6. Exhibition Texts

A variety of different types of text are required for an exhibition. While the exact needs will vary depending on the topic and approach, these are some general guidelines for common types of text used in the gallery and examples from recent exhibitions. NOTE: For accessibility and legibility, the minimum size to be used in printed labels in the gallery is 18pt in Arial font.

a. Introductory text 

Introductory text is written by the exhibition curator. It introduces the themes of the exhibition and is usually displayed on the first part of Wall A in the gallery (to the left of the Radcliffe Room), alongside the exhibition's representative image. The image and text are also often used for promotion and marketing as a clear, concise visual and textual representation of the exhibition. Below is an example of the introductory text for the In Their Own Voices exhibition as it appeared on the wall in the gallery as well as the introductory texts for The Age of Roe and Solidarity! SUGGESTED WORD COUNT: ~200 words

b. Section labels

Section or "chat" labels tell the story of the exhibition through its various sections. They are usually written by the curator, although the content and collection specialist(s) from the Library may also help draft or refine these texts. Section labels can occur at various levels–there may be one for each wall and each case or more, depending on the thematic or content groupings and how the curator wants to frame them. Section labels for cases may be included inside the cases themselves or on a nearby wall or pillar, depending on organization, available space, and layout; some exhibitions might use chat texts both inside the cases and nearby. There is some flexibility in the size and style of section labels, although writers should try to make the amount of text manageable for visitors. Below are some examples of section labels from past exhibitions, including an installation photos from In Their Own Voices. SUGGESTED WORD COUNT: 100-150 words for labels on walls or pillars / 50-75 words for chat labels in cases

c. Item labels

Item labels (also called "tombstones") identify individual items and provide key bibliographic information. All collection items included in the gallery should have some kind of item label, including any A/V. In general, item labels should aim to give appropriate credit and help point a viewer to the originating collection for further research (be particularly careful to credit creators when the creator of an item may be different from the collection it comes from). Item labels are created by the exhibition registrar using the information in the registry spreadsheet. For reasons of space and readability, the printed labels for the gallery are necessarily short and therefore do not include a truly comprehensive bibliographical citation. While item labels are often formatted individually and placed directly next to the corresponding item, other approaches are possible, particularly for cases where having multiple small item labels might be difficult for space reasons. In these cases, all the items' information can be printed on a single, larger label with numbers that correspond to numbered pins placed in the case. The text format currently used for this type of label follows this basic model:

Creator, Item title, medium (volume, photograph, document, reproduction, etc.), date, Collection Name, [Courtesy of Repository Name] (if other than Schlesinger)

These should be considered examples and guides; your exact labels may vary based on the materials featured in the exhibition; however, all item labels in a single exhibition should be uniform. One exception is that labels for item that come from outside repositories might look quite different, depending on what the lending institution requires for a credit line, e.g.:

John T. McCutcheon, How High Will She Go?, reproduction, Chicago Daily Tribune, 25 July 1937, Courtesy of Chicago History Museum, ICHi-014104; John T. McCutcheon, artist

d. Other printed texts in the gallery

There may be times when you want to provide additional information for exhibition visitors beyond what can easily fit on the types of labels described above.  In these cases, it might be useful to have a laminated printout or even a handout that people can take away with them. Citation and style guidelines for these kinds of documents should correspond to the rest of the labels in the exhibition. Some examples of this in the past have included:

• Image credits for a slideshow that is projected onto Wall B
• A full transcript of A/V to complement the closed captions on a video
• A transcription of a hand-written document in a case or on a wall that may be difficult to read
• Large print versions of wall and case labels for visitors who would find those useful

Another option for providing additional information is to use a QR code and link out to the exhibition website or a full bibliographic document on the web (for more information about the online exhibition content, see below). QR codes can be used to give greater context or deeper engagement with the exhibition topics, but it should not replace the storytelling and documentation of the labels in the gallery itself; visitors should be able to have a full, rich, informed experience of the exhibition using only the material in the room.

Decisions about when and how to use these options should be a matter for committee discussion.

e. Website/online exhibition

A version of each exhibition lives on the Radcliffe Institute website. These sites are created by Comms based on content provided by the committee. As a rule, these online versions include images of a representative sample of the materials from the physical exhibition as well as a version of the exhibit texts that has been adjusted for the online context. Therefore, some committee work is required in order to select what material will be featured in the online exhibition, to edit existing texts for use on the web, and to create any necessary additional textual material. Often the sections of the site will mirror the sections of the in-person exhibition. Here is an example of the steps required to build an online exhibition:

• In consultation with the curator, choose the featured items from each section of the exhibition and mark them on the registry spreadsheet in the column labeled "On Digital Website (Yes/No)?"
  • The page layout used by Comms works best if each section has at least three images.
• Review section texts to edit out any references to physical space of gallery (e.g. "in this case," "on the far wall," etc.) and direct mentions of specific objects that are not included in the online exhibition, as needed.
• Collect item-level information for each featured item. These will serve as the photo captions on the website. Because there are fewer space constraints online than in the printed item labels and the online images are also removed from the physical context of the gallery/Library space, we try to include additional information to these citations, including details like collection number, box, and folder identifiers. Record these in a separate column on the registry spreadsheet for Comms to copy. See below for examples.

• Create a separate folder containing copies of all the images for the website, organized by section, plus the edited section texts.
• Consider whether you want to add any links (to bibliographic records, finding aids, individual items, etc.) in the running text of the online exhibition.
• Consider adding an accessible PDF to the online exhibition that serves as a full bibliography to the in-person exhibition. This would include detailed citations for every item (with collection and container identifiers that are omitted from printed labels for reasons of brevity) plus hyperlinks to the appropriate records or finding aid pages. For the In Their Own Voices exhibition, the following note was included at the top of the online exhibition:

This site includes selections from the exhibition as presented in the Schlesinger Library. For a full bibliography of all materials included in the in-person exhibition, with detailed citations and catalog links, please see this document here.

• Copyright and the web exhibition:  If you are going to include photographs on the web exhibition, please consult with the Lead Archivist, Visual Materials & Recorded Sound Collections. If photographs have a copyright holder who is not Harvard University, or the photos are not in the public domain, we should contact the photographer to ask permission to use the image on a public website (if we know the photographer).  In addition, we may want to add a copyright statement to the citation. If the exhibit includes a lot of photos by living photographers, it may be nice to let them know they are in the exhibit even if it is not required. The Lead Archivist can advise the committee on what would be best.

f. Fact checking, copy editing, proofreading, layout 

While the curator should attempt to create clean, accurate copy when writing the introductory text and section labels, these texts must also be carefully fact checked before going out to Comms/getting posted or printed anywhere/moving on to copy editing. Fact checking is normally done by the content and collection specialists and/or the registrar. The exact workflow should be established with the individual committee members, including whether the curator wants to review any problems or changes that come up during the fact checking process or if the other committee members can make edits based on their own best judgement.

Copy editing is handled by Comms and usually performed by a freelance copyeditor from outside of Radcliffe. This person will provide a document with tracked changes that will then need to be reviewed and finalized by someone on the exhibitions committee so that it can then be put into layout by the Gallery Coordinator.

Once the Gallery Coordinator has created drafts of all the various types of labels in layout form, these will also need to be reviewed by someone on the committee to check for things like formatting, spacing, line breaks, etc. These proof review are often done in PDF markup. Re-printing labels is expensive and time consuming, and replacing labels that have already been installed can cause damage in the gallery, so this proofing step is vital.