At the risk of intruding upon a private argument, can I just point out the
original proposal for ADAM explicitly said that the project would investigate
the adoption of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (Section 7.2). AAT is
actually a very rich resource, of interest to a wider audience than its name
suggests. Although it has its limitations, there is no better source of
terminology in the art and design subject area.
Readers may be interested to learn that the EC-funded ELISE Project is also
about to investigate the use of thesauri as a method of providing mediated
access to distributed imagebanks. De Montfort University is the lead partner,
and a wide range of other institutions are becoming involved in the second phase
of the project. The V&A is a partner in ELISE, and National Art Library staff
will be involved in the Thesaurus workpackage. We will be looking at AAT and
other Getty Art History Information Program resources such as the Union List of
Artists' Names (ULAN) and the Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN). The Getty
"family" of thesauri provide the real prospect of controlled terminology in the
art and design subject area, and projects such as ADAM and ELISE have to take
account of their existence. ULAN, for example, may help solve the Mona Lisa
question, since it offers the prospect of being able to search on all variant
forms of name (Leonardo; Da Vinci; etc. etc.). AAT does not cover iconographic
themes, so the ELISE Project will also be examining ICONCLASS, which is more a
classification scheme than a thesaurus.
Doug Dodds
Head of Collection Management
National Art Library
Victoria and Albert Museum
South Kensington
LONDON SW7 2RL
UK
Tel 0171-938-8470
Fax 0171-938-8461
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