so what's this all about?

So now that introductions are out of the way and I've explained where I'll be doing my Capstone project, you're probably wondering what this project is all about and what "Objectifying Objects" means.  At least, I really hope you're a little bit curious! Let me describe the project and then hopefully the blog's name will make more sense.

The VRC has an expansive collection of slides that have been used by University of Texas faculty for a number of years. 

These slides are labeled with terms from an uncontrolled vocabulary of abbreviations determined by the slide's physical size.  For example:

N à North    S à South     S. à Saint     AELEV à Architecture elevation

There is no standardized vocabulary for these abbreviations. Punctuation and capitalization are not consistent throughout.  So before the slides are digitized into a web-accessible collection, it's going to be my job to develop a controlled vocabulary specific to the VRC that will replace these messy and inconsistent abbreviations.

Now just why is consistency so desirable? Well, imagine you collect spoons (people still collect spoons, right?) and belong to a spoon collecting club.  All the spoon collectors keep their collections stored away in an elaborate filing cabinet so they can share them with one another. Each spoon is labeled with a tag listing the color of the spoon and of what material it is made, and, once labeled, the spoons are stored away where they will be safe but still accessible. Now imagine you're searching for a very particular spoon, a blue spoon made of porcelain.  You look in the files for blue spoons but no luck. Same thing when you search through the file of porcelain spoons. Where could it be? After digging through spoon after spoon, you finally find it, labeled as a turquoise spoon made of china. Frustrations abound but at least you found your spoon. 

So a spoon collectors guild may be a strange example but I think you can get the idea, dear reader.  If there isn't consistency in the way a collection is cataloged, it makes it really difficult to find things. And when a collection is digital and people are searching through it using tags and titles, these language choices are of the utmost importance.  These tags are a way of breaking down cultural objects to their most basic parts - where they were made, what they were made of, what they depict, etc. In the end, I hope that my objectifying these objects will make it that much easier for people like you to find and enjoy them.

At this point, I have two long lists of abbreviations that have been used by the VRC over the years. I'm working on combining the two lists and cleaning up any discrepancies and redundancies. I've also been going through the vocabularies used by other collections that focus on cultural objects, like the Getty Vocabularies and University of California, Berkeley's SPIRO project.  And soon I'll actually get a chance to look at some of the VRC's slides as they are being digitized. Even this early on, I have a feeling what will be some of my greatest hurdles in this project.  I'll share these early concerns next time.