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> on Mon, 13 Sep 2004, "Bromley, Alex" <[log in to unmask]>
wrote
>The Museum of London is currently working on a Hub funded project -
>"Re-assessing what we collect". This is an attempt to examine not only
>what the museum collects in order to reflect the diversity of London's
>population, but also how this is recorded in our documentation systems.
>
>We are interested to hear from any other museums that have tackled this
>issue, particularly with regard to information retrieval systems and
>classifications.
Alex -
If you are looking for a classification or list of categories of people
and groups of people, you might find the auxiliary tables 1f and 1k of
the Universal Decimal Classification (UDC) helpful. They have many
entries for racial, ethnic and national groups and 247 different
categories for persons by status and personal characteristics. The full
schedules are available on-line only as a subscription service, but you
should find the printed version in most major libraries. It is British
Standard 1000 (in many parts). Details are at
<http://www.udcc.org/about.htm>.
As regards recording "the diversity of London's population" in your
documentation system, which I presume is MultiMimsy, I think you have
three options:
1. Create a structured set of thesaurus terms for "categories and groups
of people" and add them to your thesaurus. Then link them to object
records as appropriate.
2. Add categories and groups of people to the name authority file,
effectively treating "communities" as "organisations". This is perhaps
stretching the interpretation too far, but it would allow you to record
that a group was the creator or owner of an object, for example. This is
sometimes done to record that something came from a particular tribe,
for example, with no named individuals.
3. Add categories and groups of people as "subjects". This allows for
one level of subdivision, though not a full hierarchical structure, and
does let you specify the nature of the relationship between the group
and each object.
I would be inclined to prefer options 1 or 3, but it depends how these
fit in with the way in which you have used the thesaurus and subject
authority files in the past.
Leonard Will
--
Willpower Information (Partners: Dr Leonard D Will, Sheena E Will)
Information Management Consultants Tel: +44 (0)20 8372 0092
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