I’m looking for a good vocabulary for modelling museum objects. Museum objects rarely have titles and often we have no idea who the creators are either, but we do have a lot of fields, some of which are governed by thesauri, and some of which are more descriptive for humans to read. The types of property we would want to use include:
- Object name (what is the object, e.g. a spoon, a board game, an axe head)
- Material (what the object is made from, e.g. copper, wood, ceramic)
- Physical description (a short sentence describing the object)
- Production place (where was the object made)
- Production period (when was the object made)
- Start and end dates, with levels of approximation, for the production
- Subject of the object (e.g. what or who is depicted in a painting)
- Inscriptions (which may need transliterated and translated version also)
- Associations (e.g. this object is used in a religious context)
- Dimensions of object
- Field collection method (for archaeology)
- Field collection place (i.e. where was an archaeological object found)
- Typology (specialist categorisations, e.g. Dragendorff classifications for Samian ware)
- Technique (how the object was made)
- Previous owner
Does anyone have any recommendations.
N.B. I am talking about the “vocabulary” in Omeka, i.e. the field names. I’m not seeking recommendations for suitable thesauri, subject terms or controlled vocabularies.
Thanks,
Matthew Phillips, Durham University, UK