A Proposal for the Judging
            of Publications on the World-Wide Web
         by the Exhibition Catalogue Awards Committee


Introduction

Since 1994 there has been discussion in the Exhibition Catalogue Awards Committee (ECAC)
about whether to include catalogues from the World-Wide Web in the committee's annual
judging. The committee anticipates that the convenience and popularity of publications on the
Web will lead to an increasing number of electronic catalogues, many with no print counterparts.
Its activities as originally conceived would therefore overlook a significant and relevant body of
creative work.

The most energetic early impetus toward the electronic initiative came from committee member
Holly Hall, who in February 1995 circulated various documents, including a memo discussing
logistics and criteria for judging. Holly's death a few months later deprived the initiative of its
clearest thinker and main proponent, although the appointment of a Web subcommittee in 1996
reflected the continuing enthusiasm of committee members. The recommendations of the
subcommittee (Ellen Cordes, Manon Theroux and Michael Joseph), were mounted on the Web
in February 1997 at http://www.library.yale.edu/~theroux/webecac.htm, where they may still be
consulted. The present proposal draws on this document, and other materials, not least of which
is a draft prepared by former ECAC chair, Steve Tabor.  We are also indebted to ECAC
committee members, past and present, and to Laura Stalker for suggestions.

Scope

This may be the area of controversy in this proposal. Exhibition catalogues on the Web shade off
in various directions, into library home pages, finding aids, and exhibitions. As regards home
pages and finding aids, one can draw a boundary rather easily, if intuitively. The committee has
been using internalized concepts of what constitutes an exhibition catalogue all along to
disqualify printed publicity materials, informational brochures, and catalogues of whole
collections written primarily for reference use.

By contrast, the Web blurs the distinction between  catalogue and  exhibition, further blurred by 
the tendency of libraries to use the terms exhibition and catalogue inconsistently. While some
libraries call their Webbed object a Web Catalogue, other libraries prefer the term, Web
Exhibition although this performs the defining function of a catalogue by documenting  (at least)
a traditional library exhibition. On the other hand, some Web Exhibitions constitute the exhibition 
in its entirety, with only a virtual presence in material actuality. This category of exhibition has
prompted spirited debate within ECAC and within the ECAC subcommittee: While noting the
minority opinion, that stand-alone virtual exhibitions might even now be achieving a stature
rivaling or even overshadowing that of hold-and-feel resources, and that by ignoring them ECAC
will find itself operating on the margin, we ask that ECAC be permitted to follow the  more
conservative expansion of its scope, and target its evaluation of Webbed catalogues to only those
linked specifically to traditional library exhibitions of three-dimensional objects. 

It has been noted that the Leab awards implicitly stress the importance of exposing the public to
rare materials as physical (qua physical) objects, and it is in our best interest to remain true to the
spirit of our charge as conceived by Katherine Kyes Leab and Daniel J. Leab.  The ECAC chair
should consider asking Executive Committee to revisit  this charge, or consider alternative forums
for evaluation altogether, if this approach proves to exclude a significant body of activity
considered of relevance to the RBMS membership.

Eligibility

Rules for submissions of catalogues on the Web would be nearly identical to those for print
catalogues. The following proposed list may be compared with the existing rules at
http://www.princeton.edu/~ferguson/ecac/rules.htm.

1) The Web publication must represent a library exhibition which has taken place or was in
progress before 1 September [of the year preceding the award]. 
2) It must have been mounted between 1 September [two years preceding the award] and 31
August [of the year preceding the award]. 
3) The entry must be submitted by 30 September [of the year preceding the award]. 
4) The institution publishing the catalogue must be in the U.S. or Canada. 
5) Finding aids, home pages, and other publications lacking significant interpretive content and
specific references to displayed objects as such are not eligible. 

In addition, winning entrants would be asked to provide a stable URL, and to leave their Web
pages mounted through at least July of the award year. This latter is not a great impediment; the
ECAC subcommittee found that library Web exhibits tend to stay up indefinitely.

Categories, and procedure for submission

ECAC assigns printed catalogues to one of three categories based on production costs as reported
by the submitting library. The committee recognizes that libraries will rarely be able to give such
detailed accounting in the case of Web publications, at least as regards in-house contributions.
At the same time, it seems unfair to judge a professionally-designed, grant-funded publication
by the same standards as one mounted by a single-handed librarian on spare weekends. Rather
than create further cost categories, we suggest that the committee informally weigh the subsidy
factor in its deliberations, take account of professional design help, and attempt to cite
publications representative of the entire cost spectrum. Experience will show whether it is
practical or desirable to establish separate divisions.

With the elimination of the requirement for cost reporting, the submission process can be quite
simple. Institutions would send a communication to the ECAC chair giving the following
information:
   1) Name of sponsoring institution and department as they wish it to be known
   2) The URL
   3) Dates of the exhibition
   4) Date of publication on the Web
   5) Author(s)
   6) Person(s) and/or organization(s) responsible for design and markup
   7) Amount and source(s) of outside funding, if any. 

A version of the blank "entry form" above would form part of ECAC's cluster of pages linked
to the RBMS home page. Its URL would be publicized in the usual ways.

Number of awards

Jettisoning the cost-based categories, ECAC would be free to judge Webbed catalogues on a more
flexible basis, which it deems appropriate to this evolving  medium. (If we are no longer in the
incunabula period of Webbed information, we are not much beyond it.) We recommend giving
multiple, unranked awards, along the lines of the various ALA notable book awards (notables).
The number of ECAC notables awarded will likely rise and fall with the number of submissions.
Judging will be placed in the hands of the judges, who, as in the past, will exercise the ability to
identify and reward exemplary work.

Type of awards, and publicity

In keeping with the electronic theme, the committee has enthusiastically suggested the awards
take the form of a digital image which can be sent to the winners for inclusion in their winning
pages. This citation should be professionally designed. The institutions, titles, and URLs of the
submitting libraries  would be printed in the committee's annual checklist of print catalogues, and
in the other usual post-award publicity. The Web version of the list would contain maintained
electronic links to the winning catalogues. After some discussion, the committee rejected  the
option of providing links to every Web catalogue for a period of one year after the awards, and
thereafter only to the sponsoring institutions and winning catalogues. In our view,  the cumulation
of library exhibitions on the Web provided by the University of Houston, already linked-to from
the RBMS homepage, diminishes whatever usefulness such a service might otherwise offer.

Some members advocated an internet hookup at the awards ceremony at the RBMS Program. The
winning sites could be bookmarked and available for viewing before and after the meeting, along
with the printed catalogue winners. We hope that this can be worked into the operations of the
committee, but respectively submit that this should not be viewed as a drop dead issue, since, in
our view, it only tangentially bears upon the possibility for this initiative to succeed.

Duplicate awards for print and Web versions

Since many catalogues may have both print and Web versions, it will happen that the committee
wishes to give duplicate awards. We see  no impediment to this. Web publications have their own
structural and visual grammar, as may become increasingly evident; and success in one format
does not automatically translate into success or failure in another. In addition, forcing prospective
submitting libraries to choose between divisions would tend to diminish the quantity and hence
the quality of entries in both.

Mechanics of judging

We  propose that ECAC include Web catalogues in its judging process without any adjustment
of committee membership or meeting times. Beginning in October of the year preceding the
awards, the chair will distribute the URLs of submitted sites to the members. Members are
responsible for reviewing the sites before the Winter meeting, and should compile a list of their
favorites along with such notes as they would keep when reviewing the year's print catalogues.
Should the number of webbed catalogues grow burdensomely large, the committee might adopt
another of the practices of the notable committees and assign regionally grouped entries to
specific committee members employed in other regions.

The final judging at ALA Midwinter will require an internet hookup in the meeting room. For
simplicity in planning it would be best to confine judging in the electronic division to one of the
two meetings, and therefore to one installation. Minimum equipment requirements are a fairly
contemporary personal computer. or Macintosh, equipped with a net-browser (also late model)
and a reliable internet connection.

Criteria for judging

To aid in their evaluation of print catalogues, ECAC members resort to a list of informal criteria
which has evolved over the lifetime of the committee. Here is the current outline version (order
not significant):

INTELLECTUAL CONTENT
1. Originality
2. Overall informational content
3. Contribution to scholarship
4. Bibliographical description and accuracy of detail
5. Apparatus [e.g., names of those involved in production, table of contents, or index, where
appropriate]
6. Organization and presentation
7. Choice of items
8. Illustrations [i.e., what is illustrated, and why]
9. Appropriateness to intended audience [as stated on the entry form]

DESIGN
10. Originality
11. Appropriateness to subject matter
12. Effectiveness of design
13. Typography
14. Production and materials
15. Quality of reproduction (if appropriate)

This list would serve sufficiently for Web catalogues.


Archiving

Our consideration of archiving Webbed catalogues may present some difficulty since it
encourages us to recommend a practice that will be inconsistent with our current practice.
Currently, submitting libraries send four copies of each entry, which are distributed to the Leabs
and three archive locations: the Grolier Club, the HRC, and the Bancroft Library. Several RBMS
members have expressed the hope  that electronic catalogues might be similarly archived, and,
indeed, the undisputed value of archival copies of electronic resources has come to drive a
significant part of the agendas of the archival and  preservation communities. However, for
obvious reasons, the archiving of Webbed catalogues remains rather interesting.

Once we discard consideration of hard-copies of Webbed catalogues as too radically different
from the original resource to qualify as a meaningful surrogate, and daunting to preserve and
access (saying nothing of the demand in labor it imposes upon submitting libraries), we are
brought face to face with the familiar problem of cultivating a dependency upon volatile
technologies, with the usual imponderable questions. The impracticality of archiving Webbed
catalogues and making them accessible for many years to come in the current environment argues
against building an archiving regimen into our proposal. However, having every confidence that
conservators, preservation managers and systems librarians will eventually determine an efficient
method for archiving and accessing electronic resources, we suggest that the archiving issue not
be treated as a dead letter, but that the archiving of Webbed catalogues be kept on the agenda of
ECAC until such a time as it can become part of its normal operations.

Financial impact

This proposed expansion of scope would incur the minimal cost of a one-time charge for
professional design of a digital citation. The Leab endowment is ample to accommodate this
expense. Thus far, ALA is providing internet access at the semiannual meetings free of charge.

The Leabs

In February, 1997, Stephen Tabor phoned Katharine Leab to ask her opinion of an expansion of
our scope to include virtual exhibitions as well as Web catalogues in the narrower sense. She said
that she and Daniel were delighted with the idea, that it had been a long time coming, and that
they had no particular wishes as to our method. [I have not talked to Cathy or 'Daniel' myself
about this, although we have planned to get together in March. Will be in touch!]


                   Summary of the Proposal

1. The Exhibition Catalogue Awards Committee proposes in its judging to include exhibition
catalogues on the World Wide Web. In this new division the following stipulations would apply:
2. Submissions must represent traditional library exhibitions in actual (not virtual) galleries or
exhibition spaces.
3. Submissions will be judged in one separate category.
4. Awards will consist of a digital image, which the winning institution may [must?] incorporate
into the entry [at its option?]
5. An institution may enter a catalogue from a single exhibition in both print and electronic
divisions.
7. ECAC will not solicit or distribute archival copies.



                           Originally composed by Stephen Tabor
                           Chair, Exhibition Catalogue Awards Committee
                           21 May 1997

Revised by Michael Joseph  
Chair, Exhibition Catalogue Awards Committee
31 March 1998