Hi all- Baltimore was exciting and energizing! Linda, Joan and their entire 
committee deserve kudos!!

Keep that energy going while you can remember what happened at your 
session, workshop,  committee meeting or DSRT meeting and have your 
recorder send me a report!

Conference Proceedings are put on the ARLIS/NA website and provide valuable 
information and history for the society.

I prefer it to be in Microsoft WORD and sent as an email attachment or 
contained in the body of an email.


DEADLINE FOR REPORTS: APRIL 30, 2003

Below is an example from last year which should be followed by all 
recorders when submitting their reports.
Thanks,
Ted
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Session 2

Common Ground: Standards for Cataloging Images and Objects

Moderators:

Linda McRae, University of South Florida
Lynda White, University of Virginia

Speakers:

Murtha Baca, Head, Getty Research Institute, “Enhancing End-User Access 
On-Line Art Historical Resources”
Elizabeth O’Keefe, Pierpont Morgan Library, “Sharing the Wealth: Controlled 
Vocabularies for Libraries, Visual Resource Collections,
and Museum”
Sherman Clarke, New York University Libraries, “Are You Content with Your 
Data Content?”
Thornton Staples, University of Virginia, “A Hierarchical Metadata System 
for Image Collections”

Recorders:

Maria Oldal, Pierpont Morgan Library
V. Heidi Hass, Pierpont Morgan Library

Murtha Baca stressed that the same kinds of tools that have been used for 
decades to create “traditional” bibliographic records can
be used to catalog visual materials.  She talked about the importance of 
the “five Cs” — content, curation, cataloging, controlled
vocabularies, and copyright — in the creation of high-quality art and 
architecture imaging projects; her presentation focused on
issues relating to cataloging and controlled vocabularies. She pointed out 
the importance of selecting or devising an appropriate
metadata schema or “container” for the material in hand.  Next, that schema 
must be populated with values from a “menu” of
appropriate controlled vocabularies and classification systems including, 
but not limited to, the Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT),
Union List of Artist Names (ULAN), Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN), 
Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM), and
ICONCLASS.  There are different solutions for taking advantage of the power 
of variant names and broader terms to enhance
end-user access to visual materials. Baca gave a brief survey of some 
online tools and resources for cataloging art objects and their
visual surrogates: Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA), 
the Getty vocabularies on the Web, the Library of
Congress’ Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, and ICONCLASS.  She stressed the 
importance of receiving training if these tools are to
be used effectively.  She described two forthcoming publications, 
Introduction to Art Image Access (Getty Publications, Fall 2002),
and the visual resources cataloging guidelines (Cataloging Cultural 
Objects) that are currently being developed by a VRA editorial
team with an advisory committee composed of members from the library, 
museum, and archival communities.  The reason why art
information professionals take the time and trouble to apply descriptive 
metadata to images is to enable users, both expert and
non-expert, to find what might otherwise elude them.

Elizabeth O’Keefe began by saying there was a substantial overlap among the 
indexing terms required by catalogers of art books, art
objects, and images of art objects. Yet there is a great divide between the 
vocabularies used by book catalogers and those used by
non-book catalogers. Book catalogers are committed to Library of Congress 
Subject Headings (LCSH). Image catalogers are unlikely
to embrace LCSH for many reasons; for them, AAT is the logical choice for 
object terms. Names are an entirely different proposition.
In the library world the standard currently used to establish names is the 
cataloging code AACR2. Art Name Authority Component
(NACO), coordinated by Sherman Clarke, was established in 1993 to enable 
art catalogers to contribute names to the Library of
Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF). LCNAF would be equally valuable to 
catalogers of art objects and visual materials, if they
adopted AACR2 as their standard for formulating names. This decision need 
not carry with it an obligation to use AACR2 as a guide
to choosing main entry. The use of a single set of rules for name formation 
ensures consistency and predictability within the whole
universe of names occurring within a database. The other argument in favor 
of using AACR2 is that there is nothing analogous to it
within the object and image-cataloging world. The Union List of Artist 
Names, the Grove Dictionary of Art, and the Thesaurus of
Geographic Names are extremely valuable as reference sources, but they do 
not provide for the wide range of names covered by
AACR2, and none of them attempts to be an authority file. Using AACR2 for 
names would also enable object and image catalogers
to benefit from the research of others. Using AACR2 for names would bring 
the cataloging guide currently under development by the
VRA into line with library cataloging guidelines for the formulation of 
names. This would save the drafters of the code a great deal of
time and enable our end-users, as well as our cataloging staff, to move 
more easily from one database to another. This might also
some day lead to a VR NACO, which would funnel the names used in cataloging 
visual resource collections into LCNAF.

Sherman Clarke began by describing the International Federation of Library 
Associations and Institution’s (IFLA) 1998 Functional
Requirements for Bibliographic Records (FRBR) and their original focus on 
bibliographic records. He defined metadata (description
of the item) and data content (terminology that is used rather than the 
fields and records where data is entered). He continued with a
detailed description of the areas FRBR tackles, including why bibliographic 
records are constructed and the three groups of entities
represented by or included in records. Clarke then discussed the divergence 
between records for books and for visual resources. He
analyzed the approach of library catalogers and the tools they use to 
construct records, and their unsuitability for the description of
visual materials. The VIA database at Harvard, which has records for group, 
work, and image was described as a successful approach
to the problem of identifying works and their different manifestations. He 
concluded by reminding us that our focus should be our
users, and their need to find, identify, select, and use what they are 
looking for.

The final speaker of the panel was Thornton Staples. The General 
Descriptive Modeling Scheme (GDMS) is a project at the
University of Virginia to create a formal information structure that can be 
used to construct descriptive models of real-world or
imaginary phenomena to create contexts for collections of digital 
resources. The underlying data structure is provided by an XML
DTD, which allows the model to be as hierarchical or as flat, as is 
appropriate, and provides ways to cross reference data within or
among models. Staples started out with giving a brief overview of the 
history of the project and then went on to present the basic
element set of the scheme. The presentation was supported with elaborate 
graphics showing the structure and examples of the
scheme. More can be read about GDMS on the GDMS Research and Development 
Site at
http://www.lib.virginia.edu/dlbackstage/resndev/gdms.htm.

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