Lynette Seelmeyer
Posters
Embedded Files
Section 1: Introduction to the collection: description, history, collection policy, quality of images, quality of metadata, and ease of access for the general public.
The London Transport Museum has been in existence in one form or another since the early 20th century, starting its life as the London Transport historical collection at various locations around London and moving to the former Flower Market building in Covent Garden in 1980. It became the London Transport Museum in 2000 with the advent of the reorganized Transport for London (TfL) metropolitan transport authority. The museum has two main locations: Covent Garden in central London, and the Acton Depot in west London. The Covent Garden location houses the main collection and the Acton Depot location houses rolling rail stock and other collection items and is open to the public on scheduled visit days. Historically, the museum’s collections have existed to document the history of public transport in London and while the museum will review items donated by the public, this is done on an appointment-only basis. In 2018, the museum developed a five year plan (2018 – 2023) that outlined the museum’s plans for development and notably, the digital collection. The beginnings of the digital collection (named Collections Online) date to 2017, when the museum made 266,000 of its collection of over 500,000 analog objects available in digitized format with 50,000 high-quality digital photos accompanying these items, although no specifics on scanning or photographic equipment or techniques are available in the metadata for each item. The museum stated in 2018 that their Collections Online strategy included broad public availability of their entire analog collection through Collections Online and a strategic partnership with Google Culture in 2019 to showcase 500 of these items was a step in that strategy. Digitization has continued apace and a cursory exploration of the entire Collections Online shows that most, if not all of the museum’s collection is digitized or in process. Unfortunately, none of the items reviewed have permanent digital identifiers of any kind, which will very likely present access problems as data technology inevitably becomes obsolete. Having said this, the museum’s five-year plan states that they intend to become Europe’s premier transport museum, so one can hope that such identifiers and more complete adherence to Europeana metadata standards are forthcoming, as the collection is not indexed in Europeana.
Much of the London Transport Museum’s collections have been digitized, including the vehicles (buses, mostly) and rolling rail stock, and the larger Posters collection is routinely stored at the Acton Depot until analog items are pulled from it for display. The entire Posters collection is available online in digitized format with metadata. While it was tempting to cover the Vehicles digital collection, the Posters collection presents a snapshot of artistic, advertising, and historical and political trends and concerns for 110+ years of public transportation in London and specifically the London Underground subway system, familiar to locals and visitors alike. When searching on the London Transport Museum website, the user will see fully 5680 items when filtering for the facets poster (keyword), has image, and poster (item), a subset of the 14,746 items in total that are accessed when searching on the keyword "poster." Metadata is less complete than for other museum collections and it is assumed this is why the collections are not included in the Europeana aggregator; however, the collection is easily searched in Google and accessed through the museum’s website. Because digitization of the museum’s collections began less than six years ago, digitization continues to this day, and metadata is continually added to complete the entries. The timing of the digital collection launch was fortuitous as it was before the pandemic, with the Google Culture collaboration launched seven months before news of COVID-19 was reaching the wider world and nine months before global lockdown. The London Transport Museum could not have known this, but by digitizing their collections and making them widely available, their particular contribution to cultural heritage did not have to come to a grinding, brakes-squealing halt during the height of the pandemic.
The London Transport Museum Digital Collections can be accessed here.
The Poster collection is found by scrolling down the page and clicking on the Posters icon, taking the user here. Users may also search the entire collection using the search bar at the top of the main digital collections page.
References
London Transport Museum. (2023). Collections. https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/collections
London Transport Museum. (2018). The five-year plan for London Transport Museum: 2018 - 2023. Accessed at https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk > media > downloads
MCN. (2023). The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, e-Learning, and Online Collections. [Blog post]. https://mcn.edu/a-guide-to-virtual-museum-resources/
Price, G. (2019, June 4). Digital collections: Over 500 maps, photographs, and posters from the London Transport Museum digitized and now available from Google Arts and Culture [Blog post]. Library Journal: Infodocket. Accessed at https://www.infodocket.com/2019/06/04/digital-collections-over-500-maps-photographs-posters-and-vehicles-from-the-london-transport-museum-digitized-and-now-available-from-google-arts-and-culture/
Section 2: Two major representative items from the collection.
Item 1: Poster; Winter Sales by Edward McKnight Kauffer, 1921
Reference number 1983/4/1205: One of the museum’s many London Underground advertising posters, this digitized example was commissioned by the Underground Electric Railway Company from Edward McKnight Kauffer in 1921. It uses an abstract art style to depict a crowd surging through London’s winter weather to shop the annual Winter Sales. The abstract style was chosen specifically to call the winter weather to mind, and the colors are indicative of the short, dark days and rain of a London winter. In fact, the umbrellas are the only truly recognizable objects in the art itself and the Underground is presented as a refuge from the wet and cold English winter climate. Even the text is a brief exhortation to get out of the cold via the Underground. The metadata description of the poster suggests that it was inspired both by Japanese woodcuts and by Kauffer’s own association with the Vortism art movement. The analog poster itself is in the Posters collection that is not physically housed at the main London Transport Museum location in Covent Garden, London, but rather at the Acton Depot collection, in the suburbs. The museum states that the metadata description is only 89% complete and that it is their policy to add more information to incomplete items as the information becomes available. Metadata for the item is available in the London Transport Museum's digital collection. The poster’s print code is listed as 599.1000.26.8.21. The poster is indexed with the topics Winter, Winter sales, Rain, Umbrellas, and Shopping. Physical dimensions are listed as 1016 mm high x 635 mm wide are for the analog representation, with a descriptive size of Double Royal. Colors are listed as beige, black, red, and grey. The Item content field includes the title: Winter sales and the Text: WINTER SALES are best reached by UNDERGROUND. Design notes include: Stylistic approach: Abstraction and Stylistic influence: Futurism. Finally, the people and parties involved in the analog object’s creation are listed as Edward McKnight Kauffer, Vincent Brooks, Day & Son, Ltd., 1921 (printer) and the Underground Electric Railway Company, 1921 (publisher). Without scan process details, there is no way to determine actual resolution, but a review of the image shows that the image is complete with edges and that flaws such as paper discoloration, glue at the corners, and so forth are preserved in the scan.
This poster was chosen because it represents something that the people of London, TfL, and the artist all understand: Winter in London is cold, wet, and unpleasant, but that the Winter Sales are on in January to brighten up the winter after the end of the holidays. Winter Sales are still a going concern in London, and the Underground still takes shoppers to and from these sales. The London Underground is clearly targeting shoppers who might otherwise drive to the sales and have to park and walk to the shops in the winter weather. The Underground, meanwhile, has stops all over greater London, including in the main shopping areas such as Oxford Street and Knightsbridge, and this is clearly a savvy advertising campaign for both the Underground and the Winter Sales. Interestingly, there are other posters by this artist from slightly later years that may reflect how effective the Underground’s campaigns became: The later posters encourage travelers to shop between 10 am and 4 pm rather than take the Underground at peak commuting times (earlier in the morning and later in the afternoon/early evening) and to wait until after 6 pm before heading out for the evening to ease passenger congestion on the train lines. The item and its associated metadata explain the curatorial context in some detail and set the poster within its historical context through provenance and some storytelling, making this item an excellent example from the Posters collection, especially regarding historical and social context.
In addition to the London Transport Museum collections page and the Posters collection page, the item can be accessed through the MCN Guide and through Google by searching on London Transport Museum posters, scrolling down the page past the museum shop link, and entering the collection that way. The item and the collection are not indexed in Europeana due to the metadata not meeting Europeana standards, ultimately making the item less accessible.
Item 2: Poster; London 2026 AD this is all in the air by Montague B Black, 1926
Reference number: 1983/4/3775: This digitized representation of an analog poster from 1926 was commissioned by the Underground from Montague B. Black and printed by the Dangerfield Printing Company, Ltd. Unusually for an Underground poster, it is in landscape layout rather than portrait, so the size is listed as Quad Royal. The poster imagines the London Underground 100 years from printing – in 2026. This Underground of the distant future includes flying vehicles such as blimps and advertises the travel time (on the Underground) to Glasgow, Scotland as two hours and 45 minutes. In 2026, London at sunset is filled with skyscrapers with signs like London Bridge Air Depot, Air Taxi, Gravity Gas Co., Ltd., and Mars Stores. The upper text states that in “London 2026 AD – It’s all in the air,” while underneath, the text states “To-day – The solid comfort of the Underground.” The physical representation of this digital item is a poster in the Posters collection and is located at the Acton Depot museum branch rather than at the main branch in Covent Garden. The print code is 341/1,000/15.3.26 and the listed topics are Aircraft, City of London, and London’s transport system. The London Transport Museum states that the metadata record for this digitized item is 100% complete but includes a note that more information is added by curators as it is discovered. Metadata for the item is available in the London Transport Museum's digital collection. Physical dimensions of the analog poster are listed at 1016 mm high x 1270 mm wide, with a landscape layout in Quad Royal size, unusual for Underground posters. Colors are listed as yellow and brown, and the Item Content field includes the following: object title: London 2026 AD – this is all in the air Text: LONDON 2026 AD – THIS IS ALL IN THE AIR – THE SOLID COMFORT OF THE UNDERGROUND. People involved in the work are listed as Artist: Montague B. Black, 1926. Printer: Dangerfield Printing Company Ltd., 1926. Publisher: Underground Electric Railway Company, 1926. The final field is Associated companies, people, and places: Montague Black – 1926. Without scan process details, there is no way to determine actual resolution, but a review of the image shows that the image is complete with edges and that flaws such as paper discoloration, glue at the corners, and so forth are preserved in the scan.
This poster was chosen specifically because it is a time capsule within the wider artistic time capsule of the Poster collection itself. While the entire Poster collection showcases art styles indicative of the time the posters were individually created, and therefore it would have been easy to choose a poster that was displayed during my own childhood in London and later visits (specifically the one for the London Zoo in the 1970s or a later one from my teen years in the late 1980s with a Walkman® on it, asking passengers to keep their music turned down), this image is a unique choice among the entire collection. Interestingly, in a review of the website, there is a photo showing this poster displayed next to the 1976 London Zoo poster that was nearly chosen. This poster, created 97 years ago, imagines what would ultimately become the TfL in early 21st century London. We are now three years off of the predicted date of the poster (2026) and while central London and specifically the City of London is now indeed filled with skyscrapers in, frankly, compelling designs, we do not yet have regular transport to Mars, nor can anyone reach Glasgow in less than three hours on public transport unless they fly there from one of the London airports. People predict trends based on what they know, so the airplanes and (to a much lesser extent) blimps of this poster are certainly a feature of 21st century transportation and unless you consider speed of travel, the designers did not predict things like the Eurostar, the TGV, and other super-fast trains, nor things like electric vehicles, including buses. The 1920s and 1930s also saw a rise in popular science fiction books and films, including Metropolis, which predicted life in the future. This poster, while reflecting that general zeitgeist, also reminds passengers that London Transport right now, in 1926, is a solid and comfortable way to travel around the greater London area. The item and its associated metadata explain the curatorial context in some detail and set the poster within its historical context through provenance and some storytelling, making this item an excellent example from the Posters collection, especially regarding historical and socio-political context.
In addition to the London Transport Museum collections page and the Posters collection page, the item can be accessed through the MCN Guide and through Google by searching on London Transport Museum posters, scrolling down the page past the museum shop link, and entering the collection that way. The item and the collection are not indexed in Europeana due to the metadata not meeting Europeana standards, ultimately making the item less accessible.
References
Lang, F. (1927). Metropolis. [Film]. Berlin: UFA/Parufamet.
Von Harbou, T. (1925/1926). Metropolis. Germany: Illustriertes Blatt/August Scherl
Section 3: Why was this collection selected and how it might be used by the general public?
This collection was selected because the museum itself is dedicated to preserving items from and information about one of the most famous public transportation systems in the world: Transport for London (TfL), which comprises the London Underground, light rail, urban trains, urban buses, and other modes of transport in the London metro area; and items related to the entire endeavor, including but not limited to documents, photographs, artifacts, art, advertising, vehicles, equipment and supplies, and ephemera. The TfL system is so ingrained in London life that shops, attractions, offices, libraries, and more or less anything of note include the nearest tube and bus stations in their location directions. I spent part of my childhood in the United Kingdom and have visited frequently since moving to the United States (most of my extended family still lives in the London area). I have many happy memories of my time visiting museums and other attractions in London, including a childhood trip in from the western suburbs in 1977 that saw us riding a double-decker bus to the Uxbridge tube station, and then taking the tube to Paddington station before taking another tube line to Brompton Road to visit the Natural History Museum, so anything to do with the London Transport Museum (which is one of my son's favorite places to visit when we are in London) was a natural choice for this project. A significant amount of the collection has been digitized, including the vehicles, which are represented digitally by high-resolution photographs and associated metadata. In this case, the Posters collection was examined, because it offers a visual history of advertising and public announcements for TfL with over 5,680 posters alone dating back to 1908. Anyone who has visited London and ridden “the tube” knows that posters are in every station and do not only advertise things to see and do in the city. The posters also include information about the TfL itself, particularly the Underground. Over the 110+ years that TfL has been commissioning posters, art and information trends have changed dramatically. This collection offers a visual time capsule of London into and through two world wars, the post-war era and the swinging sixties, the late 20th century and the rise of personal technology, and into the 21st century. Because the collection is so extensive, the London Transport Museum is able to create themed display collections from within the larger collection, including an exhibit of posters by women artists that was on display in the Covent Garden location in 2018. Generally speaking, the London Transport Museum is a fascinating and popular museum with considerable collections across a range of items and topics, all related to the TfL. Many people who visit London (and people who live there) go to art museums, the British Museum, and the Natural History Museum, but the London Transport Museum offers the public a real opportunity to consider an important part of London’s history that is integral to the day-to-day management of the city itself.
References
London Transport Museum. (2023). Poster Girls: A century of art and design. Past exhibitions. Accessed at https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk/visit/museum-guide/past-exhibitions
Section 4: How easy or difficult it is to find the collection using DPLA and Google? What does this say about the museum’s collection policy for the digital collection? What does this say about the accessibility of the collection for the general public?
The collection was very easy to find via Google, but because it is located outside the United States, the Digital Public Library of America was not consulted. Unfortunately, the London Transport Museum is also not represented in Europeana, but I did also use The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, e-Learning, and Online Collections available from MCN here to find the collection. The MCN list is very complete and was created in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. From Google, a search on London Transport Museum took me to the museum’s digital collection page, which is listed below the "poster" results from the museum shop, and from there, the collections link at the top of the page led directly to a digital collections page that offers several ways to search: by date range, by collection type, by starting at the Object of the Month as well as by searching more stories, and by looking at a selection of the newest collection items, displayed in the middle of the page. Users can also click a “random object” link or look at all objects. Clicking through to a collection or to “all objects” brings the user to a faceted search page where limiters may be added to get to the collection required. Choosing a specific collection type on the collections home page takes the user to that collection search page with that facet already selected and the opportunity to add more. Metadata for the items in the Posters collection at least ranges from mostly complete to complete, and while there is a good amount of detail, it is not at the standards level required by Europeana, which may explain why I could not find items from this museum in that aggregator. Metadata formatting can also be inconsistent, and there are some missing fields and typos, including a total lack of information on scanning techniques and equipment used, and no permanent digital object identifier for any of the items studied, meaning that public access is incomplete and technology obsolescence (for the lack of permanent DOI) will be a factor in the future unless these things are addressed. Every item has a clickable icon next to the “metadata completeness” field that opens a message explaining how curators deal with incomplete data and how they add new information to every digital object as that information is discovered, presumably even for items that are considered 100% complete. Because the London transport system, and certainly the London Underground is iconic, one can only hope that the museum will bring their metadata in line with Europeana standards to make this unique cultural history collection more widely accessible. Given that the museum's stated plan is to have the London Transport Museum regarded as Europe's premier transport museum, one can only hope this will happen in line with their stated goal of rich public access to their Collections Online.
References
Europeana. (2023) Collections. https://www.europeana.eu/en/collections
Europeana. (2023). Home. https://www.europeana.eu/en
London Transport Museum. (2018). The five-year plan for London Transport Museum: 2018 - 2023. Accessed at https://www.ltmuseum.co.uk > media > downloads
MCN. (2023). The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Museum Resources, e-Learning, and Online Collections. [Blog post]. https://mcn.edu/a-guide-to-virtual-museum-resources/
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