Cat Figurine Collection Prototype Thesaurus

Cat Figurine Collection Prototype Thesaurus

INFO622 Summer 2013 Drexel University

College of Information and Technology Carole J. Griffin

Table of Contents

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Introduction........................................................................................................3 Purpose.............................................................................................................3 Scope................................................................................................................4 Instructions for Use..............................................................................................5 Hierarchal Display...............................................................................................8 Alphabetical Display...........................................................................................13 References........................................................................................................42 Appendix.............................................................................................................43

Introduction

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The Art and Architecture Thesaurus defines figurines as "three-dimensional works that represent humans, animals, or mythical beasts at less than half life-size" (Getty, 2013). Figurines are common objects that a range of collectors amass. Users lie between the spectrum of serious art collectors, including museums, on one end, and hobbyists on the other. Collections can run the range of those of high artistic value created by serious and renowned artists to those of the "kitsch" variety. Indeed, many collectors tend to collect figurines of specific types of representations, such as dragons, children, and cats, as well as those from specific historical periods or cultures. Some collectors base their collection subject matter on topics of interest that go beyond the figurines. For example, collections of American Indian artifacts might be connected to Native American Studies academic programs; kitsch collections of dragon figurines might belong to avid fantasy fiction readers, and cat figurines might belong to owners of household cats. Collectors also tend to display their collections in diverse settings such as museums, curio cabinets, galleries, and websites depicted in photographs. As collections grow in size and/or the collector desires to make their collection accessible to other enthusiasts, they often pursue various methods of organizing the collection's informational content. This thesaurus is one means of doing so.

Purpose

Figurine collectors have many methods available with which to organize the information content of their collections. Often the type of method is dictated by the collection's subject or artistic quality, or the potential users of the organized data. This thesaurus describes the concepts that are represented within a personal collection of cat figurines of predominately medium-high artistic quality. This thesaurus is intended to assist searchers and similar collectors for the purpose of both discovering this collection and employing the thesaurus' terms to organize their own collections' content. It is also designed for extensibility, that is, to expand as the collection does.

A thesaurus establishes a set of terms that are allowable for the indexing of a collection of objects, whether they are textual documents, images, or objects. This set of terms, called a controlled vocabulary, aids the indexer so that the similar objects can be classified using the same or similar terms, thus creating indexing consistency. A controlled vocabulary also benefits those wishing to access a collection by displaying the terms with which they will retrieve relevant results. A controlled vocabulary essentially describes the language of a collection with topical headings and subheadings, descriptors ("preferred terms"), entry terms ("non-preferred terms"). While a cat figurine collection can be described by a wide array of headings and

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terms, those in this thesaurus were chosen in the hopes of appealing to both serious collectors of similar objects and to hobbyist.

Many standards exist for thesaurus construction that provide guidance with "formulating the descriptors, establishing relationships among terms, and displaying the information" (NISO, 2003). This thesaurus follows the 2003 revision of the ANSI NISO Z39.19 Guidelines for the Construction, Format and Management of Monolingual Thesauri. These guidelines inform the content and display herein including this section, the introduction, scope, instructions for use, and the hierarchal and alphabetical displays.

This thesaurus benefitted from the use of a thesaurus construction software program called MultiTes. MultiTes is one of many such programs available. Creating a large thesaurus with potentially thousands of terms can quickly become unwieldy due the number of reciprocal relationships between terms. In addition to automatically creating reciprocal relationships, the best software, including MultiTes, will delete associated relationships when a term is deleted, display and print both hierarchal and alphabetical lists of terms, and aid in thesaurus maintenance over time. Although this thesaurus contains only a few hundred terms, MultiTes proved a necessary and value tool. If this thesaurus is helpful at all, MultiTes deserves a significant portion of the credit.

Meant to be used in print format, this thesaurus also contains features only available in electronic format, such as embedded links to internal content and to URLs of external sources in the References section.

Scope

This thesaurus describes the concepts that are represented within a personal collection of 56 cat figurines of predominately medium-high artistic quality which has been amassed by a semi-serious hobbyist collector and enthusiast of cats. Many of the highest quality figurines in this collection originate from regions outside the United States by renowned artists and from specialized artistic communities. It is predominately these that informed this thesaurus. However, many of the collection's figurines can be considered on the kitsch side of the spectrum, which has been taken into account as well.

A representative sample of the figurines collection previously served as the content of a Digital Collection, many of which are those of the highest artistic quality mentioned above. The figurines and their photographs were displayed on a website whose URL is noted below. This information is included in order to visually

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contextualize this thesaurus as is the Appendix section below which contains surrogate records for five of the cat figurines.

Instructions for Use

In order to guide indexers and users in the use of this thesaurus, this section provides explanations of the NISO rules and conventions to which the thesaurus adheres, and the resources from which terms were selected and relationships established. This thesaurus contains two main sections, the hierarchal display and the alphabetical display, both of which are designed to show the terms' semantic relationships. Following the subsequent description of the two display types, another NISO convention--parenthetical qualifiers--and the sources referenced are described.

Hierarchies are derived from the "whole-part," "general-specific," and "parent-child" relationships between terms. The hierarchal display lists the major topic headings (in bold) in alphabetical order each followed by subordinate terms, which are indented with each successive layer. Terms sharing the same indentation indicate that they are related to each other as "siblings," each being "children" of the same "parent." An example from this thesaurus is as follows:

techniques constructing techniques firing glassworking techniques glassblowing lampworking

Hierarchies can also be subdivided by facets, attributes of the higher level terms, which describe how the subordinate terms have been classed. Because they're not descriptors and therefore not to be used for indexing, they are not considered part of the thesaurus other than as category labels. These labels are displayed within brackets thusly: . An example from this thesaurus follows:

themes

jewelry necklaces

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The major topic headings in this thesaurus describe the subordinate terms in the broadest sense. The photographs, created by the author, are included in the hierarchal display below to illustrate the concepts. The headings are not included in the alphabetical display but are listed and defined here:

Physical properties Characteristics of the figurines perceived through the senses or measurable. Includes major subheadings of coating and construction materials, size, surface texture, and the visual properties of color and light reflection. Styles Artistic styles associated with certain schools (i.e., movements) and the cultures and peoples of particular geographic regions. Schools and regions are displayed in this thesaurus as facets. Techniques Processes and methods performed on or with the physical materials used to create the figurines. The major subheadings describe the processes of construction and surface covering. Themes Underlying motif or idea that signifies the conceptual meaning of the figurine. In this thesaurus, these are subdivided by the facet categories of function, position, and secondary objects.

The alphabetical display presents a list of all the descriptors (shown in bold) and entry terms, and excludes the major topic headings and facets as discussed above. The number of terms listed totals 219, of which 121 are descriptors and 98 are entry terms. The list shows all the relationships of each term and includes a "scope note" defining the descriptors within the context of the collection. Descriptors are displayed with scope notes, super- and/or subordinates, and any applicable associative or synonymous relations. Entry terms are displayed only with a cross-reference to an appropriate descriptor. This information is presented in a "flat thesaurus structure" as suggested by NISO (2003), the framework of which follows:

SN: The scope note briefly defines the preferred term in order to assist indexers and users alike to understand the term in relation to the collection and to eliminate ambiguities.

UF: Used for signifies that it is the preferred term, the term that is to be applied in an index or search over any lexical variants, similar concepts, or synonyms.

USE: Use signifies that it is a non-preferred term and provides a cross-reference to its reciprocal descriptor.

NT: Narrower term signifies the subordinate terms in the hierarchy. BT: Broader term signifies the term to which a term is subordinate in the hierarchy. RT: Related term signifies an associative relationship between two descriptors.

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When two or more descriptors in a thesaurus share the same spelling but not meaning, known as homographs, parenthetical qualifiers are appended to each of the terms. An example of this convention follows:

bronze (color) bronze (metal)

Considering that the collection for which this thesaurus was constructed contains art objects, as discussed above, the terms selected for all preferred and non-preferred terms, as well as the topical headings and subheadings originate from the Getty Research Institute's Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). Many of the aforementioned scope notes were adapted from the AAT as well. The AAT is recognized by art libraries and museums around the world as an authoritative controlled vocabulary, which many employ in their catalogs and databases. Often other sources, listed in the References section below, were consulted in order to locate within the AAT the most specific and applicable terms desired.

Physical Properties

Hierarchal Display

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Painted granite with a matte finish

coating materials glaze lacquer paint stain

construction materials clay ceramic porcelain glass crystal metal bronze (metal) tin rock granite cloth wood hardwood softwood

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In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

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