MAKING A MUSEUM: Materializing Regimes of Value with the NYC Department of Sanitation

Tags and keywords in our blog as well as in our archive are designed to work together, rather than independently. Keywords are more rigid and function as our "official" classification system taken from a specific and uniform taxonomical system (list of terms to classiy and organize knowledge). Tags are more informal and allow users to use words or phrases that might not be represented in the list of keywords, but that help classify our objects (texts and images). Tags can also eventually be used and added by users other than ourselves who will be able to access our collection later on.
Using both tags and keywords will allow us to have both a formal, uniform system of cataloguing, as well as an informal system that will make our collections searchable and cross-referenced by the terms that we (as a group, but also as individual users) find relevant. For the tags, please try to use singulars rather than plurals (ie. worker rather than workers) unless you think it is absolutely necessary to include plurals as well.

To look as examples of how tags and keywords are used to search collections on other sites, please check out
http://www.powerhousemuseum.com/collection/database/browsekeywords.php
http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/socialTagging.html

Compare this to a more rigid classifying system like the Smithsonian
http://acsmith.si.edu/emuwebanthweb/pages/nmnh/anth/Query.php

Here is a slightly revised copy of the Manual of how to submit to the Faculty Digital Archive.

Download file

One conceptual issue which would be good to think about that a number of you raised in class was the ways in which an object is defined by the archive. As you'll see the archive creates records which unite a digital object (an image or sound file) and contextual information of different kinds. This then becomes 'the object' in the database. I think it's useful to think of a photograph as a philosophical model for the presence of the 'object' in the record: a digital scan of a paper photograph could be thought of as many different kinds of object: there is the object photographed (e.g. a man with a dumpster), the paper photograph as object, the digital file as object and finally the record uniting the digital file with the catalogue information as an object. Think this through and make sure your descriptions (both the abstract summary and the more detailed 'curatorial notes' description address the question of 'what' it is that you are describing!

Remember - the abstract (description) is for a short summary of the object you have uploaded. Longer, more detailed information, and anything you think is important that doesn't fit in other fields should be put into the Description field - which we are using more like curatorial notes.

Also for those of you who are interested: here is the list of metadata (the fields to be filled in) that the makers of DSPACE have created, with definitions of the fields (you'll see that there are many ways to interpret these fields according to your needs):

http://www.dspace.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=141

I was browsing through some of your practice entries into the Faculty Digital Archive and wanted to make a posting about what should be in the description field. I thought it would be good to see a catalogue entry for a project I worked on at the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology to illustrate the kinds of information you should be thinking about:

Here is the image that the entry refers to:

Here are some snapshots of the catalogue focusing on the description and notes fields:

In the notes field, there is too much text for me to take a full snapshot, but the information reads:

On catalogue card, top right hand corner: “Taken and given by J. W. Layard.”

Layard’s handwritten captions says:
“3. Atchin, R.C. Mission house lent to us.
L-R Top Row: Malpuraim, Meltekshulü, Nalekon (with hand on Meltegewetpue, sone of M-shulü), Meldektaus.
L-R bottom row: Kalerib, Nale, Maluarasi, Malteris, Meltegele, Rivers, Maletelauli, Tipe (Franky)”
Handwritten “List of photographs (original). UCSD Mandeville Collection, MSS 84, Box 31, Folder 10.
[H. Geismar 20/04/04]

The notes below are taken from the ‘Biography’ Database entry on Layard:
“Layard was a pioneer in the application of psychology to anthropology. W.H.R. Rivers had just finished his History of Melanesian Society, and wanted to investigate further some of the problems that remained outstanding. Took Layard to Atchin, off the coast of Malekula and left him there after a week without any adequate training for his research or guidance on how to cope with a trying tropical climate and tribes only recently tamed. It may be that some misunderstanding, or the outbreak of war, was the reason. Anyway, Layard returned to Australia to enlist in the war, but rejected, and ill, he now realised that he was so engrossed in the life and culture of the tribesmen that he must return. The twelve months or so he spent altogether in the field were probably the most rewarding time of his life; but in 1915 he returned to the UK suffering from serious nervous exhaustion. For the next 25 years, soon becoming an ethnologist to be reckoned with, he worked on his filed materials and on the comparative ethnology of Melanesia.”

A reproduction of this image was displayed in Collected Sights in the section Fieldwork and Scholarship with the descriptive label:
“William Rivers and a local teacher from Erakor (left) with a group of young men in front of an abandoned Roman Catholic Mission house. Rivers accompanied Layard to Vanuatu, staying only a few days before continuing survey work in island Melanesia. In contrast, Layard conducted intensive fieldwork on Atchin for a year.”

[Sudeshna Guha 27/11/02]

You can search the Cambridge Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology catalogues and see the front end of this catalogue at
http://museum.archanth.cam.ac.uk/home/catalogue/index.htm

Please note a few things:

There is no first person or colloquial writing in the catalogue
All notes are sourced and referenced and authored
You might want to think about putting the following into the description field:
Source
Dimensions of object

any other ideas?

One thing I would like you to be thinking about as you work on the archive is what your 'ideal' museum catalogue would look like -what fields would it contain? How would it organise information. Please put any ideas into the comments section of this posting...

I just wanted to send a post regarding my experience uploading documents today. Everything seems to be running really smoothly. I used the Mac Lab at Bobst and walked right in without a reservation. (It seems pretty open in the mornings, I worked from about 10-1 without a problem). Also. the staff is really helpful if you have any problems.
I'd like to suggest the following keywords to be added:

Incineration
Sewage Treatment
Coney Island
Reports
Propaganda or Advertisements

I recently analyzed Harvard Library's online collections for another class, but it's a pretty amazing tool, and is worth checking out to see how they use keywords (or subjects I believe they call them) and what information is put into what field in the record details. Here's the link:

http://digitalcollections.harvard.edu/

Enjoy it!

So I was uploading my images today and came up with several possibilities for more keywords. They are:

CFC removal
Vehicle - Cut-down
Vehicle - Payhauler
Vehicle - Compactor
Trade - Mechanic
Emergency Response

Anyway, let me know what you guys think. I just went ahead and used these words in my keywords field; if they don't end up making the cut, I can always go back and delete.

November 1st: updated again!

Note: October 18: I've updated the keywords. They are now all Capitalised and all commas have been converted to dashes. Please use whatever is on this list in the format it is on the list as your keywords! And add suggestions either as comments to this posting or as a new blog entry! [HG]

Keywords are words and short phrases that relate directly to the material/objects within a museum catalogue or other database. Whilst there are a number of standardized lists of keywords (for instance that of the Library of Congress which allows all libraries to organise their collections in ways that are comparable and searchable) museums generally need to devise their own lists which reflect the idiosyncracies and special materialities of their collection.

A key word should be conceptualised as a term, concept, name, place (and so on) that will link records together and that will provide a powerful cross-referencing tool for curators, researchers and visitors to search collections thematically. In short, key words are one of the main ways in which collections are organised conceptually - they are literal manifestions of what we think is important about the material we are working with. Key words also ensure that spellings and expressions are standardised (so we don't have The Department of Sanitation, Department of Sanitation and so on), again to facilitate cross-referencing and the connection of records within the archive or catalogue.

We will use this blog post as a forum to develop our list of key words for our own archive. When uploading content to the blog - you should have this list open in a seperate window as a reference tool and choose words from this list as a tool. If you feel that there are terms not on the list that should be added, note them in the comments section of this entry and we can discuss in class and add to the list as we go along. In addition there are other ways to categorise and classify the information and objects we will be cataloguing (especially tags)

Definitive List of Key Words (more to come):
If you have others you can add them to the comments and we'll review them and put them on the list:

On the Job, social
On the Job, work
History
Trash and Transformation
September 11
Mapping the City (through its discards)

Advertisements
Award (as in a ceremony or a special commendation)
Band - original
Band -Pipe & Drum
Barge
Benevolent society
-African-American
-Asian-Jade
-Emerald
-Columbian
-Hebrew Spiritual
-Hispanic
-Holy Name
-Latino
-Polaski
-Steuben
-Women
Bicycle
Blackout (2003; 1967)
(The) Bronx
Brooklyn
Building/facility
-garage
-stable
-office
-section station
-body shop
-lockerroom
-lunch room
-fueling station
-headquarters
Cart
Carry can
CFC removal
Chief (how many stars)
Civilian
Collection
Commissioner (deputy or full)
Coney Island
Cleaning
Cliff Street
Delury, John
Derelict vehicle
Department of Street Cleaning (can be abbreviated DSC)
Doherty, John
Dump
Emergency Response
Funeral
Garbage
Ground Zero
Hand broom
Hauling
Horse
Incineration
Landfill
-Athey wagons
-Fresh Kills
-Fountain Avenue
-Pennsylvania Avenue
-Pelham Bay
Litter
Manhattan
Mayor
Mongo
Officer
-sanitation police
-section supervisor/foreman
-garage supervisor/foreman
-superintendent
Oral history
Parade
Personal stories
Pier
Plowing
Tandem plowing
Popular representation
Queens
Recycling
Reports
Retirement party
Sanitation worker
Safety & training
Scow
September 11 cleanup
Sewering
Sewage treatment
Snow
Social event
Special event
Staten Island
Strike
Sweeping - hand
Sweeping - mechanical
Trades
-Blacksmith
-metalworker
-carpenter
-electrician
- mechanic
[there will be more of these]
Transfer station - marine
Transfer station - rail
Ukeles, Mierle
-Touch Sanitation
-Flow City
-Social Mirror
-Fresh Kills/Percent for Art
Uniform
Union
-831
-444
-chief’s
Vehicle
-collection truck
-alley truck
-car
-compactor
-cut-down
-front-end loader (FEL)
-hi-lo [fork lift]
-Payhauler
-roll-on/roll-off (RoRo)
-wrecker (tow truck)
-mechanical broom
-plow
-spreader
-flow & dump
Waring, George
Waste disposal
White Wings
Woman
World Trade Center