Evidence 3 of Competency G
In which I show my application of basic principles involved in the organization and representation of knowledge. Text on this page is relevant excerpt from the Final Report about my internship in the Autry National Center, Electronic Cataloging Initiative. Here is the link to the full report with all details about internship site, internship outcomes and conclusions:
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Native American Baskets
from Rupert Costo Collection
SPECIAL COLLECTIONS and ARCHIVES,
University of California, Riverside
Photo Vlasta Radan, 2007.
2.2 Developing subject heading for basket designs and cataloging images using subject headings
One of questions that come up in conversations on the subject “what I should be thinking while cataloging for the Internet” was the possibility to relate and group objects by various patterns and designs. Naming design is very tricky issue, and in existing records there is no consistency of calling similar designs by the same name. Research of the Native American basketry literature made it clear only that most of the authorities agree on the fact that there is no religious significance in patterns, but they widely disagreed in names for specific designs. Also, at the first glance, in one particular tribe designs look fairly similar, but they tend to have significant variations and exhibit influence from other cultures or surrounding tribes. My suggestion was to index patterns using only very limited and simple geometric terms (square, triangle, horizontal band, human figure etc.) without any attempt to be descriptive (butterfly design, cactus design etc.).
All 500 records of the Pomo Indian baskets, that I edited, were indexed using this system. Also, I updated records for other subject terms that appear in on-line records. The advantage of “linked terms” feature (subject headings) is that the change of the term (from singular to a plural, for example) is changed through the thesaurus and change reflects in all records automatically.
This web site was developed to satisfy the graduation requirements for
the School for Library and Information Science at San Jose State University California
Text, design, and digital imaging by Vlasta Radan