I recently found out that the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) has published online versions of their controlled vocabularies (http://www.rbms.info/committees/bibliographic_standards/controlled_vocabularies). I'm especially interested in using the vocabularies "Binding Terms" and "Type Evidence" to describe and classify book bindings and typefaces within my digital edition project. Now that there's one URI per term in these vocabularies, they come pretty close to what I was looking for - not quite Linked Open Data ontologies, but almost. What worries me, though, is that no one seems to be using these vocabularies. They were intended to be used in MARC records, but I haven't yet seen any MARC record containing their terms. So, my question is: is there any DH project or library that actually uses one of the RBMS/ACRL vocabularies? Or does anyone have an opinion on them, or can suggest better alternatives?
Is anyone using the RBMS/ACRL vocabularies Binding Terms or Type Evidence?
(4 posts) (2 voices)-
wynkenhimself
MemberBest AnswerThere should be rare books libraries out there using these terms. The Folger Shakespeare Library does--see http://shakespeare.folger.edu/cgi-bin/Pwebrecon.cgi?BBID=120452 as an example for a record that does.
I'm not a cataloger, so I can't speak to the cataloging practices of other institutions. But I'm intrigued by the idea of linking digital editions to the controlled vocabulary used by libraries to describe physical holdings. And given the lengthy amount of consideration that goes into the RBMS's controlled vocabularies, it makes sense to piggy-back onto their work. As someone who does work closely with rare materials, I can attest to how useful their terms are and how helpful it is to have it standardized!
Posted 3 years ago Permalink -
martin.delaiglesia@googlemail.com
MemberReplying to @wynkenhimself's post:
Thank you, that is a valuable hint! I wasn't aware of the Folger catalogue. It will be exciting to explore how they used the thesaurus, and to compare their data to that which we will produce and publish in our TEI edition.
Posted 3 years ago Permalink -
martin.delaiglesia@googlemail.com
MemberUsing Google (why didn't this occur to me earlier?), I've been able to find some more catalogues which use the Binding Terms thesaurus:
- Boston Public Library (http://www.bpl.org/)
- Columbia University Libraries (http://library.columbia.edu/)
- University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library (http://www.library.illinois.edu/catalog/)
- Mirlyn / University of Michigan (http://mirlyn.lib.umich.edu)
- National Library of New Zealand Catalogue (http://nlnzcat.natlib.govt.nz)
- NCSU Libraries (http://catalog.lib.ncsu.edu)
- Saint Louis University Libraries (http://libcat.slu.edu)Posted 2 years ago Permalink
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