EWK on the web. Development and accessibility of the image database of the EWK museum’s collection of political cartoons
The EWK museum Centre for the Arts of Political Cartoon, Norrköping holds a unique collection of original cartoons by EWK, Ewert Karlsson, from the period of 1948 to 1995.
EWK is Sweden's internationally most renowned political cartoonist. The aim of the EWK museum Centre for the Arts of Political Cartoon is to highlight and increase the awareness of political cartoons and its role in societal changes. The aim is also to further the research on political cartoons in different contexts and elucidate the relevance of editorial cartoon in democratic processes. Political cartoons are important sources to history that can reveal contemporary currents, attitudes, formation of national identity and political power relations. There have been several research projects on similar material in various disciplines and interdisciplinary studies, more or less with a focus on cartoons produced before 1950. In research connected to the latter part of the 20th century EWK is an essential figure making it important to make this material accessible for researchers focused on the period after 1950. The aim of this project is to develop, elucidate and make the image database of the EWK museum s collection accessible by 1) supplement the image database with important metadata, 2) make the collection accessible and searchable on-line. In doing this we aim to further and stimulate urgent research and a wider range of cooperation in order to generate new knowledge, exhibitions and seminars.
EWK is Sweden's internationally most renowned political cartoonist. The aim of the EWK museum Centre for the Arts of Political Cartoon is to highlight and increase the awareness of political cartoons and its role in societal changes. The aim is also to further the research on political cartoons in different contexts and elucidate the relevance of editorial cartoon in democratic processes. Political cartoons are important sources to history that can reveal contemporary currents, attitudes, formation of national identity and political power relations. There have been several research projects on similar material in various disciplines and interdisciplinary studies, more or less with a focus on cartoons produced before 1950. In research connected to the latter part of the 20th century EWK is an essential figure making it important to make this material accessible for researchers focused on the period after 1950. The aim of this project is to develop, elucidate and make the image database of the EWK museum s collection accessible by 1) supplement the image database with important metadata, 2) make the collection accessible and searchable on-line. In doing this we aim to further and stimulate urgent research and a wider range of cooperation in order to generate new knowledge, exhibitions and seminars.
Final report
EWK on the Web - Development and accessibility of the image database of the EWK museum's collection of political cartoons
1. Project aim
The Museum of Work is housing The EWK Museum Centre for the Art of Political Cartoon since 2009. The aim of the project was to make the museum's collection of more than 2.000 original cartoons available for research. EWK, Ewert Karlsson (1918-2004), is one of the world's most recognized political cartoonists, who made satirical comments on news events in Sweden and internationally for a wide range of newspapers. The project would complete the collection with important metadata, and make it searchable via the Web.
Main work would be research to gather more information on when and in what context EWK's cartoons were created and published, thereby identifying depicted persons and events and expanding the information in the museum's database over the collection. In the project's final phase the database would be made available via a website.
2. Project results and discussion of the outcome
The EWK-museum's collection is available through a website that was launched in January 2015. Cartoons are searchable from free text in image descriptions as well as tags with depicted persons/thematic subjects, a path aimed at users interested in specific years, names or events. The website also has an image-based search function, where cartoons from randomly selected themes are presented as a starting point for exploring the material further. This offers users who are not acquainted with EWK's production an idea of what the database contains, and which subjects can be explored.
The EWK collection that spans the period 1947-1995 is thereby available for researchers who want to study different aspects of social development, as well as to a general audience. The project has attracted attention in media and was presented at an international scientific conference.
Initial research was supplemented by interviews with former colleagues to EWK, among others at Aftonbladet and Tidningen Land. EWK had commissions for various newspapers, where his commentary cartoons brought an own voice to the journalistic coverage of everything from election campaigns and national political battles, to questions about environmental problems, human rights and different conflicts worldwide. To make EWK's cartoons available as the contemporary objects they are, and put them in their societal context, the project aimed at trying to get as close as possible to when a cartoon was created and published.
EWK's two major employers that he regularly worked for during several decades were Aftonbladet and Tidningen Land. Above all the project focused on Aftonbladet, where EWK participated virtually every week from 1966 well into the 1990s, with an emphasis on the 1970s and 1980s. In total the project found 2.100 unique first publications of his cartoons. It made it possible to date the cartoons, as well as describe the context in which they were created, based on the texts they published together with. A large part of the cartoons was found in EWK-museum's collection. In addition to adding new metadata, it gave an opportunity to identify and correct errors in the database.
3. Unforeseen technical or methodological problems
An aggravating factor was that EWK's cartoons have been published in a large number of magazines and books, both in Sweden and abroad. Retrieving all first publications was not possible within the framework of the project. In addition, many cartoons have been re-published, and used without their original context. Therefore, the project chose to focus its work on Aftonbladet that EWK work for on a direct basis, and there find the first publication of a picture - even Aftonbladet re-published them often.
Another factor has been the difficulty to search for published cartoons. Unlike texts there is no easy way to look for these types of images in digitized newspaper databases. Instead, the project focused on going through earlier editions of Aftonbladet on microfilm at the National Library of Sweden, and scan pages where EWK's pictures were published. Beyond the rich metadata, the work also resulted in a large collection of scanned material that provides a comprehensive picture of how the newspaper used satirical cartoons as journalistic content in editorials, as well as in news reportage and portrait interviews.
4. Integration in the museum's activities and further dissemination
In spring 2014, the EWK Museum arranged an exhibition called "Unknown cartoon seeking..." which featured fifty EWK cartoons that lacked information about one or more of depicted persons and events. The idea was to make use the knowledge of visitors, as well as to promote the project and the work to develop the EWK collection. Nearly 200 proposals were received and contributed to the identification of a majority of persons and events in the cartoons.
The developed database is searchable via the museum's website. An app that connects to the database has also been developed within the museum's own resources. It allows visitors to explore the collection via interactive touch screens, placed both in the permanent EWK exhibition at the museum in Norrköping, as well as part of an exhibition of his cartoons at the cultural institution Stinsen in EWK's hometown Söderköping. This increases the accessibility of the collection and the information from the project for more than just researchers.
The cartoons in the collection comment on society from different angles, and is used in the museum's dialogue with children and young persons in issues related to human rights, democracy and freedom of expression. With the updated database the museum's educators now have more facts that can be used to further develop the museum as an alternative classroom in our pedagogical concept Every persons equal value.
To disseminate information about the database the museum organised an international scientific conference together with Michael Scholz, professor of modern history at Uppsala University. The conference Comics and Satire - Cultural History Records & Cultural Heritage at Campus Gotland 1-2 October 2015 put comics and political cartoons in focus as mass media and part of the cultural heritage, and how this part of our contemporary history can be preserved and made available for research. Both the EWK museum's curator Carina Milde and science journalist Andreas Nilsson who worked with the project participated with presentations about the EWK database and satire as a research resource for the thirty researchers and experts in museums and archives in several European countries that attended the conference. The presentations received positive feedback from the participants, which now has knowledge of the database. Discussions on further collaborations began with, among others, Jane Chapman, Professor of Communications at the University of Lincoln and Tine Anthoni, Head of Brussels Comics Arts Museum.
5. New research questions generated during the project
The EWK Museum does not conduct research on its own, but serves as a focal point that in close contact with the scientific community stimulates and develops knowledge about the art of political cartoons and EWK. What makes EWK and satirical cartoons in general an interesting research material is that they are contemporary comments that open up new perspectives, both as a mirror of society and by showing different actors' views and positions of power.
During last year, the area has been given extraordinary relevance due to the attacks on the freedom of expression in Paris as well as elsewhere in the world where cartoonists are threatened. The scientific community and museums should be a part of such a discussion, both from historical and contemporary perspectives. Researchers in literature, film studies, art history, history and within interdisciplinary environments have already begun to pay attention to political cartoons from different perspectives. However, previous research on the subject has almost exclusively focused on satire from the first half of the 1900s. The EWK database provides rich material from the post-war period, thereby opening a window to a relatively unexplored area. Research on modern political cartoons and EWK can thereby contribute new valuable knowledge.
The focused effort to study EWK's cartoons and how they were used in Aftonbladet also provides a new basis for research into satirical cartoons and their function in the Swedish press. Cartoonist has been appreciated employees at a wide range of newspapers, where their cartoons were an important journalistic tool in the news coverage. Today, virtually all cartoonists have vanished from the daily press. As interesting is how satirical cartoons, with their ability to deliver efficient contemporary comments that open up new perspectives and discussions, can contribute to the future media landscape that is rapidly changing. Accelerating digitization, new work processes and strong global players are predicted by among others the Swedish Government Official Report on Media as growing challenges to democracy.
1. Project aim
The Museum of Work is housing The EWK Museum Centre for the Art of Political Cartoon since 2009. The aim of the project was to make the museum's collection of more than 2.000 original cartoons available for research. EWK, Ewert Karlsson (1918-2004), is one of the world's most recognized political cartoonists, who made satirical comments on news events in Sweden and internationally for a wide range of newspapers. The project would complete the collection with important metadata, and make it searchable via the Web.
Main work would be research to gather more information on when and in what context EWK's cartoons were created and published, thereby identifying depicted persons and events and expanding the information in the museum's database over the collection. In the project's final phase the database would be made available via a website.
2. Project results and discussion of the outcome
The EWK-museum's collection is available through a website that was launched in January 2015. Cartoons are searchable from free text in image descriptions as well as tags with depicted persons/thematic subjects, a path aimed at users interested in specific years, names or events. The website also has an image-based search function, where cartoons from randomly selected themes are presented as a starting point for exploring the material further. This offers users who are not acquainted with EWK's production an idea of what the database contains, and which subjects can be explored.
The EWK collection that spans the period 1947-1995 is thereby available for researchers who want to study different aspects of social development, as well as to a general audience. The project has attracted attention in media and was presented at an international scientific conference.
Initial research was supplemented by interviews with former colleagues to EWK, among others at Aftonbladet and Tidningen Land. EWK had commissions for various newspapers, where his commentary cartoons brought an own voice to the journalistic coverage of everything from election campaigns and national political battles, to questions about environmental problems, human rights and different conflicts worldwide. To make EWK's cartoons available as the contemporary objects they are, and put them in their societal context, the project aimed at trying to get as close as possible to when a cartoon was created and published.
EWK's two major employers that he regularly worked for during several decades were Aftonbladet and Tidningen Land. Above all the project focused on Aftonbladet, where EWK participated virtually every week from 1966 well into the 1990s, with an emphasis on the 1970s and 1980s. In total the project found 2.100 unique first publications of his cartoons. It made it possible to date the cartoons, as well as describe the context in which they were created, based on the texts they published together with. A large part of the cartoons was found in EWK-museum's collection. In addition to adding new metadata, it gave an opportunity to identify and correct errors in the database.
3. Unforeseen technical or methodological problems
An aggravating factor was that EWK's cartoons have been published in a large number of magazines and books, both in Sweden and abroad. Retrieving all first publications was not possible within the framework of the project. In addition, many cartoons have been re-published, and used without their original context. Therefore, the project chose to focus its work on Aftonbladet that EWK work for on a direct basis, and there find the first publication of a picture - even Aftonbladet re-published them often.
Another factor has been the difficulty to search for published cartoons. Unlike texts there is no easy way to look for these types of images in digitized newspaper databases. Instead, the project focused on going through earlier editions of Aftonbladet on microfilm at the National Library of Sweden, and scan pages where EWK's pictures were published. Beyond the rich metadata, the work also resulted in a large collection of scanned material that provides a comprehensive picture of how the newspaper used satirical cartoons as journalistic content in editorials, as well as in news reportage and portrait interviews.
4. Integration in the museum's activities and further dissemination
In spring 2014, the EWK Museum arranged an exhibition called "Unknown cartoon seeking..." which featured fifty EWK cartoons that lacked information about one or more of depicted persons and events. The idea was to make use the knowledge of visitors, as well as to promote the project and the work to develop the EWK collection. Nearly 200 proposals were received and contributed to the identification of a majority of persons and events in the cartoons.
The developed database is searchable via the museum's website. An app that connects to the database has also been developed within the museum's own resources. It allows visitors to explore the collection via interactive touch screens, placed both in the permanent EWK exhibition at the museum in Norrköping, as well as part of an exhibition of his cartoons at the cultural institution Stinsen in EWK's hometown Söderköping. This increases the accessibility of the collection and the information from the project for more than just researchers.
The cartoons in the collection comment on society from different angles, and is used in the museum's dialogue with children and young persons in issues related to human rights, democracy and freedom of expression. With the updated database the museum's educators now have more facts that can be used to further develop the museum as an alternative classroom in our pedagogical concept Every persons equal value.
To disseminate information about the database the museum organised an international scientific conference together with Michael Scholz, professor of modern history at Uppsala University. The conference Comics and Satire - Cultural History Records & Cultural Heritage at Campus Gotland 1-2 October 2015 put comics and political cartoons in focus as mass media and part of the cultural heritage, and how this part of our contemporary history can be preserved and made available for research. Both the EWK museum's curator Carina Milde and science journalist Andreas Nilsson who worked with the project participated with presentations about the EWK database and satire as a research resource for the thirty researchers and experts in museums and archives in several European countries that attended the conference. The presentations received positive feedback from the participants, which now has knowledge of the database. Discussions on further collaborations began with, among others, Jane Chapman, Professor of Communications at the University of Lincoln and Tine Anthoni, Head of Brussels Comics Arts Museum.
5. New research questions generated during the project
The EWK Museum does not conduct research on its own, but serves as a focal point that in close contact with the scientific community stimulates and develops knowledge about the art of political cartoons and EWK. What makes EWK and satirical cartoons in general an interesting research material is that they are contemporary comments that open up new perspectives, both as a mirror of society and by showing different actors' views and positions of power.
During last year, the area has been given extraordinary relevance due to the attacks on the freedom of expression in Paris as well as elsewhere in the world where cartoonists are threatened. The scientific community and museums should be a part of such a discussion, both from historical and contemporary perspectives. Researchers in literature, film studies, art history, history and within interdisciplinary environments have already begun to pay attention to political cartoons from different perspectives. However, previous research on the subject has almost exclusively focused on satire from the first half of the 1900s. The EWK database provides rich material from the post-war period, thereby opening a window to a relatively unexplored area. Research on modern political cartoons and EWK can thereby contribute new valuable knowledge.
The focused effort to study EWK's cartoons and how they were used in Aftonbladet also provides a new basis for research into satirical cartoons and their function in the Swedish press. Cartoonist has been appreciated employees at a wide range of newspapers, where their cartoons were an important journalistic tool in the news coverage. Today, virtually all cartoonists have vanished from the daily press. As interesting is how satirical cartoons, with their ability to deliver efficient contemporary comments that open up new perspectives and discussions, can contribute to the future media landscape that is rapidly changing. Accelerating digitization, new work processes and strong global players are predicted by among others the Swedish Government Official Report on Media as growing challenges to democracy.