1. Subject Access to Digital Collections
Decisions About Description : Getting the Most Out of Metadata in CONTENTdm Midwest CONTENTdm Users Group Meeting
Subject Access to Digital Collections
Presented by
Mary Rose
Lynnette Fields
Catalog and Metadata Librarians
Hello, I’m Mary Rose from Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
My colleague Lynn Fields & I are going to talk about subject access to digital collections.

2. Three considerations Levels of subject analysis and access
Collection
Object
Page
Controlled vocabularies
Geographic headings

3. Levels of subject analysis and access
Collection level – Subject terms apply uniformly to all of the objects included in the digital collection
Object level – Different subjects are assigned to each object according its content
Page level – Different subjects are selected and displayed for the different pages comprising an object
Think of “collection” as a bookshelf
Think of “object” as a book on the bookshelf
Think of “page” as a page in the book on the bookshelf
A multi-page object in CONTENTdm is a “compound object”
This will all become clearer with examples

4. Level of analysis – Collection level
This is the Civil War diary of Union soldier William R. Townsend, covering the period from April 1863 to February Scanned images of the pages are accompanied by searchable transcriptions of each daily entry.

5. Each month of the diary is an object
Each month of the diary is an object. Each month is a compound object comprised of 30 or so diary pages (one for each day).

6. This is the metadata for August 1, 1863
Most of description are at the collection level: same for the entire diary [go through each line]. Also Subject (“Subjects” and “Geographic locations”) analysis applies to the diary as a whole.
The title and transcription are different for each page.
Transcriptions are keyword-searchable.
The collection-level description and subjects give users an overall view of the collection when they retrieve a particular page of the diary.
Subject terms at the collection level are not searchable. Prevents user frustration retrieving every page of diary when doing a search.

7. Level of analysis – Object level
The parent (paper) collection consists of the performing music library compiled by the St. Louis radio station KMOX when the station maintained a live studio orchestra. The digital collection was first created in 2008 with 118 initial titles. The collection will grow as more titles enter the public domain.

8. Each song is an object. Each song is a compound object comprised of 4 or 5 or 6 pages corresponding to physical pages of the sheet music.

9. This is the metadata for the song And he’d say Oo la la wee wee
Each object (a particular song) is composed of several pages (sheets of music), in this case there are 4 scanned images corresponding to the 4 pages of sheet music for this song
Subject analysis (and all description) is at object level, same for all 4 pages comprising the object

10. Level of analysis – Page level
Louis Henri Sullivan ( ) is known today as a founder of the "Chicago School" of architecture. The digital exhibit features selected Sullivan ornaments owned by SIUE representing thirty-one buildings. They are accompanied by digitized historic photographs of the buildings of origin.

11. There are 80 objects in this collection.

12. Each object is a combination of digital photos of the architectural artifact…

13. …and then digitized historic photos of the building on which the artifact originally appeared. See the pediment on front of building?

14. Note the navigation bar at the left.
The object is the “Charles P. Kimball House pediment”. It is comprised of two sets of pages. First group is “Pediment artifact images”; second group is “Charles P. Kimball House images”.
In this case there is only one page in the group of artifact images. It is highlighted in red since we are viewing that page.

15. Here is the metadata for the “Artifact image 1” page of the object
In this case “Architectural element” is mapped to the Dublin Core field “Subject”. The subject analysis (“Pediments”) is at the page level. Other description (Materials, Dimensions) also at the page level. This information all corresponds to the artifact image page.

16. Now we are looking at the Building image page.

17. Here is the metadata for “Building image 1” page of this digital object.
The field labeled “Type of building” is mapped to the Dublin Core “Subject” field. Subject analysis (“Houses”; “Dwellings”) is at the page level; other description (Dates construction/demolished; Photographer) also at the page level. This information all corresponds to the building image page and NOT to the artifact image page.

18. This shows the mapping from displayed field names to Dublin Core fields.

19. Controlled vocabulary – KMOX
I’m going to talk about controlled vocabulary decisions we made, and I’m going to start with the KMOX
collection – Mary told you earlier that we did subject analysis at the object (song) level.

20. Why did we use LCTGM?
We choose LCTGM (Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials)
for several reasons:
Built into CONTENTdm (only one at the time);
Visual nature of the collection
lack of complexity of the resources
For this collection LCTGM worked on it’s own, and didn’t need to be supplemented with another vocabulary

21. LCTGM Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials http://www
Compiled and maintained by Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress – created especially for visual materials.
It’s freely available on the web.
We’re going to do a search on soldiers.

22. 1.Terms can sometimes be faceted by nationality and/or geographically by country/state/city.
2. LCSH terms are used for geographic faceting.

23. Controlled vocabulary – Sullivan
Choices are
AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus)
LCSH (Library of Congress Subject Headings)
1.When we were working with the Sullivan architectural collection we felt we had two choices for controlled vocabulary.
2. AAT (Art & Architecture Thesaurus) - logical choice since we were dealing with an architectural collection.
3. We also wanted to include LCSH in case there were any situations that we thought AAT might not provide adequate access – many library users are familiar with LCSH

24. Type of building
Neither AAT or LCSH provided all the access we thought was necessary
Decided to always use the AAT term and if deemed necessary, include the LCSH term
Type of building was one of the subject fields that we used in this collection.
2. Read slide.
3. We had several bank photographs in the collection. Let’s see what AAT term we would use for a bank.

27. 1. The LCSH term is “Banks and Banking” – in this case we didn’t think it necessary to include it - the first word “banks” is the same for both controlled vocabularies – and we thought the heading might be misleading (we’ll see why shortly)

28. This is one of the bank photographs in the collection – inside the National Farmers Bank

29. The label we chose for this information was Type of building.
As you can see, we just have the AAT term and we didn’t add the LCSH term “Banks and banking”
If we had included the LCSH term – Banks and banking, that wouldn’t have made much sense with the label Type of building.

30. We also had personal residences in our collection
The AAT term for personal residences is “houses”. The LCSH term is “dwellings”
In this particular case we felt that if we wanted to provide as much access as possible, we should include both terms – they both make sense
So, for all of our “Type of building” headings, we carefully looked at the AAT and LCSH terms and decided on a case by case building type if we would use AAT only or AAT and LCSH.
If LCSH added value we used it, and if it didn’t add value, or was misleading we didn’t use it

31. Geographic Headings
In traditional cataloging, geographic information is often presented as a subdivision in a pre-coordinated heading:
Subject: Soldiers -- United States -- Diaries
In the digital world, there is a tendency to present geographic information as separate headings:
Type of building: Houses
Building location: Illinois -- Chicago
1st ex. shows an LCSH topical heading with a geographic subdivision for United States
2nd ex. shows a topical heading with a separate geographic heading
Let’s take a closer look at how geography is handled differently in LCSH and in LCTGM and AAT

32. Geographic headings in LCSH
1.Geographic headings are handled two ways in LCSH: as stand-alone headings and as subdivisions in pre-coordinated topical headings.
2.Authority record for Owatonna (Minn.) – gives guidance on how to use the heading
3. Shows the standalone heading (in the 151 field) – would be used if we had something primarily about a place – it’s history, geography, an atlas, etc.
4. The authority record also shows how this heading would be used as a subdivision (in the 781 field) – would be used for a topical subject that we wanted to bring out a geographic emphasis) most common geographic usage

33. LCSH authority records for topical headings show us if we can subdivided the heading by a geographic place.
That info is in the fixed field

34. We used both types of LCSH geographic headings: standalone geographic headings in the Geographic locations field and faceted topical headings in the Subjects field
The approach used in this example is very similar to traditional cataloging

35. Dublin Core provisions http://www. dublincore
4.7. Coverage
Label: Coverage
Element Description: The extent or scope of the content of the resource. Coverage will typically include spatial location (a place name or geographic co-ordinates), temporal period (a period label, date, or date range) or jurisdiction (such as a named administrative entity). Recommended best practice is to select a value from a controlled vocabulary (for example, the Thesaurus of Geographic Names [Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, getty.edu/research/tools/vocabulary/tgn/]). Where appropriate, named places or time periods should be used in preference to numeric identifiers such as sets of co-ordinates or date ranges.
What you see on the screen now was copied and pasted from: “Using Dublin Core – The Elements” at the URL shown.
The DC field for geographic information is called coverage
DC encourages using a separate field for ALL geographic terms (i.e. not employing pre-coordination).

36. TGN authority record for Owatonna, Minn.

37. Other options for geographic headings in digital collections
Presentation options depend on choice of controlled vocabulary
Vocabulary alternatives to LCSH include:
LCTGM
can use faceted topical headings or separate geographic headings
AAT
must use separate geographic headings
In digital collections we have other options besides the traditional cataloging approach

38. Geographic headings in LCTGM
When using LCTGM the metadata librarian decides when to use geographic headings as facets and when to make separate geographic headings.

39. Geographic headings in LCTGM
Facet note --(country or state)--city. Use LCSH geographic terms to facet (i.e. $z format).

40. Example of using “France” as a geographic subdivision with an LCTGM term “Soldiers” that is also faceted by nationality.

42. 1.The decision was made to make a separate heading for Ireland because the song is about the place
2. For this collection we have a browse list for subjects, and we wanted to include Ireland in that list
3. Mothers—Ireland is not appropriate because this mother is not IN Ireland (just FROM Ireland)

43. Geographic headings in AAT
There is no provision for geographic subdivision/faceting in AAT
AAT is designed to be used in conjunction with the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)

44. We used the AAT term Banks (buildings) and then provided a separate geographic heading for Minnesota—Owatonna.
This was our only option. Also we used the Getty TGN format instead of “Owatonna (Minn.)” LCSH 651 format.

45. TGN authority record for Owatonna, Minn.
We made a conscious decision to leave out the county

46. Concluding thoughts Nature of collection determines
Level of analysis (collection, object, page)
Choice of controlled vocabulary
Choice of vocabulary influences options for handling geographic headings
Decisions need to be made for each collection individually on a case-by-case basis
Our main objective is to provide useful and relevant access to each collection
Level of analysis (collection, object, page) is determined by the nature of the collection – Diary at the collection level – sheetmusic at the object – sullivan at the page

47. Any questions?