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
[log in to unmask]
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
__________________________________________________________________
Mail submissions to [log in to unmask]
For information about joining ARLIS/NA see:
http://www.arlisna.org//membership.html
Send administrative matters (file requests, subscription requests, etc)
to [log in to unmask]
ARLIS-L Archives and subscription maintenance:
http://lsv.uky.edu/archives/arlis-l.html
Questions may be addressed to list owner (Kerri Scannell) at: [log in to unmask]
