Over the past year and a half I have been leading a project of archivists and records managers to develop a functions thesaurus of terms describing the functions of corporate body record creators. The intended use of the thesaurus is to help records managers classify records in their custody and help archivists appraise and describe (through finding aids, MARC21 records, and EAD markups) the records of such corporate bodies. The progress is slow as we wade through each term in the thesaurus (now numbering above 350) and finalize the BT, NT, RT, USE, USEFOR, and examples for each term. We expect to be done sometime before the next century. Ha!
In the past six weeks or so we have seen a really great thesaurus come out for use by college and university archivists. The thesaurus was almost a one woman job and it is fantastic, though some have complained (and rightly so) that there is no interactive web-based software engine to help one navigate and search the terms in that thesaurus. Something like the open source TemaTres was suggested. That is the software the functions thesaurus will eventually end up in.
When we began looking at the functions thesaurus and whether it had a need in the RM and archival worlds, we ran into some obstacles. One of these was a small group of state archives workers who had worked on the functions aspect of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) many, many years ago. But our group discovered that the functions terms in this thesaurus had not been updated and were not in any consistent format, something all the literature we could find on the construction of thesauri told us we need to have. So we decided that if the AAT was not updated on a regular basis, that we were going to create a thesaurus that was new. And so we are doing so now.
But a few weeks ago I was contacted by someone from the SAA Electronic Records Roundtable that asked if I knew of a good genre/form thesaurus and whether one was being used or created or updated. I responded that the AAT has genre/form terms, but told the person something like "good luck finding them!" He only wanted to add the term "electronic records," but I am trying to persuade him and others to form anothe group to standardize genre/form headings and make them consistent, something the AAT does not do and that needs to be done to fit current scholarly and practical models.
I'm curious what my readers' experiences are in using thesauri?
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You Suck, Jon Stewart
3 hours ago
5 comments:
My primary thesauri have been the RBMS group of controlled vocabularies (which are well maintained and added to) and the AAT. The RBMS thesauri work well for MARC catalog records and are widely accepted as authorized lists. The AAT I have used for image and object cataloging, and I find them a bit cumbersome--but that may just be my print bias coming through. I think thesauri for archival terms would go a long way towards helping users understand what repositories are all about.
Is your question related to creating Corporate headings/names or more for genre headings?
You shouldn't have to try to re-invent the wheels already out there. :-\
Getty thesauri, LC authorities
OCLC Controlled terminologies services (do you use ContentDM?)
http://authorities.loc.gov
free searching
Have you heard, also, Russell, about the ISDF - International Standard for Describing Functions - from the ICA? Came out last year and draws on a number of international standards, including ISO 15489. Check it out. With it out right now, I don't imagine something like EAF - Encoded Archival Function - to be far behind.
Lori
SJSU SLIS
Compared to LCSH and TGM, I have been pretty impressed with Art and Architecture Thesaurus, particularly for genre/form terms and functions. And that new college and university thesaurus published by SAA is impressive, too, especially the introduction.
Of course, the erstwhile problem is that many of us are compelled to rely heavily on LCSH because we operate within a larger library system, even though it may not be the best solution for archives and manuscripts. Maybe with the development of new systems for searching collections of primary sources (on a large level, look at something like ArchiveGrid), archivists can start creating access points from thesauri that make the most sense for their researchers, and not library researchers. Because I find that each camp is asking different questions.
One can certainly catalog using a mix of each, whether LCSH, Getty -Art & Architecture Thesauri, RBMS terms, etc as long as you edit accordingly in your records. Its not one or the other.
One should get out of the habit of thinking in terms of "camps" of professionals, but be aware of what exists and what is the process to add , make changes to headings rather than reinvent the wheel, or just spin one's wheels continually in a spiral.
It will involve communication and learning something new, and need not take up too much of one's lifetime in the process.
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