I'll second that! I came on board 4 years after record entering started here with anyone able to add any term they chose to the supposedly controlled fields in our system. The result is chaos. Not only do you have to consider every possible term that someone might have used when searching for something, but you also have spelling errors and language variants. For example, if you are searching for Antarctic images, they might have been categorised not only as Antarctic, Antarctica, Polar, exploration, Arctic (for the geographically challenged!) South Pole, Trans-Antarctic Expedition, Transantarctic Expedition, TAE, British Antarctic Expedition, BAE, etc, but you also have to consider 'Antartic', 'Antartica', and many other possible variations. Photographs can be referred to as image, photograph, black and white print, print, large photograph, etc, as well as more specific terms (carte de visite, lantern slide etc).
No system is going to create order out of chaos. If you don't know what you need out of it at the end, you are will get a mess. Ask your clients what they expect to be able to do with the result. If they want to find all images of a particular type or of a particular subject, or limit searches to particular photographers, these are all areas that need to be controlled (try searching by photographer when you have 9 different spellings of their name, and several others with similar names). Plan now - even if it delays the start of data entry for a year, it will be worth it. It is almost impossible to undo a mess afterwards, and even trying takes much longer than the original data entry. Kate Muirhead Collections Manager - Documentation Canterbury Museum Rolleston Avenue, Christchurch 8013 NEW ZEALAND Telephone 64 3 366 5000 Direct Dial 64 3 366 9429 extn 875 Facsimile 64 3 366 5622 Email kmuirhead at canterburymuseum.com www.canterburymuseum.com The contents of this email are confidential. If you have received this communication by mistake, please advise the sender immediately and delete the message and any attachments. The views expressed in this email are not necessarily the views of Canterbury Museum. -----Original Message----- From: mcn-l-bounces at mcn.edu [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mike Rippy Sent: Tuesday, 19 December 2006 4:28 a.m. To: mcn-l at mcn.edu Subject: Re: [MCN-L] Need for controlled vocabularies The TASI website always has good articles. One I found quickly. http://www.tasi.ac.uk/resources/vocabs.html I think your best bet is to look at library resources. Ill try to find some myself and send them out. The biggest obstacle with these types of projects is the lack of pre-planning for the structure of the content. The system you purchase isnt going to automate itself out of the mess that comes with no pre-planning and creating a sound and controlled schema. Work now saves a ton of work later. Mike Rippy IMA Photographer mrippy at ima.museum (317)920-2662 ext.191 IMA 4000 Michigan Road Indianapolis, IN, USA 46208-3326 www.ima.museum >>> howard at twocatdigital.com 12/18/2006 12:17:14 AM >>> Good Monday morning, I'm consulting for a large organization on a transition to a centralized photo image library. The money is there for software, hardware and services, but they don't (yet) see the need for a librarian to set up a controlled vocabulary. I've advised them to do this before trying to ingest tens of thousands of existing records into their new DAM system. I'm looking for some examples I can provide that will help convince them. Please share any analogies you find useful in understanding this. Please also share any links to existing online libraries that provide an example of doing it right (or wrong). Thanks very much for your help. Howard Brainen Digital Imaging Consultant TWO CAT DIGITAL 14719 Catalina Street San Leandro, CA 94577 510-940-2670 ext 201 FAX 510-940-2632 <http://www.twocatdigital.com/> www.twocatdigital.com blog: <http://www.digitalenabler.blogspot.com> www.digitalenabler.blogspot.com Member: VRA, ARLIS/NA, MCN, SAA _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l _______________________________________________ You are currently subscribed to mcn-l, the listserv of the Museum Computer Network (http://www.mcn.edu) To post to this list, send messages to: mcn-l at mcn.edu To unsubscribe or change mcn-l delivery options visit: http://toronto.mediatrope.com/mailman/listinfo/mcn-l
