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CCO

Cataloging Cultural Objects (CCO) is a data content standards initiative for the cultural heritage community. Cataloging visual works whether they are cultural objects or their visual surrogates has long been challenging for the administratively diverse communities that are engaged in describing them. In contrast to the traditional bibliographic arena that has long benefited from the implementation and use of agreed upon community standards for both data content and values, museum documentation specialists and curators, visual resources professionals, archivists, librarians, and others who document cultural objects and their corresponding images yearned for a rulebook to guide the implementation of existing as well as emerging data value standards. Cataloging Cultural Objects provides that much needed structure.

CCO web resources include cataloging examples, training tools and presentations for use by practitioners, excerpts from the CCO print publication, etc. Sponsored by the Visual Resources Association (VRA), CCO activities center on educational efforts to promote widespread acceptance of cataloging best practices for the community. Building upon existing standards, CCO provides guidelines for selecting, ordering, and formatting data used to populate elements in a catalogue record. CCO 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.

Summary

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.

Usage

CCO is designed for use by professionals in museum collections, visual resource collections, archives, and libraries that have a primary emphasis on art, architecture, and material culture.

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.

Design

CCO is organized in three parts. Part One examines the issues that must be considered during the analytical process of describing one-of-a-kind objects, including guidance for minimal records, relationships between work and image records, and describing complex works. It also provides an overview of database design and entity relationships and authority files and controlled vocabularies. The second part consists of a chapter on each element of the final metadata record. Each chapter includes information about the metadata element, cataloging rules, and information on the presentation of the data. For example, for the element "object naming" (what a cataloger would call the title field) the book presents information about naming, cataloging rules, and information on how the object name should be displayed. At the end of each chapter, there are a number of extremely pertinent and useful examples. Part Three includes chapters on a personal and corporate name authority, a geographic place authority, a subject authority, and an authority for generic concepts.

Features

CCO is the latest standards tool for the cultural heritage community. It provides descriptive standards for art, architecture, cultural objects, and their images. It is organized by core data elements needed to describe cultural objects, includes lists of terminology sources, and illustrates hundreds of examples. CCO covers controlled vocabularies and authority control. CCO maps to the CDWA core and VRA Core 4.0 metadata element sets. It can be used with other descriptive standards tools and metadata element sets.

Print Publication

Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images is a manual for describing, documenting, and cataloging cultural works and their visual surrogates. The primary focus of CCO is art and architecture, including but not limited to paintings, sculpture, prints, manuscripts, photographs, built works, installations, and other visual media. CCO also covers many other types of cultural works, including archaeological sites, artifacts, and functional objects from the realm of material culture. Published by the American Library Association in 2006, CCO may be ordered through ALA itself, Amazon.com, and other vendors.

Reviews

"In a visual and artifact-filled world, cataloging one-of-a-kind cultural objects without published guidelines and standards has been a challenge. Now for the first time, under the leadership of the Visual Resources Association, a cross-section of five visual and cultural heritage experts, along with scores of reviewers from varied institutions, have created a new data content standard focused on cultural materials.

This cutting-edge reference offers practical resources for cataloging and flexibility to meet the needs of a wide range of institutions—from libraries to museums to archives. Consistently following these guidelines for selecting, ordering, and formatting data used to populate metadata elements in cultural materials’ catalog records: Promotes good descriptive cataloging and reduces redundancy; Builds a foundation of shared documentation; Creates data sharing opportunities; Enhances end-user access across institutional boundaries; Complements existing standards such as AACR.

This is a must-have reference for museum professionals, visual resources curators, archivists, librarians and anyone who documents cultural objects (including architecture, paintings, sculpture, prints, manuscripts, photographs, visual media, performance art, archaeological sites, and artifacts) and their images."

See Also

• Visual Resources Association
• Getty Vocabulary Program
• Library of Congress

External Links

• CCO Commons
• CCO Project Development and Support
• Book Review by Anna DeVore, Cataloging Department, University Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.
• Library of Congress Authorities