Metadata Elements for Object Description and Representation#

A Case Report from a Digitized Historical Fashion Collection Project Published on Annual Review of  OCLC Research 1999. Marcia Lei Zeng, Ph.D., Associate Professor School of Library and Information Science Kent State University Kent, Ohio, U.S.A.

Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop a catalog for a digitized collection of historical fashion objects held at the Kent State University Museum and to analyze and evaluate how well existing metadata formats can be applied to a fashion collection. The project considered the known and anticipated uses of the collection and the identification of the metadata elements that would be needed to support these uses. From a set of 90 museum accession records, 42 fashion objects were selected for cataloging. Three metadata treatments were created for these 42 items using (1) the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules (AACR) in use with the United States MAchine-Readable Cataloging (USMARC) formats, (2) the Dublin Core set of elements designed for minimal level cataloging, and (3) the Visual Resources Association (VRA) Core Categories for Visual Resources created for developing local databases and cataloging records for visual resources collections. Comparison and analysis of the formats resulted in the suggestion of a modified VRA metadata format to catalog the entire digitized historical fashion collection.

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Contents

Executive Summary

1. Introduction

2. Methodology

3. Discussion 3.1 Characteristics of Fashion Objects 3.2 Object Description on the Internet: The Contents and Access Points 3.3 Object Description on the Internet: The Formats 3.4 Description of Fashion Objects 3.5 Representation of Subjects 3.6 Additional Elements Suggested 3.7 Mapping Metadata Elements of Different Formats

4. Summary and Conclusions

References

Appendixes Appendix A. A List of Selected Fashion Collection Websites Appendix B. Image of a 1860 Day Dress with Bonnet and Shawl Appendix C. A Sample Record in VRA format Appendix D. A Sample Record in USMARC format Appendix E. A Sample Record in Dublin Core format

Tables 1-3 Comparison of Desired Elements and Selected Metadata Elements: 1. Fashion Object Registration Information 2. Fashion Object Descriptive Information 3. Subject/Topic Information of Fashion Objects

Acknowledgment

Project Related Links Visual Resources Association. (1997). The core categories for visual resources, version 2.0. Including Work Description Categories and Visual Document Description Categories. Web site of the VRA Core, including Version 2.0 Printed version of the VRA Core, Version 2.0 published on VRA Bulletin Vol.25, No.4 (Winter 1998). VRA Bulletin Volume 25, Number 4 (Winter 1998) Feature Articles: The VRA Core Categories for Visual Resources An online template for cataloging historical fashion objects. Each element is linked to the element definitions (revised for this project). The template contains a mapping mechanism.

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# Note: This research is funded by OCLC Library and Information Science Research Grant Project. A full paper based on this report has been accepted for publishing in the Journal of American Society for Information Science (JASIS) Volume 50, Number 13, 1999 (abstract). The report published here has additional sample records and project- related links. Please send email to mzeng@kent.edu if you have any question.

Images of the silhouettes used in this paper are links from "Bissonnette on Costume, A Visual Dictionary of Costume" by Anne Bissonnette of the Kent State University Museum. https://www.kent.edu/museum

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