1. For a historical piece of costume, the designer or manufacturer is often unknown. Therefore the statement of responsibility that is to be recorded in the USMARC 1XX field (authorship) and $c of 24X field, as well as in the CREATOR element in both the VRA Core and DC is, in many cases, uncertain. Sometimes, in the original accession records, clues about the manufacturer exist. The original sources could come from an oral conversation with a donor, or the item itself might suggest a manufacture location (e.g., an Indian-style signature usually was embedded in a shawl). In USMARC, the 260 and 500 fields secure an entry for such information, but in the other two formats, the CREATOR element and PUBLISHER element do not necessarily support manufacture information.
2. From the beginning there was a problem of not being able to find text descriptions from which a "title" of an item could be taken. In most cases, the Museum registrar or cataloger created a title for an item according to other elements of the description. In those circumstances, generic names (rather than titles) were assigned, using some kinds of classification terms of work types. As a result, the USMARC 24X field (title statement) and TITLE element in the VRA Core and DC are consistently supplied by generic names of work types. "Dress" is one of the few terms that have been used as the title of hundreds of dresses. Other examples of such general terms include "man's coat", "court dress", "evening dress", and "day dress". A few slightly more specific titles discovered include "Princess-style summer evening dress", "Summer afternoon dress", and "Plastron bodice summer day dress". Terms that further differentiate dresses are usually recorded in the STYLE field of KSU Museum's accession records and are associated with SUBJECT and NOTE fields in the metadata formats.
3. Dealing with elements regarding dates relative to a fashion item description is often not problem-free either. It is not unusual to see an accession record that contains three to four dates, ranging from the date an original work was created (usually estimated), to the dates it was worn (e.g., "ca. 1912"), purchased, or officially transferred to the KSU Museum. The USMARC 260 subfield $c (publishing or imprint date) and DATE element of DC (the date of publication) are functional when the original item's date is recorded. VRA Core provides two date elements: a DATE for original work description and a VISUAL DOCUMENT DATE. More likely, a visual document date would be later than the date when an item was officially transferred to the museum. Unfortunately, visual document dates were seldom found anywhere in this application.
4. The above problems were mainly due to the facts that the museum objects are often imperfectly known at the time of accessioning and registering. In describing them, there is usually more reliance on the perceptions of the person doing the description (Taylor, 1999, p.10). A significant amount of useful information was found in the original KSU Museum accession records. When transcribing them into the cataloging records, numerous 5XX fields in USMARC, NOTES elements in VRA Core, and DESCRIPTION elements in DC were used. Notes can relate to registration/management of an item, its description, and its subject meanings. The following are just a few examples:
item history
e.g., "The Dress is said to have been worn by the mother of the donor on her wedding day in 1870."
e.g., "Bought by the Princess Grace of Monaco for the Rose Ball at Monte Carlo."owner, or persons related to the item
e.g., "This dress, bonnet and shawl all belonged to Marie Eleanor Bente who married Gerhart Henry Albers in 1865. ... Both families had emigrated from Germany around 1844. Gerhart Albers served in the Union Army during the Civil War and acted as a translator for German speaking troops. His name is inscribed on the Soldiers and Sailors Monument on Public Square in Cleveland."
e.g., "Fan gift of Ben Frost in memory of Carolyn Frost."significance of patterns, colors, customs, etc.
e.g., "On the center front of this red silk satin coat is embroidered a puzi with a mandarin duck, emblem of a seventh-degree civil official";
e.g., "A bride was considered an 'empress' on her wedding day, and quasi-official bridal attire often had imagery adapted from Manchu court costume, including the imperial dragon and the phoenix, fenghuang, associated with the empress."style history
e.g., "Dresses in this style, with knee-length fronts of the bodice flowing into the polonaise, are illustrated in 'The Queen' for October, 1871, and continue through to 1873. The applied band on the skirt appears in 'Le Follet' in March, 1872 and 'The Queen' for July, 1872."exhibition records
e.g., "Exhibited 10/2/89-4/15/90 'Age of Napoleon', Metropolitan Museum of Art."
e.g., "Exhibited: 'Wrapped in Splendor: The Art of the Paisley Shawl' 7/30/97-9/13/98."conservation information
e.g., "Excellent condition." Very often there is rich information added by the museum registrar relating to the design of a specific item, such as:construction of a dress
e.g., "Black wool resist-printed with red and yellow rosebuds; high round neck, long shaped sleeves set into dropped shoulders edged with self piping, sleeve openings edged with black velvet; front opening with jet buttons, F & B bodice fullness gathered into set-in waist-band; full floor-length, gored skirt, double box-pleated into waist-band, hem-bound with horsehair braid."features of an item or its components
e.g., "Paired aprons in red silk brocade, bordered in blue and accented with white, have straight end panels with couched gold-wrapped thread long dragons and fenghuang. Paired aprons consists of two sections, each made up of a straight, vertical panel and pleats attached to a plain waistband."the composition of an item including its parts and related accessories
e.g., "button", "tie", "long sleeve", "pleat", "belt-coral", "scarf".
USMARC notes are advantageous in their capacity to differentiate various types of notes, so that control of both cataloging and searching tasks become enhanced. USMARC Fields 500 (general note), 508 (creation/reproduction credits note), 520 (summary, abstract, annotation, scope note), 535 (location of originals/duplicates note), 541 (acquisition note), 561 (provenance note), and 585 (exhibition note) are useful. Some 3XX fields are also appropriate for these types of notes; however, their subfields are rather difficult to apply; and they may not be meaningful for searching. Therefore, sometimes 5XX fields instead of 3XX fields were used for easier handling. It took a significant amount of time to generate the first record by following AACR2 and the USMARC details. Later, a template of the USMARC record was generated so that records became easier to create. However, many debates continue among the catalogers consulted regarding which fields should/could be used in particular cases. A typical example relates to the question of whether a 505 (formatted content note) could be used to describe the parts of an item (such as pieces of a man's main dress, a furniture set, or a set of porcelain). Other discussions involve using 545 (biographical or historical note), 773 (host item entry), and 787 (nonspecific relationship entry). Furthermore, whether information in particular note fields will be searchable in a database remains a question, since many systems choose not to index the 5XX fields or to only index one or two particular 5XX fields.
VRA Core's strength in dealing with such object-description notes is clear. Parts of the information that USMARC 5XX fields offer also find unique places in the VRA Core record. For example, VRA Core uses these elements: RELATED WORK, RELATIONSHIP TYPE, MEASUREMENTS, TECHNIQUES, MATERIAL, REPOSITORY NAME, and REPOSITORY PLACE. The VRA Core NOTES element easily applies to the rest of the notable information. Yet, since this format does not differentiate other notes, it may influence future searching when the database becomes very large (say, for searches of exhibition notes). There is also the possibility that a record may miss data if no one suggests to the cataloger what types of notes he/she should record. Therefore, a template indicating types of notes to be recorded is necessary. A sample record in Appendix C illustrates such a template. It uses a modified VRA Core format in which NOTES fields are differentiated using some of the details that USMARC 5XX fields cover.
Dublin Core's DESCRIPTION element allows a textual description of the content of the resource, including abstracts in the case of document-like objects or content descriptions in the case of visual resources. Though not primarily designed for the description of an object, DESCRIPTION is applicable to some parts of the fashion item's information. However, even after using the DESCRIPTION element repeatedly, some information may not fit into a permanent field. For example, location of tag, exhibition history, and the history, role and criticism of the object may have to be eliminated, especially when metadata information is embedded in an electronic document's non-display section (e.g., "HEAD" section of a HTML document). DC's RELATION element could be used for the information about parts/pieces of an item in this application.
5. Information contained in the USMARC note fields provides suggestions for additional entries in the 6XX and 7XX fields having to do with the history of an item, persons related to the item or to its owner, style history, or exhibition records. These fields provide structured access points to information about persons and organizations related to the item, in addition to the browse-able note fields. VRA Core and DC lack this feature, especially for added personal and corporate body entries. From a cataloging point of view, assigning added entries to a record is time-consuming; but, from a searching point of view, structured field searching is a very important means for satisfying user's information needs.
The above analysis illustrates the pros and cons of using USMARC, VRA Core, and Dublin Core formats in the context of descriptions of historical fashion objects. Such an analysis in the context of subject representation will be presented in the next section. To provide an overview, three tables have been prepared to list desired elements. They were formed based on discussions with the KSU Museum staff, a data dictionary designed by Rebecca Albrecht, a former student, under the supervision of the author, and the author's experiences in examining KSU's fashion objects and their accession records. Table 1 lists the elements in the Registration Information category; Table 2 includes those in the Descriptive Information category; and Table 3 reflects the Subject/Topic Information category. Though not an exhaustive compilation, elements from the three metadata formats appropriate for particular contents are indicated in the tables. The tables focus on content and matched field names rather than input conventions and syntax. The inclusions of the examples in matching fields are demonstrative, rather than exhaustive. Table 1 and 2 are presented below while Table 3 will be presented in the next section.