To Hold or to Access: Building IA of the Canadian Architecture Collections Eun Park McGill Universit

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To Hold or to Access Building IA of the
Canadian Architecture CollectionsEun ParkMcGill
University Library Information Studies
IA Summit 2005
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Description of Session

• This session presents the findings of assessment
  of metadata sets and controlled vocabularies of
  Canadian Architecture Collections in the McGill
  University Library.
• Targeted audiences practitioners, researchers,
  librarians, metadata designers, digital
  collection developers and manager who have
  interests in digital collections

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Objectives of the Session

• To understand the organization and description of
  digital collections in designing metadata sets
  and controlled vocabulary
• To understand the technical, design, and
  managerial issues associated with building and
  managing information architecture on digital
  collections
• To share lessons learned from the research with
  other colleagues

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The Digital Collections Program (DCP)

• Digital collections on Canadian arts,
  architecture, history, culture, map, etc.
• Aims to provide the preservation of and access to
  the librarys special and rare collections.
• Some examples
• Canadian Architecture Collection (CAC)
• Howard Ross Management Library
• Canadian Corporate Reports Project
• The McGill University Napoleon Collection
• Fontanus

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Canadian Architecture Collections

• 9 databases on architecture and corresponding
  architects, affiliated to the School of
  Architecture and Urban Planning, McGill
  University
• Bland, Maxwells, Nobbs, Pratte, Safdie,
  Schoenauer, Schreiber, Taylor, and Traquair
• Architecture works, drawings, pictures of
  buildings, projects, and their professional and
  personal writing and drafts created during their
  professional life

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9 Databases

• One database composed of tables, fields,
  attributes
• One database has one to many tables, up to 14
  tables.
• 55 tables in total
• Over 453 fields over 7 databases except Pratte
  and Traquair databases

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Problems of Managing D/B

• Have been developed since the early 1990s in
  different times and by several developers.
• No uniform policy on how to develop database and
  how to assign table and field names brought
  database unmanageable to managers and
  inaccessible to users.
• Confusion and ambiguity of field names in the
  management, organization, and retrieval of these
  tables due to confusion and ambiguity of field
  names

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Categories

• The most frequently used tables and fields over 9
  databases grouped into major categories
• Tables grouped into 7 categories, including data
  information, library, project, description, type,
  office files/boxes/folders, and miscellaneous
  others.
• Field categories grouped into 11 categories,
  including library, project, identification, file
  information, description and comments, location,
  type, title, drawings, collection size, and
  others.

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Category Type

• Category type used to indicate types or purposes
  of buildings, which function as controlled
  vocabularies.
• Major typologies among government, educational,
  commercial, cultural, health, residential,
  religious, transportation, etc.
• Sub-typologies available for a more specific
  classification under one major category

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Comparative Analysis

• The most commonly used tables compared to
• 1) the Description of Architectural Drawings
  developed by the Getty Research Institute

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Issues and Implications

• Assessment of controlled vocabulary and metadata
• Feasibility of metadata
• Specificity of controlled vocabularies of DCP
• The result of the research will suggest a
  recommended metadata set to CAC for further
  development, which might be applicable to similar
  types of digital collection.