L'Institut Franco-Chinois de Lyon

While browsing the Web for information about libraries to visit this summer, I happened upon this interesting virtual exhibit of maps, books, posters, photographs, letters and manuscripts evidencing the relationship between Lyon, France and China during the early years of the 20th Century: L'Institut Franco-Chinois de Lyon. Each image is accompanied by a short descriptive sentence, including a date, and a longer paragraph describing more generally the scene in Lyon at the time and the aspects of the relationship that the image illustrates. The images are presented as small thumbnails, but can be enlarged somewhat. The resolution is not all that great, however, and there is no item-level administrative metadata provided.

The library's entire Chinese collection includes over 55,000 items. This virtual exhibition only shows a small sampling (probably fewer than 100). The library does not explain how it has chosen what to digitize. This is, however, a municipal library, though such a specialized collection is rather unusual perhaps. Nonetheless, it does appear to be prepared for the general public rather than for researchers. The larger collection appears to target the research audience more explicitly.

The library has a number of these virtual exhibits on different subjects. They seem to try to tell a story by taking advantage of the Web to organize a small set of artifacts and place each in the context of the times through the writings that accompany each image. Pretty much exactly what you might see in a museum exhibit, more so than in a library. Nicely done though light on the metadata.