CollectionsUnit 1 Lab Activity 2: Browsing a Digital Collection – “Patent Medici

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CollectionsUnit 1 Lab Activity 2: Browsing a Digital Collection – “Patent Medicine Trade Cards” in UCLA Library Digital Collections
Concept
Having learned about GLAM institutions (galleries, libraries, archives, and museums) and digital collections in the Unit 1 Lab Activity 1: Read – Sourcing Content from Digital Collections, this exercise is to explore the “Patent Medicine Trade Cards,” the major digital collection in this course, within the UCLA Library Digital Collections by navigation, browsing, and searching. You might have a lot of experience browsing webpages in the World Wide Web. In this exercise, you will spend some time paying attention to the pathways, viewing broadly on the webpages and looking closely to the kinds of information showing along the way. At the end of this exercise, you will write a discussion post to reflect on this exploration.
About UCLA Library Digital Collections
Remember that a collection is usually a group of similar kinds of things that someone (or some institutions) collected at some point. A digital collection is an online database of digitized objects and other digital content. In the case of the UCLA Library Digital Collections, it consists of 77,302 collections, all being sets of distinctive and international open access digital materials from the Library holdings. The UCLA Library Digital Collections is stewarded by the Digital Library Program that works collaboratively within UCLA Library across campus and with a broad range of partners, aiming to preserve and provide enhanced access to local and global cultural heritage materials in support of the University’s teaching, learning, research, and service mission. It is under this mission that this class is able to take advantage of utilizing the Collection of “Patent Medicine Trade Cards.” Understanding the structure and mode of organization of a digital collection, “Patent Medicine Trade Cards” in this case, provides you a better sense when navigating, browsing, and searching within the UCLA Library Digital Collections. In UCLA Library Digital Collections, the collection items are organized by acquired and curated sets of collections. It is different in comparison with other types of online searching experiences. For instance, in the specimen data from the Consortium of California Herbaria Portal 2 (CCH2), the data serves as a finite set of items in an institutional-based collection, and the users can use controlled vocabularies and key words to search by relevance, and Google search returns are prioritized by relevance but with no outer boundary of search results. Having this in mind, you will see the examples when exploring the Digital Collection of “Patent Medicine Trade Cards” within the UCLA Library Digital Collections.
Activity
Let’s Explore!
This is the taking-off and landing point (page): “Patent Medicine Trade CardsLinks to an external site..” We are going to start off from here, tour around the whole UCLA Digital Library Collections, and come back here.
First, take a moment and view this page, “Patent Medicine Trade CardsLinks to an external site..” You see information associated with this Collection, such as description (“About this Collection”), dates of creation, the numbers of trade cards, the URLs (including the IIIF manifest URL), the “tags” ( “Keywords”), and Notes (provided by the curator, Russell Johnson). This information is called metadata, which provides an organizational or/and contextual information about this Collection.
Now, go to the top of the page and click “UCLA Library Digital Collections BETA.” It takes you to the site of “UCLA Library Digital CollectionsLinks to an external site..” Again, look what is on the page. Remember, the goal is find the way back to the Collection of “Patent Medicine Trade Cards.” There are various pathways that can take you back there. Let’s try one of them:
Under “Browse items,” go to “Collections,” and “more”, then choose “A-Z Sort.” Notice on top, there are 77,302 Results/Collections. You know you will find “Patent Medicine Trade Cards” by clicking on “Next” a few times (5 times) and find it among the titles all starting with the letter P, but allow some viewing time between clicks. On the way there, notice the title of each collection. The collections are often rare and unique sets of materials with distinctive titles. Remember what is mentioned earlier that the way in which the collection items in UCLA Library Digital Collections are organized by acquired and curated sets of collections. After arriving “Patent Medicine Trade Cards” on the list, you see the number “238” on the right. The curator tells us that even though there are 247 physical trade cards in the physical Collection, but there are only 238 digital images in the Digital Collection. After clicking on “Patent Medicine Trade Cards,” it should take you back to the main page of the “Patent Medicine Trade Cards” Collection. (But it does not, it leads to the search returns of all the digital images in this Collection. Perhaps it is just an active choice of path or an error.)
Will you be able to find the pathway from the site of “UCLA Library Digital CollectionsLinks to an external site.” back to the main page of “Patent Medicine Trade CardsLinks to an external site.”?
Write a discussion post (about 80-100 words) to reflect on this exploration and your discovery of UCLA Library Digital Collections.

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