About the Collection

Goal

The goal of this digital library project is to create awareness of the photographic resources available in the Romer Collection at the Miami-Dade Public Library.  The photographs in this collection provide a valuable record of Miami's past and can help explain the history and development of our community.  While this project is limited to Gleason Waite Romer's aviation photographs, the complete scope of his work was much greater.  Romer documented all aspects of life in the South Florida community between 1925 and the early 1950s.  Of particular interest are the many photographs of homes, buildings, and street scenes.  These have been very useful to preservationists and those involved in historic restoration.  Hopefully, this online collection and its exhibits will encourage users to further explore the wide variety of photographs held within the Romer Collection at the Miami-Dade Public Library.

Collection Development

The Romer Collection is made up of over 17,000 photographs.  The Miami-Dade Public Library has digitized over 600 of Romer's original photographs.  In selecting the materials to be included in this online collection, the focus was on those photographs related to Miami's aviation history.  Images were chosen using two basic criteria.  The primary criterion was the relevance of the photograph in depicting an important event or aspect of Miami's aviation history.  The second criterion was the technical quality of the printed image.  Since all the photographs are well over 60 years old, there has obviously been some loss of quality.  It should also be noted that Romer was using less sophisticated equipment than available today.  In cases where the subject matter of a particular photograph was considered essential to the project, the secondary requirement for high technical quality was relaxed.  All photographs are organized into narrative exhibits that attempt to tell the story of aviation in Miami and place the images in context. The photographs selected for inclusion in this online collection are those that were determined to serve this purpose most effectively.

Resource Description Method
Each of the images included in this collection is accompanied by basic information about the original photograph. This includes the photograph's title, additional titles, notes about the photograph (if present), subject headings, the Miami-Dade Public Library Dynix number, and the image number assigned to the photograph as part of the Romer Collection. The Dynix catalog number and image number will be helpful to those wishing to purchase reproductions or view the original photographs in the Florida Room of the Main Library.  Much of the information accompanying the photographs comes directly from the Miami-Dade Public Library's online catalog. New subject headings were supplied in an attempt to better describe the photographs.  Library of Congress subject headings were used with the addition of some created locally in order to identify specific persons, aircraft, or organizations.  In addition to the information about the photographs included with the images, metadata is included in the HTML code for all the web pages making up this digital library project. This embedded metadata takes the form of keywords and descriptions that were supplied for each of the pages.
 

Project Maintenance

The structure of this project has been created so that additional photographs and exhibits may easily be added to the online collection. The addition of future exhibits can occur with a minimum of effort and will not require major changes in the navigational structure of the project.  Due to the wealth of photographs in the Romer Collection, it is anticipated that new exhibits will be added to this project from time to time.

The content of this digital library consists mainly of images that are housed on the server that hosts this web site.  Therefore, maintenance of this web site will consist of manually checking the few external links included in the Bibliography section.  This will be performed regularly in order to eliminate the possibility of broken links.  

Comments and Suggestions

Great effort has been made to produce a well designed and accurate web site.  Any suggestions for improvement of the project, corrections of inaccuracies in the content, or other comments would be greatly appreciated.  Please click on the link below to make a comment or suggestion.

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