subject control in visual collections

SUBJECT CONTROL IN VISUAL COLLECTIONSAuthor(s): Toni PetersenSource: Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of North America, Vol. 7,No. 4 (Winter 1988), pp. 131-135Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmericaStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947951 .

Accessed: 14/06/2014 14:02

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Chicago Press and Art Libraries Society of North America are collaborating with JSTOR todigitize, preserve and extend access to Art Documentation: Journal of the Art Libraries Society of NorthAmerica.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 195.34.79.208 on Sat, 14 Jun 2014 14:02:55 PMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ucpress

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=arlisna

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=arlisna

http://www.jstor.org/stable/27947951?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


Art Documentation, Winter 1988 131

SUBJECT CONTROL IN VISUAL COLLECTIONS by Toni Petersen

Director Art and Architecture Thesaurus

Abstract Subject access to visual collections is a relatively new con

cept, and has been made possible through the automation of visual material catalogs. This paper will discuss the issues in the control of subject information in automated visual collec tions, especially the types of subjects covered by the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT). It draws upon the experience that resulted from an experimental workshop on database de sign for visual collections held at the ARLISINA Conference in Washington in 1987.

Background There is a radical contrast between the way visual resource

collections are (or increasingly, were) maintained manually and the changes that have come about with automation. In the past the curator/custodian arranged slides in drawers ac cording to the dictates of local art historian users, or accord ing to some of the well-known, published slide classification schemes. Access to the slides was through the classification system, and through the mind of the curator, who could take on the aura of scholar. When Professor X would dash in with a request for slides demonstrating Moorish influences in do mestic architecture in Spain and California or of tension-span bridges built of concrete, the slide curator had only one op tion beyond the very broad subject categories of the classi fication scheme. That was to dig deeply into his or her brain, pulling out information planted there through the experience of looking at and remembering multitudes of images.

There is a flaw in this method. Slide curators come and go, and sometimes must be absent. New slide curators need time to learn the contents and whereabouts of tens of thou sands of images. And even the most experienced person with the best of memories cannot remember everything there is to know about each slide. We have all been made aware of the new age of the com

puterized slide management system, with its promise of vastly improved access to image collections. What is not clear until the decision to automate and purchase a computer sys tem is made is how much effort goes into translating the information in someone's head and in the many images

within the collection for the literal eye of the computer. There are difficult issues facing each visual collection that

wishes to automate: those of setting on a specific computer system; a format to hold cataloging records; a subject ac cess system for names, iconographie and other subjects; lo cal issues of authority control, to name the major issues. The movement toward automation is relentless, however, and once the break is made to change well-tried patterns of be havior, the benefits of maintaining our collections in a more rational manner becomes paramount. The overriding hope is that once these issues are resolved, however, a much im proved visual resource collection management system will result. This paper focuses on only one piece of the many that

have to be considered and put together to construct a good automated catalog the subject fields: those places to hold information about the subject of an image. And even at that, the main focus will be on a piece ofthat piece the use of the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), which does not pro vide iconographie subjects or proper names.

At the 1987 ARLIS/NA conference in Washington, D.C., Pat Barnett of the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of

Art, Amy Lucker, then with the AVIADOR project at the Avery Library, and I led a workshop on database design for image collections. We tried, in a preliminary and experimental way, to address most of the issues related to choosing a system, designing a format, and finding controlled vocabularies for subject access. By far the most difficult part of the process was not identifying the necessary fields to represent the various aspects of the data to be held, but deciding on the content of those fields. Even when authority files were avail able, most were incomplete, and we had to consider how they might be augmented. We also had to answer the impor tant questions of how to incorporate the subjects we found and to what depth to index the image in hand. These issues are difficult and are relatively new challenges for the visual resources curator. This paper will first describe the AAT, which was chosen as

the subject vocabulary used in the 1987 workshop, and then will discuss the format developed for the workshop, espe cially those portions covering the subject fields and some of the authorities that might be consulted for each field.

The Art and Architecture Thesaurus The AAT is a thesaurus of topical subjects in the field of art

and architecture. Topical as defined by Webster's Third New International Dictionary means "of, relating to, or arranged by topics."1 We may therefore presume the AAT provides one

with the topics to be used in the description of the image to be cataloged. Topical subjects are only one of the kinds of subjects used to describe an item. Other types of subjects cover the iconographical content of an image, like Madonna and Child, or dogs, or clouds. Still others are related to per sonal names of real or fictional people, like the artist who made the work, or the sitter of a portrait, or geography the location where the work was made or is located. The AAT is currently a compilation of more than 35,000

terms, gathered, researched, and arranged conceptually into 36 sections, or hierarchies. These terms deal with the object names and concepts useful to the description of art objects (Figure 1). The AAT is about half finished, and when complete

may contain about 100,000 terms. In order to provide an au thoritative list that will gain acceptance in the field, we draw the terms forming the base of the AAT from existing, well known subject lists in use now, like Library of Congress Subject Headings, RILA, and the Avery Index to Architectural Periodicals. These are augmented by additional terms from reference sources and up-to-date scholarly monographs, and they are validated by advisory and review teams of scholars.

The 36 hierarchies cover terminology in the following three areas:

1) The Built Environment: built works and the human elab oration of the natural environment.

2) Furnishings and Equipment: artifacts with a primarily util itarian purpose, often embellished. 3) Visual and Verbal Communication: objects of primarily

nonutilitarian form created according to aesthetic, concep tual or symbolic principles.

The hierarchies are structured into seven broad categories, called facets, which represent categories of knowledge, and should be mutually exclusive types of information. In the AAT the seven facets are: Associated Concepts; Design Attributes and Motifs; Styles and Periods; Agents; Activities; Materials;



132 Art Documentation, Winter 1988

FIGURE 1 ART AND ARCHITECTURE THESAURUS FACETS

AND HIERARCHIES

1. ASSOCIATED CONCEPTS *CP Associated Concepts

2. PHYSICAL ATTRIBUTES *DE Design Elements and Attributes

3. STYLES AND PERIODS *SP Styles and Periods

4. AGENTS *PO People and Organizations

5. ACTIVITIES *DO Disciplines *PR Processes and Techniques *FT Functions *EV Events

6. MATERIALS *MT Materials

7. OBJECTS BUILT ENVIRONMENT

*BC Built Works Components *BW Single Built Works and Open Spaces *CS Built Complexes and Areas *SL Settlements, Systems, and Landscapes FURNISHINGS AND EQUIPMENT FR Furnishings CT Containers CU Culinary Artifacts PA Personal Artifacts MD Measuring Devices *TE Tools and Equipment Ml Musical Instruments RA Recreational Artifacts AM Armament TA Transportation Artifacts CA Communication Artifacts *HD Hardware and Joints VISUAL AND VERBAL COMMUNICATION *DW Drawings PN Paintings SC Sculpture PT Prints PF Photographs BA Book Arts CM Communications Design MM Multimedia Arts Forms *VG Visual Genre EM Exchange Media

*DT Document Types ^Indicates completed hierarchies

and Objects. A style (Renaissance) is a different category from a material (Bronze), or a process (Casting), for example. The facets are meant to work in combination with AAT terms to make more complex subject headings (e.g., Renaissance bronze casting) or with non-AAT subject facets, such as icon ography, geography, personal names, or building names.

The AAT differs in a number of important ways from Li brary of Congress Subject Headings2, the major, authorized subject list in wide use, especially in library catalogs and by those wishing to use the Library of Congress-based MARC format:

1) The AAT is hierarchically arranged according to a rigor ously constructed, internally consistent structure, which al lows a cataloger to see the term graphically displayed in a conceptual array, with terms that are broader, and others that are narrower or more specific in meaning. This means that one can better decide the exact term needed and also get a better sense of the meaning of terms when they are seen displayed in their "family" settings (Figure 2). LCSH terms are available only in an alphabetical array.

FIGURE 2 SAMPLE HIERARCHY SECTION

Drawings <drawings by function>

As-built drawings Competition drawings Contract drawings

Change order drawings Clarification drawings

Design drawings Conceptual drawings Design development drawings Schematic drawings

Measured drawings Pattern drawings Preliminary drawings

Underdrawings Sinopie

Preparatory drawings Presentation drawings Presentation drawings (Gifts) Record drawings Theoretical drawings Topographical drawings Working drawings

Assembly drawings Minor assembly drawings Subassembly drawings

Cartoons (Working drawings) Auxiliary cartoons

Construction drawings Shop drawings

Erection drawings <drawings by technique>

Blot drawings Computer drawings

Plots (Computer drawings) Doodles Freehand drawings Gesture drawings Line drawings

Contour drawings Blind contour drawings Cross-contour drawings

Outline drawings Mechanical drawings Renderings Three-tone drawings Thumbnail sketches Tone drawings Tracings

2) AAT terms are chosen from available sources to make a conceptual whole within their hierarchical arrays. This does not mean that there are not general terms in the AAT. "Houses" is available for use, as are numerous narrower

terms related to it, such as "Country houses" and "Bun galows." LCSH terms are often general, because they are used to describe the subject of whole books, rather than a specfic object in an image. They are also generated only when a need for the term arises, so many terms available in the AAT will not be found in LCSH.

3) Rather than expressing single concepts, LCSH terms are often "precoordinated": that is, they are complex concepts put together at the time the heading is generated, and remain in the authority list in that specific combination. For example, "Wooden doors" is an LCSH heading, as is "Renaissance painting." If the AAT maintained this type of precoordinated vocabulary, all possible combinations of materials plus objects and styles plus techniques would have to be con structed in order to allow for the needs of catalogers describ ing images or curators cataloging museum objects. In the

AAT, because of its faceted structure, "Wood" is found in the Materials hierarchy, "Doors" in the Built Works Components




hierarchy, "Renaissance" in the Styles and Periods hierarchy and "Painting" in the Disciplines hierarchy. Catalogers are free to use them separately, or to combine them into their own precoordinated headings.

4) The AAT is an open system, that is, susceptible to expan sion. Suggestions for new terms are welcomed from any user. Candidate terms coming from users do have to go through a rigorous editorial process, just like terms gener ated by AAT staff, but once accepted, they are available immediately in the online system. Printed updates are also distributed to users on a regular basis. LCSH is open also, in that new terms are constantly being added, but up to now they have been added only by LC staff when a new subject heading is needed for a book being cataloged. That situation may be changing. Recently a group of librarians submitted some suggested new subject headings to LC on an experi mental basis. The experiment was a success and LC is con sidering allowing further suggestions from outside to be made in the future.

5) Most importantly for the constituency represented by ARLIS, the AAT is especially designed for the fields of art and architecture and hopes to provide a comprehensive vocabul ary for cataloging and retrieval of bibliographic, image, and museum object data.

The Experiment To return to the hypothetical format designed for the work

shop, we, as librarians, wished to develop a structure that would be consistent with library cataloging procedures and that would take advantage of existing guidelines. We first examined a number of formats in use in slide collections. We then examined the (then) new MARC Visual Materials Format and chose a set of fields that mapped into the MARC format but were not expressed in the MARC way; that is, there are none of the MARC field tags and subfield codes. (See Figure 3 for a chart of the database design workshop format and the corresponding MARC fields.) This was intended to make it easier for the slide curator or cataloger. Actually, we found some difficulty with this sytem when we input some practice records for the workshop. Without proper field and subfield codes and guidelines, we wondered about things like how to put in a first name versus a last name. What about prefixes like "von" and "de"? What about single-name artists, like ancient Greeks? What about dates of birth and death? How would we formulate geographic place names? Should we always include state and country with city names? What about places that have changed names or political alle giances over time? All these issues are clearly spelled out in book cataloging in the MARC format, but they must be sim ilarly dealt with in a developing visual resource system, or the danger exists that information will be entered incon

sistently and create problems on retrieval. Unless a library cataloging code like AACR2 is used, it would be necessary to construct data dictionaries or inhouse cataloging manuals to cover all of the data inputting issues that arise.

In the format that we designed, more than half of the fields (16 of 29) required controlled vocabularies. We identified the following kinds of vocabularies needed:

1) personal names 2) corporate names 3) geographic names 4) topical subjects 5) iconographie subjects Personal names include artists, architects, sitters of por

traits, patrons, and collectors. Corporate names include archi tectural firms, galleries, museums, other institutions, struc ture and building names. Geographic names cover places and features, such as rivers and mountains, all over the world, throughout history. Iconographie subjects can run the gamut from Biblical scenes to depictions of the homeless on the streets of New York. As noted above, for topical subjects, including object names, media, processes and techniques, styles and periods, and the like, we decided to use the AAT.

FIGURE 3 FIELD NAMES AND SPECIFICATIONS FOR NON-BOOK

DATABASE WORKSHOP Field Name Field Description Average Length RECORD NUMBER Unique identification 6

number assigned to each record

DIMENSIONS Dimension of item in 10 hand, e.g., slide, drawing This field has two values, 10 color or b/w.

Identifies cataloger. Use 4 cataloger's initials

Call number or accession 10 number

COLOR

CATALOGER

CLASSIFICATION NO.

PRIMARY ARCHITECT/ARTIST

ASSOC. ARCHITECT/ARTIST

PRIMARY FIRM

ASSOCIATED FIRM

TITLE OF WORK DATE OF EXECUTION

VIEW

PART OR DETAIL

IMPRINT

EXTENT OF WORK DEPICTED

NOTES

PROVENANCE

PERSON(S) DEPICTED

STRUCTURE DEPICTED

ABSTRACT CONCEPTS

Indicates the primary 30 architect or artist involved in the work depicted. (Personal name, e.g., Johnson, Philip). Values entered/controlled by Personal Name Authority List

Indicates other architects 30 or artists involved in the work depicted (Personal Name, e.g., Sterling, James). Values entered/ controlled by Personal Name Authority List

Indicates name of firm or 70 partnership associated with the work depicted (Corporate Name, e.g.,

McKim, Mead & White) Values entered/controlled by Corporate Name Authority List

Indicates other firms or 70 partnerships associated with the work depicted (Corporate Name, e.g., Cohn Pederson). Values entered/controlled by Corporate Name Authority List

Title of work depicted 100

Indicates date work was 10 completed Describes the point of 30 view of work depicted (e.g., Front elevation). Use to distinguish slides of similar subjects from one another.

Indicates description of 35 parts or details of work depicted (e.g., Capitals). Indicates imprint of item 60 in hand, i.e., place, publisher, date.

Dimensions of work 50 depicted Miscellaneous 250 information

Information note giving 100 ownership history of work depicted.

Subject data pertaining to 50 person(s) depicted in work (Personal Name). Values entered/controlled by Personal Name Authority List

Name of building, 75 structure, or institution depicted (e.g., Seagram Building). Values entered/ controlled by Corporate Name Authority List

Indicates abstract 35 concepts relating to history, theory, and criticism (e.g., Rationalism). Values entered/controlled by AAT List

Marc Tag 001

007$h

007$d

040

059

100

700

110

710

245

245$f

245$g

245$p

260

300

500

561

600

610

650



134 Art Documentation, Winter 1988

Field Name Field Description Average Length Marc Tag

DESIGN ELEMENTS Includes terms for design elements, such as motifs, patterns, and other attributes (e.g., Harp motif, Round). Values entered/ controlled by AAT List

STYLES AND PERIODS

AGENTS

PROCESSES

MATERIALS

ARCHITECTURE

GEOGRAPHIC NAME

PHYSICAL FORM

ICONOGRAPHIC SUBJECT

Terms for chronological and cultural descriptions are entered here (e.g., Gothic). Values entered/ controlled by AAT List

Terms for occupational titles and organizations including groups, industries, etc. (e.g., Carpenters). Values entered/controlled by AAT List

Terms for operations in architectural construction, and other art fields (e.g., Bricklaying). Values entered/controlled by AAT List

Materials and material products relative to structures or works of art (e.g., Stone). Values entered/controlled by AAT List

Terms for object names including built works, architectural components, complexes, and open spaces (e.g., Columns, Parks). Values entered/ controlled by AAT List

Indicates place associated with the work depicted. Values entered/ controlled by Geographic Name List

Optional field indicating specific form of the work being described (e.g., Architectural drawing). Values entered/controlled by AAT List

Describes iconographie elements in work depicted (e.g., St. Mark).

35

100

40

35

35

35

40

35

50

650

650

650

650

650

650

651

655

653

Those who have tried to establish authoritative headings will acknowledge what a difficult task it is to create authority records and to maintain authority files over time. This is a new burden for most visual resources curators, but is one that the library field has assumed for decades now. We there fore decided to see what was already available in the Library of Congress Name Authority File, which is online in OCLC, RLIN, and other major bibliographic networks. This list con tains personal, corporate, and geographic names in one list, and it is constantly growing as new records are added to the database. However, is is a general list, not one developed specifically for art or architecture.

As an experiment, we chose 50 slides to catalog, provided by slide curators from five different collections. These were all of architectural subjects because this is the section of the AAT that is the most complete at present. We then searched the LC Name Authority File for all the different kinds of names needed, and found about 30%, which, considering the general nature of the list, is encouraging. But what of the other 70%? A field cannot be left blank just because one does not find the name needed in the authority file being consulted.

The problem of building authority files for art cataloging is a serious one, and one that will not be solved quickly. For tunately, several groups within the fields of art history and art librarianship are working on it. For instance, there is a taskforce within the Visual Resources Special Interest Group of ARLIS/NA that is looking for available authority files and is

considering whether to build needed ones. As valuable as this activity is, it is not likely to produce the actual lists needed in the foreseeable future. At best, it might point out additional sources, such as the RILA and Oberlin name au thority files, that might be used to fill in pieces here and there.3 Among other organizations working on these issues is the National Geographic Society which is building a geo graphic name authority. The Art History Information Program of the Getty Trust (AHIP) is working toward a union name list of artists, based on names provided by RILA and several other art databases within AHIP. Iconography is another problem area, but again, a few pieces exist now, like the Library of Congress Thesaurus of Genre Terms, the Index of Christian Art, and ICONCLASS.4 On the International level, a committee of the International Committee of the History of Art (CIHA) called TAU (Thesaurus Artis Universalis) has been charged with investigating all of these issues of authority control in art automation.5

The remainder of this paper will discuss how the AAT was used in the workshop format. The method we chose was to provide separate fields for each facet, or category of informa tion, in the AAT. The seven fields and the types of terms that they include were:

1) ABSTRACT CONCEPTS (Abstract concepts relating to history, theory, and criticism)

2) DESIGN ELEMENTS (Design elements such as motifs, patterns, and other attributes, like colors)

3) STYLES AND PERIODS (Style, chronological, and cultural designations)

4) AGENTS (Occupational titles and organizations, includ ing groups and industries)

5) PROCESSES (Operations and processes in architectural construction and in the production of works of art)

6) MATERIALS (Materials and material products relevant to structures or works of art)

7) ARCHITECTURE (Object names including built works, architectural components, complexes, and open spaces)

There was also an optional field called PHYSICAL FORM which was used to indicate the specific form of the work being described, e.g., "Architectural drawings." These terms would also be taken from the AAT.

Providing this much detail regarding the subject in a slide, a photograph, or a drawing goes far beyond what tradi tionally has been given in the catalogs of such collections and in a sense takes the place of the information stored in the brains of curators and professors using these collections. The disadvantage of doing so is the extra time required to catalog visual resource materials to this detail. However, by far the greatest expenditure of time is that needed to establish au thority records: names and subjects, individually. Here is

where the greatest benefit is to be gained by the sharing of these resources. With already established thesauri and au thority files available to curators, one still has to take the time to choose the subjects to include for each item, but this is nothing compared to the time and effort that is required to establish a name or subject in the first place. What I have described is the kind of visual resources catalog

that might exist on a personal computer or small in-house computer system. Those interested in using library-like data bases, or whose institutions may be thinking of integrating visual resource catalogs and other collection catalogs with the library catalog, in other words, those considering the es tablished networks like OCLC and RLIN, would of course use the MARC Format, especially the MARC Visual Materials Format.

Findings There is a disadvantage to the way AAT terms are now

being used in visual resource cataloging. Often single AAT terms are chosen and put into one subject field, resulting in

what becomes essentially a collection of keywords. An exam




pie from a slide depicting the second court of the Ramesseum in Thebes, taken from the Rensselaer Poly technic Institute Slide Library, follows:

New Kingdom; Egyptian; Nineteenth dynasty; Mortuary temples; Stone; Courtyards; Papyrus columns; Lotus motif; Mortuary temples; Sanctuaries; Peristyles; Archae ological sites Or another from the same collection, of a slide of the

Aachen Technical University Medical Faculty: Megastructures; Medical centers; Health care buildings; Medical laboratories; Hospitals; Research facilities; Ser vice cores; Towers; Shafts; Air shafts; Rail fences; Rail ings; Canopies; Courtyards; Entrance halls; Mezzanines;

Galleries; Pavilions; Roof gardens; Roof terraces; Steel; Trusses; Reinforced concrete; Precast concrete; Columns; Space frames.

While it is certainly possible to input subjects like this, and some successful retrieval can ensue, a case may be made for constructing subject strings that are more like LC headings in that they string together single terms into more complex concepts. One compelling reason, besides compatibility with existing subject headings like LCSH, is to avoid the frustration caused by giving false information. In the second example above, for instance, the terms "Steel" and "Reinforced con crete" both appear, but there is no way of knowing which elements in the architectural complex depicted in the slide are made of these materials. A Boolean search for Steel +

Railings, to find all examples of Steel railings, would bring up this slide, but it might not be the railings that were made of steel, but the Pavilion, or any of the other elements listed. It is a chance you take when using this kind of system.

LCSH avoids this problem of "false drops" by always com bining such descriptions in one heading, like "Steel railings." The AAT is designed to provide separate categories of infor mation in pieces, or facets, to be combined only when de sired by a particular cataloger. This makes the AAT both easier and harder to use: easier, because if one wants to use separate terms, they are readily available, in great profusion; harder, because if one needs to combine terms into subject strings, one must develop policies for doing so. The AAT has been working on suggested rules for making such strings for some time now and will be including them in the printed version of the thesaurus, which is planned for publication early in 1989.

A taskforce of art librarians within the Research Libraries Group is also working on application rules with the AAT and has submitted a proposal to the American Library Associa

tior s MARBI committee, which is the committee that over sees changes to the MARC format. The taskforce proposal expands the structure of the subject fields in the MARC for mat, adding subfield codes that make it possible to construct subject heading strings according to AAT facets. The pro posal was passed at the July 1988 meeting of the MARBI Committee, and this new subject field will now become part of the MARC format. [Note: a workshop to demonstrate the use of the AAT in the new MARC field is scheduled for the ARLIS/NA conference in Phoenix in spring of 1989.]

Automation has turned all our worlds inside out and has forced visual resource collection managers to examine closely their cataloging procedures. Book catalogers, faced with automation in the late 1960s, and a brand new catalog ing code in 1981, have emerged from their period of turmoil

with a fair amount of stability and a sense of the benefits that have accrued from sharing their cataloging resources to cut costs. For visual resource curators, who mainly deal with the cataloging of unique items rather than books which are pub lished in multiple copies, the benefits of shared resources

may be felt most in the use of shared authority files. These files may require adaptation to the differing needs, of the indi vidual visual resource catalog but may still provide valuable assistance. Visual resource curators have hitherto worked in lonely outposts. Perhaps it is time to venture out and form alliances to help with the work ahead.

Note: This paper was originally presented at the Art Libraries Society of North America Annual Conference, Da/las, February 1988.

NOTES Webster's Third New Intemationdl Dictionary of the English Language (Spring field, MA: G. & C. Merrian, c1961). 2Library of Congress, Subject Cataloging Division, Library of Congress Subject

Headings. 10th Edition (Washington, D.C: Library of Congress, 1986). 3Lizette Bonnifield and Alan Boyd, Oberlin AACR2 Art Names With LC Classifica tion (Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College Library, 1986; RILA [International Repertory of the Literature of Art]', [Williamstown, Mass.]: Getty Art History Information Program, 1975- ). Elisabeth Betz Parker, LC Thesaurus for Graphic Materials: Topical Terms for Subject Access (Washington, D.C: Library of Congress, 1987); H. Van De Waal, Icon class: An Iconographie Classification System, 17 vols., edited by L. D. Couprie with R. H. Fuchs, and E. Tholen (Amsterdam: North-Holland Pub lishing, 1980); Index of Christian Art, Princeton University. 5Deirdre C Stam, "Factors Affecting Authority Work in Art Historical Informa tion Systems: A Report of Findings from a Study Undertaken for the Comit International d'Histoire de lArt (CIHA), Project: Thesaurus Artis Universalis (TAU), Visual Resources 4, no. 1 (Spring 1987): 25-49.



subject control in visual collections

Documents