Job available
I hope the attached job announcement is acceptable for this list. If not, my sincere apologies...and please inform me of the appropriate penance. Job announcement is also inserted below... This position is for 3 years and is funded by IMLS. ANYONE interested should contact me by email. Thanks! Christopher Dunn Plant Collections - A Community Solution (DiGIR) Technician The Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG), in partnership with the American Public Gardens Association (APGA, formerly, AABGA), University of Kansas, has received a major three year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to link living plant collections databases at 15 gardens across the US. The CBG is seeking an energetic and creative information technology professional to provide the technological skills necessary to link these databases using the DiGIR (Distributed Generic Information Retrieval) protocol. The successful candidate will work closely with CBG staff, American Public Gardens Association (APGA) staff, consultants, University of Kansas (DiGIR developers), and individual gardens around the country to, among other tasks, (1) develop the schema to be used by all of the partners for serving data using DiGIR, (2) work with APGA to modify their existing website and integrate the DiGIR web portal for searching the collections, (3) customize and/or configure the DiGIR application for each institution to support the common schema used by all participants serving data to the portal, (4) work with IT representatives at each of the participating institutions to install servers, software operating systems and customized DiGIR, (5) perform server installation, software installation and DiGIR installation if no IT support is available, and (6) train staff within each institution to install, maintain and troubleshoot the DiGIR during the installation visit and through workshops and professional presentations, and assist with other management aspects of the project. Candidates wishing to be given full consideration should hold a degree in computer sciences (with at least one year experience as application developer OR five years relevant industry experience), proficiency with XML and XML schema, expertise with Java programming language, experience implementing and administering J2EE applications, especially with Apache Tomcat servlet engine, knowledge of SQL and experience with construction and administration of relational databases, and excellent oral and written communication skills. To apply, please send by January 6, 2006 a detailed resumé, descriptions of past and current project experience, and 3 letters of reference to: Dr. Christopher P. Dunn, Executive Director for Research Programs, Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, IL 60022. email: cd...@chicagobotanic.org; fax: 847-835-5484. The Chicago Botanic Garden is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Christopher P. Dunn, PhD Executive Director for Research Programs Smith Family Curator of Native Habitats Chicago Botanic Garden 1000 Lake Cook Road Glencoe, IL 60022 USA Phone: 847.835.6934 Fax: 847.835.1635 IMLS DiGIRJobAnnoucement.doc Description: IMLS DiGIRJobAnnoucement.doc IMLS DiGIRJobAnnoucement.doc Description: MS-Word document --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: Job available
Thanks for the announcement, Christopher. Job announcements related to our areas of interest are always welcome. Happy Thanksgiving! Marla Misunas Collections Information Manager Collections Information and Access San Francisco Museum of Modern Art 415-357-4186 (voice) Check out SFMOMA Collections Online www.sfmoma.org _ President, Museum Computer Network http://www.mcn.edu -Original Message- From: Christopher Dunn [mailto:cd...@chicagobotanic.org] Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 7:55 AM To: mcn-l@mcn.edu Subject: Job available I hope the attached job announcement is acceptable for this list. If not, my sincere apologies...and please inform me of the appropriate penance. Job announcement is also inserted below... This position is for 3 years and is funded by IMLS. ANYONE interested should contact me by email. Thanks! Christopher Dunn Plant Collections - A Community Solution (DiGIR) Technician The Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG), in partnership with the American Public Gardens Association (APGA, formerly, AABGA), University of Kansas, has received a major three year grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to link living plant collections databases at 15 gardens across the US. The CBG is seeking an energetic and creative information technology professional to provide the technological skills necessary to link these databases using the DiGIR (Distributed Generic Information Retrieval) protocol. The successful candidate will work closely with CBG staff, American Public Gardens Association (APGA) staff, consultants, University of Kansas (DiGIR developers), and individual gardens around the country to, among other tasks, (1) develop the schema to be used by all of the partners for serving data using DiGIR, (2) work with APGA to modify their existing website and integrate the DiGIR web portal for searching the collections, (3) customize and/or configure the DiGIR application for each institution to support the common schema used by all participants serving data to the portal, (4) work with IT representatives at each of the participating institutions to install servers, software operating systems and customized DiGIR, (5) perform server installation, software installation and DiGIR installation if no IT support is available, and (6) train staff within each institution to install, maintain and troubleshoot the DiGIR during the installation visit and through workshops and professional presentations, and assist with other management aspects of the project. Candidates wishing to be given full consideration should hold a degree in computer sciences (with at least one year experience as application developer OR five years relevant industry experience), proficiency with XML and XML schema, expertise with Java programming language, experience implementing and administering J2EE applications, especially with Apache Tomcat servlet engine, knowledge of SQL and experience with construction and administration of relational databases, and excellent oral and written communication skills. To apply, please send by January 6, 2006 a detailed resumé, descriptions of past and current project experience, and 3 letters of reference to: Dr. Christopher P. Dunn, Executive Director for Research Programs, Chicago Botanic Garden, 1000 Lake Cook Road, Glencoe, IL 60022. email: cd...@chicagobotanic.org; fax: 847-835-5484. The Chicago Botanic Garden is an Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer. Christopher P. Dunn, PhD Executive Director for Research Programs Smith Family Curator of Native Habitats Chicago Botanic Garden 1000 Lake Cook Road Glencoe, IL 60022 USA Phone: 847.835.6934 Fax: 847.835.1635 The information contained in this electronic mail message (including any attachments) is confidential information that may be covered by the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, 18 USC Sections 2510-2521, intended only for the use of the individual or entity named above, and may be privileged. If the reader of this message is not the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination, distribution, or copying of this communication, or the taking of any action based on it, is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please immediately notify me and delete the original message. Thank you --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: LCSH / was STEVE folksonomies
Title: mcn_mcn-l digest: November 22, 2005 Will, We have avoided the LCSH approach for the same reason you mentioned. We have a very large collection, relatively little extant subject cataloging, and I am the only person who both catalogs the art collection and has any experience using LCSH. I dont have time to enter LCSH terms, and certainly the curators and registrars dont have time for LCSH training. Our collection management system is also not set up to handle subject terms like a library OPAC. Its just more efficient to enter keywords like steel industry and Pittsburgh, PA than to use the Steel Industry--PennsylvaniaPittsburgh subject heading, and get basically the same results. The folksonomy approach could be helpful in our situation too, but it would be a long time before we could get such a project going. Jana Hill Collection Database Coordinator Amon Carter Museum 3501 Camp Bowie Blvd. Fort Worth, Texas 76107 817-989-5173 817-989-5179 fax All opinions are my own and not those of my employer. -Original Message- From: Real, Will [mailto:re...@carnegiemuseums.org] Sent: Wednesday, November 23, 2005 10:20 AM To: mcn-l@mcn.edu Subject: RE: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching in CMS and DAMS We are grappling with the question of subject headings at the moment, in several ways. We had not done any subject cataloguing until about 2 years ago, in a collaborative project involving a museum (ours), a digital library, an archive, and a history center. The partners decided to use library-style LCSH headings, as in Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh. There was a fundamental difference of opinion among the partners regarding what the subject headings represent. Some (coming more out of a library/archives environment) seemed to think of the headings primarily as descriptive metadata about the images, embedded in their permanent records, while others (like us) thought of them primarily as a means of public access and therefore advocated a more liberal standard, including allowing subject headings of what the image is about as well as what the image is of. On the website that resulted from the collaboration, the subject headings are indeed published within the individual records, along with other descriptive metadata like creator, title, date, etc. [It seems that publishing the subject headings online is more common in digital libraries than museums]Certainly the subject headings do provide a means of access to the images, to a point, but the headings were definitely created from the cataloguer's point-of-view, not the end user's. Thus an image depicting a person wearing a plaid suit would not have included plaid anywhere in the subject headings because this detail would not haverisen to the cataloguer'sideaofthe image's main subjects. From the end user's point-of-view, however, someone could very well want to find this image by searching under the term plaid. We are now engaged in another archives project ourselves, and the archivist responsible for the cataloguing has adopted the library-style LCSH approach established in the earlier collaborative project. This new project in particular would lend itself very well to the folksonomy approach, but my initial presentation of this idea has met, not unexpectedly, with resistance and skepticism. What seems to be hard to get accross is that this is not necessarily an either/or proposition. The cataloguer's LC standards can be met, if necessary, but end-user-friendly access terms can also be provided. But the mere fact that the folksonomy tags could become part of the image's database record seems quite disturbing to some. Soon we will be creating subject terms for the museum's online collections access. It is nearly unimaginable that we will ever get there if we have to hire trained cataloguers or curators to provide proper LC-style headings, and the resulting access to the images would not be nearly as rich as it might be if we use the folksonomy approach, so we are keen to try. A few questions: Does anyone have an opinion about the value, in the networked information world,of the hierarchical LC subjectformat I described above (Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.)? Are others using this format (and why) or are you using single terms, more like keywords? For those who have done social tagging projects, do the tags become part of a permanent collections database record of an object, or do they exist outside of that, as part of a strictly web-based implementation? William Real, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching in CMS and DAMS
In a message on Wed, 23 Nov 2005, Richard Urban museumn...@earthlink.net wrote 2. Clustering/Collocation Using a limited, controlled set of terms means it will be easier to establish relationships between individual items and put like things next to each other. This is more difficult when uncontrolled sets of keywords are used. This is a point that I think should not be overlooked. There is a major distinction between (1) a post-coordinate indexing system, in which individual indexing terms are assigned to documents and not combined until the searching stage and (2) pre-coordinate indexing, in which terms are combined into strings at the indexing stage to express compound concepts. These two approaches are complementary, supporting searching and browsing respectively, rather than conflicting. 1. Post-coordinate indexing, often using a thesaurus of individual concepts, is effective for the retrieval of specific topics when searchers know what they are looking for. Even though they do not know the words the particular system uses to express these concepts, a good thesaurus will provide entry points under any terms likely to be sought, pointing to the terms that have been chosen as labels. Terms suggested by users should be added to the vocabulary when likely to be sought, either as preferred terms or non-preferred entry points. The problem with uncontrolled folksonomies is that many different words may be used for the same concepts, and someone searching using one word may not find relevant information that has been labelled with a synonymous word. 2. Pre-coordinate indexing, such as LCSH or many classification schemes, is of greatest benefit when the searcher wishes to review a subject area by browsing in a catalogue or in an organised list of search results. Someone searching for information on the steel industry may well find it helpful to have the results subdivided and listed in order of the places where the industry occurred (as in the previously cited example) or in some other systematic order. Classification may be defined as grouping together of similar or related things and the separation of dissimilar or unrelated things and the arrangement of the resulting groups in a logical and helpful sequence http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/glossary.htm. Let's have the best of both worlds. Leonard Will -- Willpower Information (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will) Information Management Consultants Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092 27 Calshot Way, Enfield, Middlesex EN2 7BQ, UK. Fax: +44 (0)870 051 7276 l.w...@willpowerinfo.co.uk sheena.w...@willpowerinfo.co.uk URL:http://www.willpowerinfo.co.uk/ - --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching in CMSand DAMS
Hey everyone --- these discussions echo some of the themes we've explored in steve. How you conceptualize folksonomy is related closely to what it is you think you are enabling by it, and thinking about one half of that equation exposes pre-conceptions on the other. If you think that folksonomic strategies are enabling 'internet users' to catalog your collection for you, then you'll want to implement systems and protocols that support institutional values, like consistency, authority, accuracy, and strict interoperability. But if you think of folksonomy as a way to enable a user to make a personal connection with your museum collection, and conceive of it as supporting re-discovery (of things that i've seen in your museum that i'm interested in) as much as new discovery (of things in your collection that i might be interested in), then many of those questions don't matter, and what is more important is the user experience, and feedback loop. Personally, i'm becoming more and more convinced that tags exist in a space between a user and a resource, and that their meaning is situationally defined. the popular del.icio.us tag 'toread' is a good example of this. it only means something to me, now. it doesn't really mean anything to you, because i can't know if you want toread this thing. And it won't mean the same thing to me tomorrow when i've read that thing -- assuming that i'm keeping up on my reading ;) So letting people tag museum objects is letting them say what those objects mean to them, and helping them re-create that sense of meaning at a later time. So any way they choose to assert meaning (any tag they use) is valid -- within limits of socially acceptable behaviour of course. This doesn't discount the social leverage we get from tagging. You might be really interested in the things that i want toread because you're interested in the same things that i am. So you follow the things that i want toread assuming that there will be useful stuff there. That's where the power of del.icious. tag streams comes from. Nor does it belie the broader utility that derives from the way that personal tags cluster around information resources, a confluence that might help us leverage the power of the personal for institutional ends. If the same tag, from a set that we know (like impressionism from a known list of styles) is used by x number of people to describe the same resource, can we assume that that resource is really about that? (i.e. that it is 'impressionist' ? i know i changed parts of speech there). The studies that The Metropolitan Museum has begun in this area are really interesting and hint at statistical thresholds. We've also got a lot to learn about what people find interesting in our collections. We really don't know how they will describe them, but we're pretty sure that the way the general public thinks about art and the way that a specialist conceives of it are very different: preliminary tests have also born this out. if we know what kinds of things people are interested in will we change our descriptive practices? I'm convinced that there are lots of ways that museums can use tagging; we've just got to do it in a conscious way, and try and learn from our experience. that's what's making the Steve collaboration fun. Happy Thanksgiving -- to some of you from someone who celebrated it a while ago: it seems the meaning of holidays is situationally dependent too ;) jt -- __ J. Trantjtr...@archimuse.com 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 __ --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching
We are grappling with the question of subject headings at the moment, in several ways. We had not done any subject cataloguing until about 2 years ago, in a collaborative project involving a museum (ours), a digital library, an archive, and a history center. The partners decided to use library-style LCSH headings, as in Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh. There was a fundamental difference of opinion among the partners regarding what the subject headings represent. Some (coming more out of a library/archives environment) seemed to think of the headings primarily as descriptive metadata about the images, embedded in their permanent records, while others (like us) thought of them primarily as a means of public access and therefore advocated a more liberal standard, including allowing subject headings of what the image is about as well as what the image is of. On the website that resulted from the collaboration, the subject headings are indeed published within the individual records, along with other descriptive metadata like creator, title, date, etc. [It seems that publishing the subject headings online is more common in digital libraries than museums] Certainly the subject headings do provide a means of access to the images, to a point, but the headings were definitely created from the cataloguer's point-of-view, not the end user's. Thus an image depicting a person wearing a plaid suit would not have included plaid anywhere in the subject headings because this detail would not have risen to the cataloguer's idea of the image's main subjects. From the end user's point-of-view, however, someone could very well want to find this image by searching under the term plaid. We are now engaged in another archives project ourselves, and the archivist responsible for the cataloguing has adopted the library-style LCSH approach established in the earlier collaborative project. This new project in particular would lend itself very well to the folksonomy approach, but my initial presentation of this idea has met, not unexpectedly, with resistance and skepticism. What seems to be hard to get accross is that this is not necessarily an either/or proposition. The cataloguer's LC standards can be met, if necessary, but end-user-friendly access terms can also be provided. But the mere fact that the folksonomy tags could become part of the image's database record seems quite disturbing to some. Soon we will be creating subject terms for the museum's online collections access. It is nearly unimaginable that we will ever get there if we have to hire trained cataloguers or curators to provide proper LC-style headings, and the resulting access to the images would not be nearly as rich as it might be if we use the folksonomy approach, so we are keen to try. A few questions: Does anyone have an opinion about the value, in the networked information world, of the hierarchical LC subject format I described above (Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.)? Are others using this format (and why) or are you using single terms, more like keywords? For those who have done social tagging projects, do the tags become part of a permanent collections database record of an object, or do they exist outside of that, as part of a strictly web-based implementation? William Real, Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching
Title: mcn_mcn-l digest: November 22, 2005
Does anyone have an opinion
about the value, in the networked information world,of the hierarchical LC
subjectformat I described above ("Steel
Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.")? Are others using this format (and why) or
are you using single terms, more like keywords?
I've
been using mostly single terms, but will occasionally use a heirarchical LC
format when there is a specific enough topic. I anticipate that searches
for more general terms will bring these topics, but there will be the option for
a more detailed search. Of course, our indexing scheme hasn't quite been
finalized yet, so there is room for adjustment.
Peter Konin, MLS Subject Cataloger Information
Services Philadelphia Museum of Art
Phone: (215) 684-7288 pko...@philamuseum.org
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Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching
Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching
Will, et al. First off...this is a great thread. We need to have more of these kinds of discussion here! snip A few questions: Does anyone have an opinion about the value, in the networked information world, of the hierarchical LC subject format I described above (Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.)? Are others using this format (and why) or are you using single terms, more like keywords? The problem that I see in these discussions is that those not steeped in the cataloging tradition don't often see the LCSH as a larger social system of collaboratively creating a common set of terms. There are, no doubt, challenges with using LCSH that derive from what LCSH is. (And I'm going out on a limb here. LCSH isn't covered in my cataloging class until next weekcorrections welcome) LCSH subject headings aren't just made up willy nilly, they're based on the concept of literary warrant or that the terms used are actually represented in the body of materials being described. For bibliographic texts there's a leading organization and a large group of users, following a common format that debate the addition/deletion and change of terms based on the bibliographic materials they see. I'm not exactly sure how visual materials feed into this process, but the bulk of LCSH is likely to be based on texts, rather than images. It often looks like madness, but there is method to it. The question seems to suggest whether we can/should develop a visual literary warrant for describing the ofness and aboutness of the materials we're describing. Things like Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) are an important step towards that goal because they provide guidance and some liberal constraints on what kinds of controlled vocabularies are used for subject description. LCSH is not a magic bullet, but an appropriate controlled vocabulary is going to offer some advantages over keywords. Namely: 1. Interoperability We're living in a networked environment. Many of us will be sharing our records outside the contexts of our local environment (if not today, in the future) and using common vocabularies will make the job of aggregating and providing access much easier. A set of keywords, or even a folksonomy created by a specific community may not always make sense outside of that community (and I'd say this goes both ways...LCSH doesn't always make sense outside of it's community, useful as it can be). We're already seeing the interoperability challenges even when controlled vocabularies are used. See for example some of the work being done through National Science Digital Library OAI Best Practices/Shareable Metadata Best Practices http://oai-best.comm.nsdl.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PublicTOC 2. Clustering/Collocation Using a limited, controlled set of terms means it will be easier to establish relationships between individual items and put like things next to each other. This is more difficult when uncontrolled sets of keywords are used. 3. Management The other benefits of things like LCSH is that (in the right contexts), is the possibility to do authority control. If terms change over time it's easier to update, change and transform them if they've been properly applied. How many of us are hamstrung on sharing information about our collections because of the amount of clean-up of uncontrolled terms/descriptions. So what about folksonomies and keywords? I think the development of folksonomies is very exciting. It allows us to leverage large social groups to do what we don't always have the staffing to do and it puts description in the hands of end-users. And as some have suggested it's not an either-or proposition. I like to think about it like the Congress. The Senate (in theory) is supposed to be a slower-moving more deliberative body, whereas the House has it's finger on the pulse of the people. Call it bicameral cataloging that takes the benefits from persistent standards-based description and more flexible approaches such as folksonomies. In response to Will's question about where folksononmic terms live, I can't say. However I'd say don't try to mix them with other terms. Being able to identify where terms come from will be important to the long-term usefulness and management of the records we create today. Maybe they get indexed together in a searching service, but in a record they should be clearly distinguishable. It will be interesting to see from STEVE and other projects whether this kind of social tagging is also useful to staff functions, which may suggest it's useful to include in collections records. Looking forward to where this discussion goes... Richard Urban Graduate School of Library and Information Science University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign rjur...@uiuc.edu --- You are currently subscribed to mcn_mcn-l as: rlancefi...@mail.wesleyan.edu To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-mcn_mcn-l-12800...@listserver.americaneagle.com
Re: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching
Very well reasoned and thoughtful responses, Richard. Thanks! I'm very glad I set this thread rolling and that we're getting some great ideas out there. A couple of thoughts: The rationale for using a community standard like LCSH, as you said, is sharability and authority control. LCSH, while sometimes obscure, allows you to build complex terms in structured ways that others will (theoretically) mimic when they catalog similar things. Ideally, we should all have CMS and DAMS that will allow us to both enter a term and enter its source, i.e. Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh. [LCSH] Steel factories [local term] My Uncle Steve's workplace [folksonomy] ;-) The search screen could allow you to browse (the power of LCSH, in my opinion) or do keyword searches. I like the idea of identifying ofness and aboutness. Any suggestions how to indicate this in a data structure? Library cataloging doesn't really let you, in my experience, so there isn't an easy translation there. Maybe something in VRA? As to labor intensiveness, there's a lot to be said for laying a ground work and doing the basics as a batch process. Set up some ground rules: for example, all objects from the Asian Art department identified as Chinese furniture get subject heading xyz, and write a small program to find those records and add the heading. Then, if you have the resources, have someone look at each record and add something more detailed. I'm cooking up a scheme to pair a curatorial intern and a library school intern--the curatorial grad student says this is a the lib student works out an authorized heading. Would take some curatorial QC, but could be effective, I think. Looking forward to working this out and catching up with the libraries and archives (my background, before I moved over to the digital imaging side)! Deborah Wythe Brooklyn Museum Head of Digital Collections and Services 718 501 6311 Original Message Follows From: Richard Urban museumn...@earthlink.net Reply-To: mcn-l@mcn.edu To: mcn-l@mcn.edu Subject: RE: STEVE folksonomies / was subject keyword searching in CMS and DAMS Date: Wed, 23 Nov 2005 13:17:55 -0600 Will, et al. First off...this is a great thread. We need to have more of these kinds of discussion here! snip A few questions: Does anyone have an opinion about the value, in the networked information world, of the hierarchical LC subject format I described above (Steel Industry--Pennsylvania--Pittsburgh.)? Are others using this format (and why) or are you using single terms, more like keywords? The problem that I see in these discussions is that those not steeped in the cataloging tradition don't often see the LCSH as a larger social system of collaboratively creating a common set of terms. There are, no doubt, challenges with using LCSH that derive from what LCSH is. (And I'm going out on a limb here. LCSH isn't covered in my cataloging class until next weekcorrections welcome) LCSH subject headings aren't just made up willy nilly, they're based on the concept of literary warrant or that the terms used are actually represented in the body of materials being described. For bibliographic texts there's a leading organization and a large group of users, following a common format that debate the addition/deletion and change of terms based on the bibliographic materials they see. I'm not exactly sure how visual materials feed into this process, but the bulk of LCSH is likely to be based on texts, rather than images. It often looks like madness, but there is method to it. The question seems to suggest whether we can/should develop a visual literary warrant for describing the ofness and aboutness of the materials we're describing. Things like Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) are an important step towards that goal because they provide guidance and some liberal constraints on what kinds of controlled vocabularies are used for subject description. LCSH is not a magic bullet, but an appropriate controlled vocabulary is going to offer some advantages over keywords. Namely: 1. Interoperability We're living in a networked environment. Many of us will be sharing our records outside the contexts of our local environment (if not today, in the future) and using common vocabularies will make the job of aggregating and providing access much easier. A set of keywords, or even a folksonomy created by a specific community may not always make sense outside of that community (and I'd say this goes both ways...LCSH doesn't always make sense outside of it's community, useful as it can be). We're already seeing the interoperability challenges even when controlled vocabularies are used. See for example some of the work being done through National Science Digital Library OAI Best Practices/Shareable Metadata Best Practices http://oai-best.comm.nsdl.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?PublicTOC 2. Clustering/Collocation Using a limited, controlled set of terms means it will be easier to
