Digital Objects in the Classroom

Our goal: one online home for many digital collections of historic costume

•    To showcase collections from all over the country, or perhaps the globe!
•    Through one simple search, to be able to see which collections have examples of work by a specific designer, from a specific period, with a specific construction detail, etc.
•    To be able to look at digital images of such search results side by side, whether the object in question is in New York or Indiana

How do we achieve this goal?

•    COLLABORATION!
•    agreement on the format of a standard catalog entry
           o    compare current examples of our catalog entries and look for commonalities
•    agreement on the format of images, including photos and QTVRs
•    creation of a federated search engine specific to our field
•    opening up individual collections to metadata harvesting
•    grant support for several collaborating institutions to develop this resource
•    grant support to host this resource

Challenges:

•    current centralized resources are mostly text-based
           o    how do we develop this concept for works that need equal support for text and image?
           o    it’s not just an image search, either
           o    complex objects with multiple images, references, etc.
•    financial considerations
           o    if many institutions participate, who hosts and maintains the resource?
           o    hopefully grant funding can provide a solution

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