Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 20:47:17 -0400 (EDT) From: Katherine Jones-Garmil <gar...@husc.harvard.edu> To: mc...@world.std.com Subject: Text v Fine-Arts Cataloging (fwd) Message-Id: <pine.osf.3.96.970807204705.12975b-100...@login6.fas.harvard.edu> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII
******************************************************************************* Katherine Jones-Garmil | Program Director Assistant Director | Museum Computer Network Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology | m...@athena.mit.edu 11 Divinity Avenue |---------------------------- Cambridge, MA 02138 USA | (617) 495-1969 gar...@fas.harvard.edu | (617) 495-7535 fax | ******************************************************************************* ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Thu, 7 Aug 1997 16:59:25 -0400 From: David Green <da...@cni.org> Reply-To: ninch-annou...@cni.org To: Multiple recipients of list <ninch-annou...@cni.org> Subject: Text v Fine-Arts Cataloging In an unusual practice, I wanted to distribute on the NINCH-Announce list a comment made by Robert Baron on the Visual Resources Association's list about differences between carrying text and fine-art imagery onto the network through current and developing cataloging practices. It may get to the heart of some issues David Green ps: To sign on to the VRA-L listserv, send the command "SUBSCRIBE VRA-L" to <lists...@uafsysb.uark.edu> *********************************************************************** I don't think of the differences between library and fine-arts cataloging as due to distinctions in technology and database sophistication, but, rather due to fundamental differences between their respective cataloged content. True, fine-arts cataloging will be well served by finely hewn thesauri and efficiently networked databases, but the core difference, to me, revolves around understanding the work of art as a unique man-made object in which style, subject, patronage, meaning, aesthetics, purpose and use are the defining criteria -- criteria rarely written into the work itself. Book cataloging, in contrast, looks at the tangible, proceeds from the given, defines categories of use to users, classifies by criteria suitable to serve as finding aids. Looking at it this way, it seems only natural that computers came to libraries first and that to make computers bend to the demands of the fine arts has been, to say it mildly, a struggle. Robert Baron
