Utah’s Most Elusive

Selection Decisions

The stated goal for this digital collection is to expose “many elusive reports written about Utah by state and government agencies, but not widely distributed.” The documents relate to “Utah’s history, geography, natural resources, politics, society, economy, etc.” Utah State University’s Digital Library does not provide any further insight into the selection process; however, it does state that more reports will be added to the collection.
Metadata

One can search the corpus of documents, as they are in .pdf format. However, complete catalog information is not explicitly attached to any object. That is, the user needs to look at the scanned title pages. Having said that, the documents are grouped by topic.

Object Characteristics

I was unable to find the digitization protocols listed on the site, although they seem rather high considering the collection is mostly text. Once one has chosen a document, a menu of its pages appears to the left with a manipulatable image of the page currently viewed taking up most of the browser’s window. This mode of viewing is quite appealing and functional, though I did encounter a document that downloaded every page as a .pdf to my desktop. That was a drag.

Intended Audience

Anyone in need of sources for a paper about Utah could find something within this collection—unless the subject was the Church of Latter-day Saints, which appears only as subsequent references within documents. The collection does a wonderful job, in my uneducated opinion, of providing a wide range of really dry, totally intriguing information about life in Utah. Come on, doesn’t converting woodlands to grasslands interest you just a little?