So tonight I was uploading items to my OMEKA collection and getting stumped on the metadata. All my buttons have union labels on them and I was unsure about putting them in the description field. The cataloger in me said “Do it” but the real person in me said “So what?” My inner cataloger was happy to find this article from Progressive Librarian. The article is titled “Proposal for Inclusion of Union Label Description in Bibliographic and Archival Cataloging Guidelines” and it, obvious from the title, advocates including union information when cataloging. I know that this isn’t exactly cataloging but it definitely feels a lot like it. I think that union information is pertinent information to include when recording metadata for accuracy’s sake as well as the fact that it’s important to acknowledge history and the people who crafted the items we are preserving. However, if I am wrong and it’s just cluttering up the description field, please let me know.
Now if you will excuse me I am about to partake in some Hulu.
1 Comment
November 20, 2008 at 4:55 pm
It makes me ridiculously happy that you thought about this while doing your project, as it’s exactly the type of thing I was hoping for (And when you’re done with Hulu, you might want to take a look at:
http://digitalcommons.ilr.cornell.edu/
where they’d certainly encourage you to include the union information as an important piece of history.)