James A. Michener’s Centennial: The Evolution of a Novel

James A. Michener’s Centennial: The Evolution of a Novel

1) Collection Principles: This is a very good example of a digitization project in progress (not completed). The site contains (or will contain) everything that the institution, the James A. Michener Special Collection at the University of Northern Colorado, has regarding Michener’s novel Centennial. This includes images of one of Michener’s notebooks, photos taken of Michener while he was working on the book, and images of the production of a miniseries based on the book. In each of these three sections, there are dead links that indicate images/information that are coming soon. The complete lack of internal navigation is very frustrating.

2) Metadata: Each image is associated with a short description, occasionally a date, and an author (for the photographs of Michener). Each page on the site gives contact information for the Michener Collection and the Colorado Digitization Project, as well as a link to general Copyright and Permissions information. There doesn’t seem to be any information on the creation of these digital images, but an effort is being made to provide a user with avenues to ask for information.

3) Object Characteristics: Each image is available for viewing in three sizes, and unknown small size, 250kb jpeg, and 800kb jpeg. The small size is on the page with the rest of the metadata, and the two larger sizes open separate windows. In keeping with the general lack of order of the site, the photos are not gathered together in any one place—a user must go through the entire site page by page to locate the different images.

4) Intended Audience: Considering the lack of sophistication in the design and implementation of the website, it is difficult to determine a distinct user group(s). It seems more like this site is more of a dumping ground for these images and some associated data while the images are still being processed. Hopefully, when the digitization project is complete, the site will be redesigned to more attractively and usefully house the images and data.