Lesson 8 – ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

Lesson 8 – ArchiveGrid and CAMIO

Discovery Exercise Part 1 ArchiveGrid

1. My “Sitting Bull autograph card” search yielded a 7 sentence summary as well as notes about the materials, including a list of descriptive terms/phrases under “This collection covers:” These descriptive phrases reminded me of subject headings.

I thought the summary of information about Sitting Bull was concise, complete, and unbiased. I’ve probably encountered this information a number of times in my past studies and travels, but I wouldn’t be able to pass a test on it, so it was nice information to read again.

I must say I did expect to see a digital image of the card so I was a tad disappointed that one was not included.

2. I searched “Little Bighorn” and retrieved 178 results, with 20 results shown per set or page. I was curious about the two yellow outlined boxes at left, one titled “Archives” at top left, the other titled “Locations” below that.

Clicking “More archives” in the “Archives” box retrieved a list of 41 archives holding items related to “Little Bighorn.” Clicking “More locations” in the Locations box retrieved a list of 32 locations listed by country then state or province then city.

I presumed that the numbers in parenthesis indicate the number of items at each one, but then I counted to verify my suspicion. Yessiree, the numbers in parentheses on each list added up to 178.

I especially liked the “Locations” list. This would be extremely helpful and timesaving if I were planning a trip to personally visit as many archives as possible. Living in South Dakota, the nearest places for Little Bighorn archives were Minneapolis and St. Paul, MN, then Lincoln, NE, Bozeman, MT, Laramie, WY, and Provo, UT.

Knowing what I know about US demographics, I was not surprised that the Provo archives (58) held the most items related to “Little Bighorn” of ALL the archives in the entire list. Now looking at my printed notes, I should have realized that right away: “Brigham Young University (58)” is listed second alphabetically in the initial “Archives” at top left.

One helpful feature of ArchiveGrid was that the search term used was shown at the top of every printed page of results and or item information. That makes it much easier for me to backtrack through my notes later ---helps keep the information and memories of my search strategies fresh past the first day of searching.

Discovery Exercise Part 2 CAMIO

1. The CAMIO homepage lists nine categories of objects and a tenth link to “and more…” that brings up BROWSE CAMIO page with a list of “Contributing Museums” and a list of 15 “Work Types.” I can’t wait to browse some of these museums. I’ve always wanted to visit them. I’ve made it into the gift shop of the MOMA but never into the gallery itself. Now I can visit at least some of these collections online.

My search for Paul Revere retrieved 35 images of objects. These objects included silver objects created by Paul Revere or Paul Revere II, as well as paintings, sketches and/or drawings of historical scenes or figures with some connection to Paul Revere. Some paintings were of or about Paul Revere or Mrs. Paul Revere. Others must have had some connection to Paul Revere that was not evident in the brief information provided in this set of objects. At least two paintings were retrieved in the Paul Revere search results because the paintings’ descriptions mentioned that the artist had also painted a portrait of Paul Revere. I presume that similar connections to Paul Revere would be evident in the descriptions for other paintings in these results, but I did not read all the descriptions.

Clicking a “Refine your search” option at left of screen for Paul Revere the creator [Paul Revere, North American, American, American, 1735-1818 (By)] resulted in 18 images of objects made by Paul Revere. These included a sugar bowl, 2 different creampots, a teaspoon, a sauceboat (one of a pair), goblet, cann wine quart, tankard, 3 different teapots, 2 different sugar urns, a sugar basket, a coffee urn, a two-handled bowl, a Sons of Liberty bowl, and a salver. I wonder what a “salver” is or a “cann” wine quart…guess I need to look up some of those terms.

I suppose I could have also started with a narrower search for items by Paul Revere by selecting Work Type: Decorative Arts and Utilitarian Objects, but I wasn’t 100% certain that all his work was in this category.

2. The search for “Sioux” retrieved 63 works, including some about Sioux Springs, Nevada. By selecting the second option under “Refine your Search –Creator” that was “Sioux, North America, Native American, Sioux” 37 works were retrieved. Similar Creator options for Lakota, Blackfeet, and Eastern Sioux were also shown in the list.

3. Since the objects included in the above searches reminded me of books by Paul Goble, I used his name as a search query. There were no results for “Paul Goble” or “Goble.”

4. I think that many students and teachers in my school could use the images in CAMIO as part of their social studies classes and teaching/learning activities, especially in social studies and art classes. Teachers who would like to use VTS techniques (Visual Thinking Strategies) might find these images useful. I would think that many of the Picturing America images also might be available in CAMIO as well.

Teachers could easily find and project images using their computer projectors for high quality presentations and viewing in their classrooms.

Personally, I would like to search CAMIO for images by Picasso (keyword search shows 1016 works but not all by him) and Matisse (keyword search shows 222 works, probably not all by him either) that I could show my students when we read the book When Pigasso Met Mootisse by Nina Laden.

5. In selecting images by Picasso for My Favorites, I discovered that not all in the Picasso set were done by him. Using the Creator option is critical to refining results. Also, I noticed that for some of his works his name is shown as Pablo Picasso and for others his name is shown as Pablo Ruiz Picasso.

I discovered that I had to “Add to Favorites” one page at a time. Checked selections were lost if not added before advancing to the next page. Also the "Add to Favorites" option is grayed out until at least one image has been selected. I also discovered that I needed to spell the artist’s name correctly. Mootisse is not a viable search term for Matisse (duh), but you can tell what I was thinking about when I typed in that search term.

There’s one really cool option at left called the “Compare Viewer.” This feature allows 2 images to be displayed side by side on the screen simultaneously. One or both can be changed anytime by selecting either the next-previous option or selecting a specific image number.

Other COMPARE viewing options that appear once you are in the COMPARE mode include fit in window, maximum resolution, zoom, pan left, pan right, pan up, pan down, hide or show thumbnails.

My favorite COMPARE feature is the ability to change the color of the frame (think matte) around the images. Note the little spectrum of colors in the upper right of COMPARE screen. The color surrounding the image can be changed simply by clicking another color square. This WAS fun to play with.

I see many uses for this feature in many classes: art is the obvious application, but I’m sure there would be applications in other subject matter areas.

All the options at left in the View Favorites page are fantastic, especially for teachers who have digital display capabilities in their classrooms.

There’s great potential in CAMIO for anyone to explore art or to find items for reports or presentations.

ADDENDUM 1: This is the first time I’ve tried to post from school. I could not get my computer to paste my blog entry (copied from a WORD document) into the blog page. Is this a function of our school internet restrictions? I don’t know. I will email this entry to my home computer and then try pasting it into my blog at home.

ADDENDUM 2: Whew! Thankfully I WAS able to paste my blog entry into my blog on my home computer. Now I'm curious...was this a problem just for me? Or, can other teachers post to their blogs from a school computer?