Hi,

I've been using the EAD to encode finding aids to art collections in our
museum (which are online at
http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/search/collectionguides.html) and I'd like
to offer some feedback on changes to the DTD I think might be useful. I
know the EAD comes out of the library/archive worlds, but it is already SO
enormously useful and much-needed in the museum community that I think some
minor considerations which could benefit all, could also make the EAD even
more precise and useful for museums.

Some feedback has already been given on the need for more detail in the
PHYSDESC/PHYSFACET tags, which is where I also feel a little tweaking is
needed for collections which need to provide more precise information on
the physical aspects, since these are primary access points for us.

Below I've included some tagging along the lines I've been using for
describing typical museum/art objects. This tagging is currently legal, but
is not perhaps what was envisioned with the PHYSDESC tag so far. In
addition to the AAT for controlled vocabular terms, we use the CDWA
(Catagories for the Descriptions of Works of Art) as the structural
organization for our museum records. The CDWA is not about syntax at all,
and is very flexible that way, allowing us to use it as a model for our
collections database, and (hopefully) in our related systems such as
finding aids to allow integration.

<C><DID>
<UNITTITLE>Yellow Table on Yellow Background</UNITTITLE>
<UNITDATE>1936</UNITDATE>
<PHYSDESC SOURCE="OTHERSOURCE" OTHERSOURCE="CDWA"
LABEL="measurement-dimensions">
<DIMENSIONS>41 x 50 inches</DIMENSIONS>
</PHYSDESC>
<PHYSDESC SOURCE="OTHERSOURCE" OTHERSOURCE="CDWA" LABEL="material-materialname">
<PHYSFACET>oil on canvas</PHYSFACET>
</PHYSDESC>
</DID>
<CONTROLACCESS>
<GENREFORM SOURCE="AAT" NORMAL="paintings">
</GENREFORM>
<PERSNAME SOURCE="ULAN" NORMAL="Hofmann, Hans" ROLE="artist">Hans
Hofmann</PERSNAME>
</CONTROLACCESS></C>

Basically, I found I needed more detail than the EAD currently allowed -
for instance we needed to indicate materials used in the creation of an
object specifically, where the EAD would put that under the broad tag of
PHYSDESC or PHYSFACET. We need to separate this element out from other
elements in the physical description of the object, such as processes used
in it's creation, or dimensions. So, to add granularity to the PHYSDESC I
used the available attributes of source to indicate where I was getting my
lables from, and label to indicate the actual term taken from the CDWA that
describes that facet of it's physical description. This level of info seems
like it would make more sense at the PHYSFACET level, but is not available
there yet. I used hyphens to indicate the level in the heirarchy of the
CDWA that the term occurs at since there are duplicate terms at different
levels.

Basically something like this allows the person marking up to use the
general EAD tags which are themselves useful, but also to add some
subject/domain-specific structure and detail to them, so art objects might
get extra CDWA-derived attributes added, medieval manuscripts could use
another organization, all in the same framework. If a "source" and "label"
attribute were added to the PHYSFACET element, it would not be overly
complex, EAD users could ignore them or use them. It would maintain the
interoperability of all EAD documents because it does not add an entire
specialized element, and yet it would allow more precise retrieval of
certain types of records, especially in environments of finding aids for
mixed types of collections. (I'm thinking of this one in particular as we
are contributing our finding aids the a larger "UC-EAD" project, which will
have a smattering of art objects/finding aids among many archival finding
aids). Although "label" used to be an attribute of the PHYSFACET element, I
feel that "source" would also be important for precision, since say
medievalists may use the same term as art catalogers ("name" or
"material"), but use it in very different ways.

So, although it might seem like unneeded complexity, I can think if
immediate practical benefits already. The CDWA comes from the Getty along
with the AAT and ULAN and could be added as an allowed source, or left open
for the user. I'd be curious to hear if current markup can already do what
I'm looking for another way, or if this would create confusion about what a
"controlled vocabulary" is or any other comments as I'm working with this
right now.

Thanks!




Richard Rinehart              | Berkeley Art Museum/Pacific Film Archive
Systems Manager & Education   | University of California
Technology Specialist         | 2625 Durant, Berkeley, CA 94720-2250
[log in to unmask] | http://www.bampfa.berkeley.edu/
& Board of Directors, Museum Computer Network, http://www.mcn.edu/