Image Cataloguing Resources

Thesauri

• The Art and Architecture Thesaurus
  This excellent resource is available via the Web without charge. For those of you without access to the Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) this thesaurus will be invaluable. For those of you with the LCSH this thesaurus will be invaluable. Let's face it, this is a great resource.

• Thesaurus for Graphic Materials: Subject Terms (TGM I)
  This thesaurus was developed by the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress and is used by many libraries and archives in the United States and abroad. It provides over 6,300 terms for indexing the subject content of visual images including terms for activities, objects, occupations, events and concepts. Several hundred new terms are added yearly and users can propose new terms for addition to TGM I by using a proposal form available online. The introduction to TGM I explains the structure and content of the thesaurus as well as guidelines for the indexing of visual materials.

• Thesaurus for Graphic Materials: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms: (TGM II)
  This thesaurus was also developed by the Prints & Photographs Division of the Library of Congress. TGM II contains more than 600 terms for categories of images such as "Cityscapes," "Group portraits" and "War posters" and terms for physical attributes and creation techniques such as "Chromolithographs," "Digital images," and "Albumen prints." Users can propose new terms for addition to TGM II by using a proposal form available online. The introduction to TGM II explains the structure and content of the thesaurus as well as guidelines for the indexing of visual materials.

Cataloging

• Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections
  From the Library of Congress Web site: "Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections was compiled by Elisabeth Betz Parker in 1982 to provide guidelines for cataloging a wide variety of visual materials from photographic prints, negatives, and albums to posters, cartoons, popular and fine prints, and architectural drawings. These rules are a national standard supplement to Chapter 8 of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, which focuses on modern, published audiovisual materials.

  For groups of pictures as well as individual items, the guidelines cover transcribing and devising titles; stating creators, producers, and dates; expressing quantities, media, and dimensions; and writing subject, user advisory, and other kinds of notes. There are also sample catalog records, a glossary, and an index."

  Graphic Materials is available in a variety of formats for downloading to your computer.

• Visual Materials: Processing & Cataloging Bibliography
  Access techniques for historical picture collections draw on conventions developed in the library, archival, and museum communities. This bibliography lists basic manuals that provide guidance in physical care and arrangement, identification, bibliographic description, subject indexing, and digital reformatting of photographs, prints, architectural drawings, cartoons, and posters. The selected articles and links to online catalogs illustrate practices in a variety of institutions to help collection managers identify approaches suitable to their organizations' collections.