series finale of Mad Men that aired on AMC on May 17 roughly coincided with NYPL's digitization of over one-thousand fashion illustrations produced in the 1950s and '60s by New York City-based firm Creators Studios. ("Not yesterday's but tomorrow's fashions today" was the company's tagline.) Perhaps we've just had Mad Men on the brain lately, but if you see traces of the show's female protagonists in these ready-to-wear design drawings you are not alone:

JOANImage ID: 5231431

PEGGYImage ID: 5232004

BETTYImage ID: 5232441

FAYEImage ID: 5232112

MARIEImage ID: 5232272

MEGAN (Zou Bisou Bisou!)Image ID: 5232079

TRUDYImage ID: 5231514

JANEImage ID: 5232055

See more Creators Studios fashion illustrations on NYPL's Digital Collections site and also in person at the Mid-Manhattan Library Picture Collection.

My Library: Children's Book Illustrators

Frank Collerius, Library Manager, Jefferson Market Library — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 16:22:38 -0400

The Children's Book Ilustrators Group (CBIG) presented us with an interesting project—we would choose a favorite children's book and they would create an illustration inspired by that book! Rebecca, the Children's Librarian at Jefferson Market, chose The Reluctant Dragon by Kenneth Grahame and The Magic City by E. Nesbit. The resulting work is on display in the library. Here is an interview with some of the illustrators—on their process, their favorite books and writers and their visit to Jefferson Market Libray!

What inspired you about the book you chose to illustrate?

MARILYN PAPAS: I chose The Reluctant Dragon because I laughed out loud, and it was so visual. The author, Kenneth Grahame, really developed his characters well and injected humor throughout this age old story of St. George and the Dragon. It has a fun and triumphant ending proving anyone can be friends.

MAXINE LU: I chose The Magic City because my 9 year old daughter and I love to listen to CDs of stories by the author, E. Nesbit, on our long road trips. Her writing, from the early 1900s, is still fresh today. It contains an understanding of children and the humor of children unlike others. She was an amazing writer, influencing C.S Lewis and J.K. Rowling. She combined real world settings with magical adventures which had not been done before.

LAURA GOETZ: I chose The Reluctant Dragon. The unusual friendly character of a dragon, who didn’t like to fight, was what inspired me. The dragon reminded me of my big bloodhound Sam, who has a frightening bark, but is as friendly as can be.

LEEZA HERNANDEZ: Being from England, The Reluctant Dragon reminds me of where I grew up which was quite rural. I love dragons, too and I wanted to explore textural ways to create a dragon with my illustrative style—which I hadn't done before. This was the perfect opportunity for me to do that.

DONNA MISKEND: The Magic City is all about imagination and creativity. It’s a very visual story, with a lot of possibilities for illustrations. Phillip creates cities from objects he finds around his house. And he reads books on all different subjects that either influence the cities he builds or the people and animals come alive to inhabit them. It’s a wonderful story!

JENNIFER MERZ: I have always loved The Reluctant Dragon ever since I was a child. I have always been inspired by the Dragon's independent spirit and reluctance to fight, and the boy's courage to jump in and solve a difficult situation!

DIANA TING DELOSH: I chose The Reluctant Dragon because I loved the character of a gentle, poet dragon, who just wanted to spend his days peacefully, dreaming and creating new poems. I also enjoyed the author, Kenneth Grahame's tongue in cheek tone and humor that makes this story both timeless and relevant.

Tell me about your illustration process.

DONNA MISKEND: First I sketch out the individual pieces. Here I used the candlesticks, vases, and other objects I have in the house, just like Philip in the story. I have a file of reference material from newspapers and magazines and used my own photos of people in costumes. I often scan my sketches into the computer, adjust the size and then use the print out as a workable sketch. In this illustration there is a border, so I arranged the sketches under tracing paper and cleaned up the outlines. Then I transferred the entire drawing from the tracing paper to watercolor paper. I used a sepia brown colored wash for the base, and built up the colors using watercolor paint. I also used colored pencils for some of the detail.

JENNIFER MERZ: I use brown paper bags (yes, the kind from the supermarket!) to roughly 'sketch' my pictures first. This process gets me in tuned with all the tactile supplies that I use for my finished collage illustrations.

LAURA GOETZ: My illustration process varies depending on the project, but I begin with a pencil drawing. I develop the sketch using tracing paper that you can see through, so I can retrace and move, add or take out elements in the picture. Sometimes, I do a small color rough. Then I transfer my final tracing on to watercolor paper and paint the final art. I often base my characters on people or animals I know.

DIANA TING DELOSH: I use ink and watercolor paints. My process is very basic: read/review the story or illustration specs, ruminate, research, doodle thumbnails, sketch and sketch on tracing paper until it looks right, transfer onto watercolor paper, ink, plan the color and paint. First I put in all my shadows using either a blue-black or sepia color. Then I start with the thing I'm most nervous about painting or sometimes I just start from the item on the bottom left. I'm right handed so I work from left to right so as not to smudge my art. I use a hairdryer to help dry areas if I'm in a rush. Backgrounds are usually painted in last.

CLAUDIA CARLSON: I draw on paper, scan the pencil drawing into my computer and use a wacom tablet with digital pen in photoshop.

LEEZA HERNANDEZ: It's completely experimental. I look for ways to fuse line, texture and color in interesting and engaging ways. I will work with pencil, paints (mostly acrylic), paper, collage, and printing inks but I’m happy to use photos, used packaging and fabrics if I think it will work in the piece somehow. It's different every time I work on an illustration and that's why I love it so much.

MARILYN PAPAS: I followed my best rough sketch as a guide. For this illustration I used photos and old wood cuts from reference such as magazines and Google images. I invented the dragon based on a seahorse which shows in it's face and snout.

CLARE PERNICE: I go to the library and get out research material. I got out many books on dragons and learned that there are all different types. I sketch and make notes and compile a list of characteristics that will help with the drawing. Once I come up with the character in pencil I then test out some colors. Then I draw him on quality paper. My finished dragon is in shades of aqua pastel.

MAXINE LU: My illustration process starts with a pencil drawing. I scan the pencil drawing into the computer, cleaning it up with an eraser tool in Photoshop. Then I add color in the computer. I print out the final piece.

What other books/authors inspire you?

CLARE PERNICE: All the books written by my favorite author Roald Dahl because he writes characters so vividly and his stories really get your imagination going!

DIANA TING DELOSH: I'm a fan of E. B. White, Margaret Wise Brown, Tolkien, Donna Jo Napoli, William Steig, Robert Quackenbush, Maurice Sendak, Cynthia Rylant, Jane Yolen and too many others. I love mysteries, adventures and fairy tales—both classic and new.

JENNIFER MERZ: A. A. Milne, E. B. White, Lewis Carroll—stories that create wonderful imaginary worlds are my favorites!

DONNA MISKEND: Tolkien is a favorite author, he even created an Elvin language for his characters. I also love international fairytales. Often they are the same stories but told through the eyes of different cultures.

LAURA GOETZ: Too many to list, but my favorite book is the classic, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. The author wrote a dream like adventure story, with fun text. His mysterious and make believe characters illustrate his creative imagination.

CLAUDIA CARLSON: Diana Wynne Jones is my favorite fantasy writer. Sean Tan my favorite writer/illustrator. I love the illustrations of Paul Zelinsky, Adam Rex, and Posy Simmonds. Of course I love Rackham and Dulac's fairy tale illustrations from a hundred years ago. The pen and ink drawings of Garth Williams are magical even when they show ordinary things, such as a pig and a spider who are friends.

Note: check the NYPL catalog for holdings on the above authors and illustrators.

If this is your first time at the Jefferson Market Library, what have you discovered?

CLARE PERNICE: This is my first time at this wonderful library. It has a fantastic children's room with it's own theatre for performances.

DONNA MISKEND: I’ve been here quite a few times, it has a good selection of children’s books for all age groups. I love the architecture. With the spiral staircase, stained glass windows and vaulted ceilings, it’s very castle-like. Perfect to get you in the mood for both these stories.

LEEZA HERNANDEZ: The Jefferson Market Library is such a beautiful building. One could spend hours in there just looking at the architecture. I was amazed at the amount of books in the children's room, too. It's a fantastic place to absorb oneself in books.

MAXINE LU: I now live near the Jefferson Market Library. I am so honored to have an illustration showing here. I have learned that the Jefferson Market Library is incredibly involved in the neighborhood history and mysteries. I love the children's department at the Jefferson Market Library. I have discovered that I can have a small part in this wonderfully rich neighborhood.

Thank you all so much for a wonderful show!

(All work protected by copyright and may not be used without permission.)

A Paper Sculpted Goldfish.

Jessica Pigza — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 10:47:50 -0400

Included among the books I brought out for last month's Handmade Crafternoon was one that I've been slow to return to the shelves because I want to try my hand at so many projects within it. The book in question is Kenneth Ody's Paper Folding and Paper Sculpture, and I'm a fan because it contains a really broad range of projects--from cute little projects like dog scuptures to some seriously elegant lacy paper globes.

I've tried just one project so far, a goldfish that gets its three-dimentional structure through a simple woven tail that helps to form the fish's cupped body. Here's how Ody explains how to make the fish:

I'm impressed with the simplicity of execution and the means of creating a paper sculpture without the use of adhesives. I always enjoy finding unexpected inspiration (like this fish pattern) in the stacks when preparing book offerings for each month's Handmade Crafternoon. I hope that you enjoy browsing through the books too--if you ever have questions about them just let me know. At March 20th's Handmade Crafternoon I will have ready a spread of books all about handsewn toys and puppets, so do keep an eye out here for more details about the event later this week.