In message
<[log in to unmask]>, Frankie
Roberto <[log in to unmask]> writes
>> * I'm not clear whether you're allowing objects to be tagged more
>> than once
>
>Not yet. Thought it'd be better to get one tag for as many objects as
>possible instead. Plus, I reckon most things have a single classification
>which adequately describes them. But, I might reconsider.
While that is often true (and certainly the case for this material,
where the information to hand is quite sparse), there are various
criteria by which you could classify objects. By form, by materials, by
function, by context of use (SHIC), ...
I think that we as a community are missing a trick in this area. If we
had, not fragmented institution-specific "object name" termlists, but a
sensibly-organised object class thesaurus/ontology, this could be used
both within the profession (for assessing collections coverage & the
potential for sharing resources) and for engagement with the public.
When NMSI put up a picture of a Hillman Imp from their collection and
asked for comments from the public, they weren't asking about that
specific car, but about the class of which that was an instance. People
instinctively understand that idea of abstraction from the instance to
the class, but we lack a shared tool to express that shared
understanding in relation to our collections.
If we had such a framework, we could also have authoritative
descriptions of each class which could be used locally - exactly the
sort of "shared cataloguing" that libraries have done for decades.
Richard
--
Richard Light
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