The Charles W. Cushman Collection: Enhancing Visual Resource Discovery Through Descriptive Metadata Based on Subjective Image Analysis

paper
Authorship
  1. 1. Linda Cantara

    Libraries - Indiana University, Bloomington

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The Charles W. Cushman Collection: Enhancing Visual
Resource Discovery Through Descriptive Metadata Based on Subjective Image
Analysis

Linda
Cantara

Indiana University Libraries
lcantara@indiana.edu

2003

University of Georgia

Athens, Georgia

ACH/ALLC 2003

editor

Eric
Rochester

William
A.
Kretzschmar, Jr.

encoder

Sara
A.
Schmidt

The Charles W. Cushman CollectionThis project is funded by an IMLS
National Leadership Grant. comprises nearly 18,000 Kodachrome slides,
captured from 1938 to 1969 by Charles Weever Cushman, an accomplished amateur
photographer, world traveler, and pioneer in the use of color photography.
Cushman bequeathed the collection to his alma mater, Indiana University, on his
death in 1972, yet its existence was virtually unknown until late 1999 when a
university archivist rediscovered the suitcases in which the slides were stored,
along with Cushman’s notebooks containing identifying information and dates for
each slide. The images visually document in color the vernacular history of
people, places, and events that have previously been seen only or primarily in
black and white. To provide online access to the collection, a project team at
Indiana—including staff of the Digital Library Program, the University Archives,
and the University Libraries— has digitized the slides and has designed a
relational database to document administrative, technical, and descriptive
metadata about the images. Transcriptions of Cushman’s notebook annotations and
corresponding documentation on slide mounts will be keyword searchable. In
addition, we are creating descriptive metadata for each image by assigning terms
for subject content, genre, physical characteristics, and geographic location.
The terms are selected from standard controlled vocabularies, primarily the
Library of Congress Thesauri for Graphic Materials (TGM I and TGM II), but also
Library of Congress Authorities Files (LCAF) and the Getty Thesaurus of
Geographic Names (TGN). When all the slides have been cataloged, the database
will be mapped to an XML format—most likely Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
but possibly Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS)—and will be searchable
over the Web.
The use of controlled vocabularies in the descriptive metadata of a large image
collection has the potential to optimize visual resource discovery, but many
issues must be addressed and resolved to ensure the expense of assigning the
terms truly results in improved image retrieval:
The Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject
Terms (TGM I) and Thesaurus for Graphic Materials II: Genre and Physical
Characteristic Terms (TGM II) include topic headings developed by the
Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division over the past fifty
years to catalog graphic materials. In adherence with ANSI/NISO
Z39.19-1994,ANSI/NISO Z39.19-1984 is the American
National Standards Institute/National Information Standards
Organization Guidelines for the Construction, Format and Management
of Monolingual Thesauri. NISO recently announced plans to revise
these guidelines: see .
terms are expressed in natural language word order following American
English spelling conventions. Although new terms are added regularly
based on proposals submitted by catalogers (Alexander), these thesauri
frequently lack the specificity desirable for describing individual
images. In addition, regardless of the domain knowledge and cataloging
expertise of personnel performing image analysis to assign subject
headings, inconsistencies are inevitable. Professional catalogers of
traditional media readily acknowledge that subject analysis of printed
materials may vary from cataloger to cataloger as well as from day to
day. In this paper, I will discuss how we have attempted to approximate
consistency of image analysis by multiple catalogers, the quality
control procedures we have implemented to further ensure uniformity of
subject term assignment, and the “work- arounds” we have devised to deal
with encountered inadequacies in the selected controlled
vocabularies.
The Digital Library Federation, the Getty Grant Program, and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in cooperation with Rice University are
currently sponsoring a Visual Resources Association (VRA) review and
evaluation of existing data content standards and current practice in
order to compile a guide to good practice for describing cultural
objects and images. The forthcoming Cataloguing Cultural Objects: A
Guide to Describing Cultural Objects and their Images—the CCO Guide—will
provide recommendations and examples for using data value standards
tools and building authority records.See and “Project
Proposal for Guide to Good Practice: Cataloging Standards for
Describing Cultural Objects and Images,” Digital Library Federation,
January 12, 2001, at .
Used in concert with XML data structure and communication standards, the
CCO Guide will facilitate consistent creation of descriptive metadata
for visual resources, enabling interactive and complex search options.
Paradoxically, Open Archive Initiative Metadata Harvester (OAI-PMH)
service providers require data providers map rich metadata to
unqualified Dublin Core, while content aggregators like the Research
Libraries Group (RLG) Cultural Materials service must currently treat
all controlled vocabulary terms as keywords.See the Research
Libraries Group (RLG) Cultural Materials site at . In this regard, the RLG states, “Ultimately, we hope to add
powerful ‘assisted searching’ tools, to help users navigate across
different vocabularies and subject schemes, but in the meantime we
are simply using whatever subject terms are provided in the source
data.” (See ). Although neither OAI service providers nor RLG preclude
the use of multiple or complex metadata formats, content creators
nevertheless face a quandary: why commit extensive and expensive
personnel hours to create increasingly rich metadata when interoperable
and federated access is possible when implementing simpler, less costly,
metadata standards?I am, of course, playing the devil’s
advocate here.
The foremost concern when designing and implementing an image
retrieval system should be the searching needs of the user community
(Sundt). Art historians, for example, may be trained in the use of one
or more controlled vocabularies specific to art images,For
example, Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) at ,
ICONCLASS at http://www.iconclass.nl/, and Categories for the
Description of Works of Art at . but users of vernacular photography collections may have
limited experience with any controlled vocabulary. Since lack of
familiarity with the underlying vocabulary tools may actually diminish
rather than enhance user interaction, the search interface should
ideally facilitate direct mining of the encoded metadata, directing the
user to broader, narrower, related and cross-referenced subject terms.
This paper will conclude with a review of our usability test findings in
respect to a prototype interface that integrates TGM I and II terms into
the search facilities for the Cushman Collection.

REFERENCES

Arden
Alexander

Tracy
Meehleib

The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials: Its History, Use,
and Future

Cataloging & Classification Quarterly

31
3/4
189-211
2001

Encoded Archival Description

<>.

Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN)

<>.

Guidelines for Implementing DC in XML

<>.

Library of Congress Authorities

<>

Library of Congress Thesauri of Graphic Materials: TGM
I (Subjects) and TGM II (Genre and Physical Characteristics
Terms)

<>
<>.

Metadata Object Description Schema (MODS)

<>.

Open Archives Initiative FAQ

<>.

Christine
L.
Sundt

The Image User and the Search for Images

Murtha
Baca

Introduction to Art Image Access: Issues, Tools,
Standards, Strategies

Los Angeles
Getty Research Institute
2002
67-85

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Conference Info

In review

ACH/ALLC / ACH/ICCH / ALLC/EADH - 2003
"Web X: A Decade of the World Wide Web"

Hosted at University of Georgia

Athens, Georgia, United States

May 29, 2003 - June 2, 2003

83 works by 132 authors indexed

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Conference website: http://web.archive.org/web/20071113184133/http://www.english.uga.edu/webx/

Series: ACH/ICCH (23), ALLC/EADH (30), ACH/ALLC (15)

Organizers: ACH, ALLC

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  • Language: English
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