Günter,
Thanks for a good summary of the MCN-L
discussion. I wanted to highlight one of the
attractions of folksonomy for the art museums
involved in Steve that you didn't mention: It's a
bridge between the museum and the visitor.
There's a "semantic gap" between the way that
museum professionals talk about art and the way
that the general public perceives it. What you
see in a picture may not be reflected in art
museum professional documentation. As Koven Smith
reported at the MCN session, preliminary tests at
The Metropolitan Museum of Art have shown a
significant difference in the terms assigned by
art historically and non-art historically trained
staff. And what curators 'know' about a work may
not be drawn from visual analysis at all. Michael
Jenkin's wonderful anecdote about the MMA's
curatorial trials reinforced this; one curator
was stumped when asked to assign keywords that
described a photograph: "Everything I know isn't
in the picture", he said.
Subject cataloguing (at any one of Panofsky's
levels of description: pre-iconographic,
iconographic or iconological) is one aspect of
what is often not included in museum
documentation. Another is style and period
terminology (think "Impressionist"). Then there
is the lack of simple descriptions of the visual
elements that make up a composition (red circle,
blue square). Or there is the formulation of
names. Is she Gabrielle Chanel, or Coco?
In all these cases enabling users' descriptions
[through tagging] would capture their perspective
on the works in museum collections, bridge the
gap between visitor and museum, and further
enable access to the collections we hold in the
public trust.
jennifer
--
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J. Trant [email protected]
Partner & Principal Consultant phone: +1 416 691 2516
Archives & Museum Informatics fax: +1 416 352 6025
158 Lee Ave, Toronto
Ontario M4E 2P3 Canada http://www.archimuse.com
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