Over the last decade, many organizations and agencies have been working toward the development of data standards for creating descriptions of and retrieving information about cultural objects. Data standards not only promote the consistent recording of information; they are fundamental to the efficient retrieval of information on line. They promote data sharing, improve the management of content, and reduce redundancy of effort. In time, the accumulation of consistently documented records across multiple repositories will increase access to content by maximizing research results. Ultimately, uniform documentation will promote the creation of a body of cultural heritage information that will greatly enhance research and teaching in the arts and humanities.
Standards that guide data structure, data values, and data content form the basis for a set of tools that can lead to good descriptive cataloguing, consistent documentation, shared records, and increased end-user access. In the art and cultural heritage communities, the most fully developed type of data standards are those that enumerate a set of categories or data elements that can be used to create a structure for a fielded format in a database; these data structure standards are also known as metadata element sets. Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) and the VRA Core Categories, Version 3.0 (VRA Core) are examples of data structures or metadata element sets. Although a data structure is the logical first step in the development of standards, a structure alone will achieve neither a high rate of descriptive consistency on the part of cataloguers, nor a high rate of retrieval on the part of end-users.
The choice of terms or words (data values) and the selection, organization, and formatting of those words (data content) are two other types of standards that must be used in conjunction with an agreed-upon data structure. Of these two types of standards, far more work has been done in developing standards for data values, typically in the form of thesauri and controlled vocabularies such as the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, Art & Architecture Thesaurus, Union List of Artist Names, and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. Along with the Library of Congress Name and Subject Authorities, the Getty vocabularies and other online thesauri bring us to the second step on the road to documentation standards and the potential for shared cataloguing.
Cataloguing Cultural Objects (CCO) takes us to the third
step by providing standards for data content. Until
now, there has been little published documentation on
data content standards applicable to cultural objectsóstandards
that guide the choice of terms and define the order,
syntax, and form in which data values should be entered
into a data structure. Unlike the library and archival
communities, which have well-established rules for data
content in the form of the Anglo-American Cataloguing
Rules (AACR), the cultural heritage community in the
United States has never had published guidelines similar
to AACR that meet the unique and often idiosyncratic
descriptive requirements of one-of-a-kind cultural objects.
Cataloguing Cultural Objects has been developed to fill
this gap. Building upon existing standards, Cataloguing
Cultural Objects provides guidelines for selecting,
ordering, and formatting data used to populate elements
in a catalogue record; this manual is designed to promote
good descriptive cataloguing, shared documentation,
and enhanced end-user access. Whether used locally as
an aid in developing training manuals or in-house cataloguing
rules, or more broadly in a shared environment as a
guide to building consistent cultural heritage documentation,
it is hoped that this tool will advance the increasing
move toward shared cataloguing and contribute to improved
documentation and access to cultural heritage information.
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