Data Dictionary Northwest Railway Museum

Data Dictionary – Northwest Railway Museum

Crossing Organizational Boundaries

Final Version – October 8, 2003

Field Name / Dublin Core Mapping & Field Properties / Description
Title / Title: searchable, public field; required field / The title should strive to uniquely identify the image. It will show as text beneath the thumbnail image in a search retrieval display. Consequently generic titles such as “Photograph” or “Tree” will not be helpful for users who need to make selections from the thumbnails. Conciseness is also important, as a long title may not completely display below the thumbnail in the search display.
When possible, use the order who, what, where, when.
Always include a date when known, even for transcribed titles. Use the form “April 25, 1925” appended to the end of the title. If an exact year is not known, use the form “ca. 1925.”
Brackets or quotation marks should be avoided.
Photographer / Creator: searchable, public field; required field / Photographer and/or firm associated with the creation of the original image. If image scanned was a later copy, create a note in the Notes field to this effect. For example: “Original photo copied by Webster & Stevens.”
Use local Authority File created from the Library of Congress Authority File and name forms established at NWRM.
Invert personal names (Lastname, Firstname).
Examples
Smith, John
Jones Studio
Date / Date: Non-searchable, public field; required field / Date original photograph was taken.
Enter only a year; e.g., “1925.” If the date is unknown, assign an approximate date using ca.; e.g., “ca. 1925.”
Approximate dates should be used in combination with the Dates field to enable searching (see that field description for details).
Specific dates (for example, September 12, 1933) are to be noted in the Title and Notes fields (see those field descriptions for more details).
Dates / Date: searchable, hidden field; required field / Used in conjunction with the Date field. This field is the searchable, staff-only component of these two fields.
When the Date is a single year, enter the same year in Dates.
When the Date is approximate (for example, “ca. 1925”), Dates should list a range of dates five years on either side of the approximate date. The date range should be on a single line, with years separated from each other by a comma and a space; thus Date = “ca. 1925” means Dates = “1920, 1921, 1922, 1923, 1924, 1925, 1926, 1927, 1928, 1929, 1930.” If the image is known to be from a smaller range of years (e.g., between 1921 and 1924), only those years should be entered.
Caption / Description: searchable, public field / Description of the content of the image, providing background and specifics about the photo, comparable to what would appear on an exhibit label.All rMore than anything else will contain research into an image’s content. or other details will be included in this field.
Notes / Description: searchable, public field / Notes can include any information of importance that is not represented elsewhere. Technical information and other specifics about trains represented in the image will be detailed in this field. Each note should be written as a paragraph separated from contiguous Notes using a “double break” (<br<br>).
Types of Notes used are listed below. Record Notes in the order they appear in this list:

Note on content of image. This includes, for example, people depicted in the image, transcriptions of signs in the image, any history of objects or people in the image that isn’t covered in the Caption field, speculation about events or people depicted, points of interest, addresses of buildings depicted, etc. Examples:
Sign in image reads: ____.
Men in image, left to right: ___.
Recto information note (any data on front of image). Note that “caption” implies something printed at the time of photo creation, while “handwritten,” etc. imply something added later.
Caption on image: ___.
Handwritten on image: ___.
Caption on border/mount: ___.
Photographer’s reference number: ___.
Verso information note (any data on back of image):
Caption on verso: ___.
Handwritten on verso: ___.
Accompanying material note:
Handwritten on sleeve: ___.
Document filed with image: ___.”Reproduction Note – form not yet discussed.

Subjects / Subject: searchable, public field / Subject headings and corporate names representing the content of the images. Content terms are should be taken from a controlled vocabulary, usually the LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (LC TGM I). UCataloger may insteadshould use Local Authority File based on the LC Authority File for correct forms of corporate names.
Geographic subheadings should be applied to all content headings. Subject Headings or devise a new subject heading for submission to LC.
Use a single break (<br>) to separate subject terms.
Subjects need not be created for places listed in the Places field.
Examples [Note from tg: are these all valid TGM examples? I don’t think so…]
Railroad cabooses—Washington (State)—North Bend
Bridge construction—Washington (State)—Issaquah
Places / Coverage: searchable, public field; required field / Name of the political and physical/spatial settings of the content of the resource, as well as any geographic features (lakes, mountains, rivers, etc.) seen in the image.
Use Local Authority File for correct forms of place names. This should be based first on the LC Authority File and second on the Washington Localities database of the Tacoma Public Library (
For renamed places, enter the new place name in this field. (The title should contain the name used when the photo was taken. For example, an early photo of Tolt would have “Tolt” in the title but “Carnation” in the Places field.) Place names that are considered significant but not found in the LC Name Authority file are candidates for NACO or SACO proposals. These proposals should be made in collaboration with the UW Libraries’ Metadata Implementation Group.
Form of entry for cities and states: [Country—State or Province—City].
Format
United States—Washington (State)—Snoqualmie
Washington, Lake (Wash.)
Digital Collection / None: searchable, public field / Will name the database containing the digital objects. All records will read, “Northwest Railway Museum Image Collection.”designate the record as being part of MOHAI’s database.
Accession Number / NoneIdentifier: searchable, public field; required field / The AccessionNnumber is the unique identifier NWRM uses to identify the image.
Examples [Note from TG: how about an example that begins with PI, or something similarly exceptional]
P71
93.04.05
Ordering Information / None: not searchable, public field / Instructions for ordering and information about permissions to use the image. All records will read, “To inquire about reproductions or permissions, please contact the Northwest Railway Museum at or write to PO Box 459, Snoqualmie, WA 98065.”
Repository / Source: non-searchable, public field; required field / The institution where the item is physically located. All records will read, “Northwest Railway Museum.”
Repository Collection / Source: searchable, public field; required field / This field contains the collection name (when applicable).
Examples
Seattle Post-Intelligencer Collection
PEMCO Webster & Stevens Collection
Object Type / Type: searchable, hidden field; required field / Enables cross-searching with UW collections. This field will always contain the term UW would use to describe the object: for example, “photograph” or “negative.”
Physical Description / Type: searchable, public field; required field / Describes the physical manifestation of the scanned object. Objects will be measured in centimeters.
Examples
1 photographic print mounted on cardboard: gelatin, b&w; 20 x 25 cm.; scratched.
1 negative: safety film, b&w; 10 x 13 cm.
Type / Type: searchable, public field; required field / Enables cross-database searching to be limited to images, text, etc. This field will always read “Image.”
Digital Reproduction Information / Format: non-searchable, public field / Describes the digital conversion process and the scanned resource along with information about the original resource.
Example
Scanned as a 3000 pixel TIFF image in 24-bit RGB color [or 8-bit grayscale], resized to 640 [or 600] pixels in the longest dimension and compressed into JPEG format using Photoshop 6.0 and its JPEG quality measurement 3.The second part of the field will describe Other information can be appended to the description. ______
Administrative Notes / None: searchable, hidden field / Staff notes can be entered here.
CD Number / None: non-searchable, hidden field / Lists the CD on which the TIFF file is located.
Image File Name / None: searchable, hidden field / File name with “.tif” extension of the image that was imported into CONTENTdm

Band beneath image:

Image from the Northwest Railway Museum Collection Property of Museum of History and Industry, [Seattle], [Image Number] ___ [no period]

words in brackets will be included if there is room

Color [of band]: &hFFFFFF [white] [i.e., FFFFFF]

Height of band in pixels: 30

Font: Verdana

Font style: Regular

Size: 8 [point]

Effects: [none]

Color: Black [check sample]

Script: Western

Resize font if the message is too large to fit on band: [yes, check this box]

26 questions concerning the MOHAI data dictionary:

Is the order of the data fields accurate?

Photographer field: do we want to invert names?

We have listed “Photographer” as a required field. This means we will enter “Unknown” when we do not know a firm or photographer name. Is this what we want?

Did we discuss date-recording procedure? We are currently going to record the date of the original photograph, with a note for any copies.

Do we want to have a caption credit note? In Notes field? In caption field?

Will the Subjects field include obsolete place names, or should these go in the Places field?

I forget what we decided: subject field will or will not duplicate Places (and Names) information?

Subjects field: form and genre terms okay?

Will the Personal Names field include people associated with the image in addition to those depicted?

If “Personal Names” is only people depicted, can we rename the field to something more transparent, like “People Depicted?”

Should we invert names in Personal Names?

Places field: are we going to depend ultimately on a Local Authority File (as the data dictionary recommends)? We are going to use the LC AF first, then Tacoma Public Library, right? If the place is not found in either Authority File, we aren’t going to create a subject heading in Subjects, are we (the data dictionary does not require this at present)? Two questions asked above are pertinent here too: (1) what do we do with obsolete place names; (2) are we going to enter a Places term and a subject term? Please note we will be diverging from UW practice in several ways if we leave the data dictionary as is.

Note: it is UW practice to precede all strings with “United States” and “Canada,” even though this is not required by AACR2R.

What will be the content of the Digital Collection field (including: what is the name of the digital?

What should be the content of the Ordering Information field?

Is the wording in Repository correct?

What specific information will be appropriate to Physical Description while other similar information about the original resource will be put in Digital Reproduction Information?

Where can we see the MOHAI authority list for object types? If a term is not on the list, what should we do? Should we make any effort to use TGM II (or should we restrict the use of those terms to the Subjects field)? If we use TGM II terms in the Subjects field, where should we draw-the-line (considering all form terms should be found in either Physical Description or Digital Reproduction Information)?

Do we want to include size in Physical Description? Do we want to include condition? Anything else? (In the other image database, MOHAI followed AACR2R rules – at least for puntuation -- and treated the field like a MARC 300 field, it appears – should we do that again?)

Should Digital Reproduction Information contain duplicated information? Maybe the same information in a different form?

Does the Digital Reproduction Information contain an acceptable description of the scanning process? Should we establish any other specific instructions for this field?

Where can we find information for Acquisition and for Required Credit Line?

We would like an example for Required Credit Line.

Can we get the location codes for the various collections?

The Administrative Notes may present a possible problem as a searchable/hidden field. We don’t want records to be retrieved based on terms found in this field. We may like to tag it with xyz to easily retrieve any records that contain any values before the site goes-live. Once the site goes live, we should probably make this field non-searchable. The field can easily be converted back to a searchable field temporarily by an Administration Station user.

We do want a white band, black type, verdana font, with 30 pixels for the band itself and 8 pixels for the font? This is exactly the same as UW bands.