Yes, this is the ideal solution - and very much needed!
Cath



Cath Maloney
Records Officer, London Archaeological Archive and Research Centre
Museum of London
46 Eagle Wharf Road
London. N1 7ED
Tel: 020 7566 9319
Fax: 020 7490 3955
Email: [log in to unmask]
www.museumoflondon.org.uk

New major exhibition: The London Look: Fashion from street to catwalk. 29 October 2004 - 8 May 2005
-----Original Message-----
From: LEE, Edmund [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 27 January 2005 16:05
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [FISH] e-conference - conservation


--From Phil Carlisle -- forwarded by Ed --

Gill
They cover two very distinct concepts - objects and materials. Whilst a material could be indexed as an object, eg. Copper alloy object, an object would rarely be qualified by its material ie a ring which happens to be made from copper wouldn't be indexed as 'copper ring' but as 
OBJECT - Ring
OBJECT MATERIAL - Copper
 
So anyone searching for things made of copper finds the ring
And anyone searching for rings finds the ring regardless of whether it's made from Copper or Gold.
 
A combination of the two thesauri indexing specific OBJECT and MATERIAL fields would, to my mind, be the ideal solution.
 
N.B We (DSU) have been thinking about amalgamating the BM thesaurus and our own in house Building Materials thesaurus for quite some time to create a heritage materials thesaurus which was less specific than the BM but more detailed than the EH thesaurus. If the general consensus was in favour of this then we could possibly put this plan into action sooner rather than later. 
 
 
Phil
 
Phil Carlisle
Data Standards Supervisor
English Heritage