The Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is a controlled vocabulary used for describing items of art, architecture, and material culture. The AAT contains generic terms, such as "cathedral", but no proper names, such as "Cathedral of Notre Dame." The AAT is used by, among others, museums, art libraries, archives, catalogers, and researchers in art and art history. The AAT is a thesaurus in compliance with ISO and NISO standards including ISO 2788, ISO 25964 and ANSI/NISO Z39.19.
The AAT is a structured vocabulary of 55,661 concepts (as of January 2020), [1] including 131,000 terms, descriptions, bibliographic citations, and other information relating to fine art, architecture, decorative arts, archival materials, and material culture. [2]
The AAT project began in the late 1970s in response to the gradual automation of records by art libraries, art journal indexing services, and catalogers of museum objects and visual resources. Automation required consistency in cataloging as well as more efficient retrieval of information; a controlled vocabulary was a solution to both these problems. The project was conceived by library directors and architectural experts Toni Petersen, Dora Crouch, and Pat Molholt and was originally headquartered part-time at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY, then at Bennington College in Bennington, VT and later moved to Williamstown, Massachusetts, with the J. Paul Getty Trust providing technical advice and funding. In 1983 the Getty Trust took over editorial responsibility. The AAT offices relocated to the Getty's Los Angeles headquarters in order to better coordinate with two other similar Getty projects, the Union List of Artist Names (ULAN) and Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN) soon after its publication.
The AAT was published in 1990 and 1994 in both print and electronic form. By 1997, the size and frequency of updates made hard-copy publication unfeasible and the decision was made to publish via a searchable online Web interface and in data files available for licensing. The online Web interface is freely-accessible from any computer connected to the Internet. Final editorial control of the AAT is maintained by the Getty Vocabulary Program, part of the Getty Research Institute.
Since 2008, Taiwan e-Learning and Digital Archives Program (TELDAP) [3] collaborated with Getty Research Institute (GRI) in developing the Chinese-language Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT-Taiwan). The initial goal of this project is to provide multilingual search and corresponding images in integrate digital archives systems of Taiwan, and broaden the inclusion of terms related to Asian art, architecture and material culture in AAT.
The AAT can be used in several ways:
AAT is available as Linked Open Data at vocab.getty.edu [6] since February 2014 [7] and is updated bi-weekly.
The initial core set of terms was derived from authority lists and the literature of art and architectural history; this core set was reviewed, approved and added to by an advisory team made up scholars from all relevant disciplines, including art and architectural historians, architects, librarians, visual resource curators, archivists, museum personnel, and specialists in thesaurus construction. Its hierarchy was inspired by the Medical Subject Headings. All eras from antiquity to the present are covered, and it is not limited geographically.
As of January 2007, the AAT contained approximately 131,000 terms. While the thesaurus contains many variations on a term, such as singular and plural forms, spelling variants, various forms of speech, and synonyms, one is always flagged as the preferred term. Terms are updated biweekly and regular users are encouraged to propose new terms.
In 2015 AAT contains 354,000 terms. [8] They are available in 4 major languages (English, Dutch, Spanish and Chinese), and some terms in various native languages.
The AAT is a faceted classification system as well as a hierarchical one. There are seven facets:
The record for each concept includes its place in the hierarchy (with a link to its parent), as well as links to related terms, related concepts, sources and contributors for the data, and notes.
A faceted classification is a classification scheme used in organizing knowledge into a systematic order. A faceted classification uses semantic categories, either general or subject-specific, that are combined to create the full classification entry. Many library classification systems use a combination of a fixed, enumerative taxonomy of concepts with subordinate facets that further refine the topic.
The Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names is a product of the J. Paul Getty Trust included in the Getty Vocabulary Program. The TGN includes names and associated information about places. Places in TGN include administrative political entities and physical features. Current and historical places are included. Other information related to history, population, culture, art and architecture is included.
The ISO/IEC 11179 Metadata Registry (MDR) standard is an international ISO/IEC standard for representing metadata for an organization in a metadata registry. It documents the standardization and registration of metadata to make data understandable and shareable.
Simple Features is a set of standards that specify a common storage and access model of geographic features made of mostly two-dimensional geometries used by geographic databases and geographic information systems. It is formalized by both the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) and the International Organization for Standardization (ISO).
Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C recommendation designed for representation of thesauri, classification schemes, taxonomies, subject-heading systems, or any other type of structured controlled vocabulary. SKOS is part of the Semantic Web family of standards built upon RDF and RDFS, and its main objective is to enable easy publication and use of such vocabularies as linked data.
AGROVOC is a multilingual controlled vocabulary covering all areas of interest of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), including food, nutrition, agriculture, fisheries, forestry and the environment. By November 2021, the vocabulary consisted of over 39,600 concepts with up to 924,000 terms in up to 41 different languages. It is a collaborative effort, edited by a community of experts and coordinated by FAO. AGROVOC is made available by FAO as an RDF/SKOS-XL concept scheme and published as a linked data set aligned to 20 other vocabularies.
The Getty Research Institute (GRI), located at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California, is "dedicated to furthering knowledge and advancing understanding of the visual arts".
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data itself, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
The Getty Vocabulary Program is a department within the Getty Research Institute at the Getty Center in Los Angeles, California. It produces and maintains the Getty controlled vocabulary databases, Art and Architecture Thesaurus, Union List of Artist Names, and Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. They are compliant with ISO and NISO standards for thesaurus construction. The Getty vocabularies are the premiere references for categorizing works of art, architecture, material culture, and the names of artists, architects, and geographic names. They have been the life work of many people and continue to be critical contributions to cultural heritage information management and documentation. They contain terms, names, and other information about people, places, things, and concepts relating to art, architecture, and material culture. They can be accessed online free of charge on the Getty website.
Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) describes the content of art databases by articulating a conceptual framework for describing and accessing information about works of art, architecture, other material culture, groups and collections of works, and related images. The CDWA includes 532 categories and subcategories. A small subset of categories are considered core in that they represent the minimum information necessary to identify and describe a work. The CDWA includes discussions, basic guidelines for cataloging, and examples.
A metadata standard is a requirement which is intended to establish a common understanding of the meaning or semantics of the data, to ensure correct and proper use and interpretation of the data by its owners and users. To achieve this common understanding, a number of characteristics, or attributes of the data have to be defined, also known as metadata.
ISO 25964 is the international standard for thesauri, published in two parts as follows:
ISO 25964 Information and documentation - Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabulariesPart 1: Thesauri for information retrieval [published August 2011] Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies [published March 2013]
The Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA) is a project by the Getty Research Institute to create a controlled vocabulary containing authority records for cultural works, including architecture and movable works such as paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, textiles, ceramics, furniture, other visual media such as frescoes and architectural sculpture, performance art, archaeological artifacts, and various functional objects that are from the realm of material culture and of the type collected by museums. The focus of CONA is works cataloged in scholarly literature, museum collections, visual resources collections, archives, libraries, and indexing projects with a primary emphasis on art, architecture, or archaeology. The target users are the visual resources, academic, and museum communities.
In the context of information retrieval, a thesaurus is a form of controlled vocabulary that seeks to dictate semantic manifestations of metadata in the indexing of content objects. A thesaurus serves to minimise semantic ambiguity by ensuring uniformity and consistency in the storage and retrieval of the manifestations of content objects. ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 defines a content object as "any item that is to be described for inclusion in an information retrieval system, website, or other source of information". The thesaurus aids the assignment of preferred terms to convey semantic metadata associated with the content object.
The documentation of cultural property is a critical aspect of collections care. As stewards of cultural property, museums collect and preserve not only objects but the research and documentation connected to those objects, in order to more effectively care for them. Documenting cultural heritage is a collaborative effort. Essentially, registrars, collection managers, conservators, and curators all contribute to the task of recording and preserving information regarding collections. There are two main types of documentation museums are responsible for: records generated in the registration process—accessions, loans, inventories, etc. and information regarding research on objects and their historical significance. Properly maintaining both types of documentation is vital to preserving cultural heritage.
Lightweight Information Describing Objects (LIDO) is an XML schema for describing museum or collection objects. Memory institutions use LIDO for “exposing, sharing and connecting data on the web”. It can be applied to all kind of disciplines in cultural heritage, e.g. art, natural history, technology, etc. LIDO is a specific application of CIDOC CRM.
A Collections Management System (CMS), sometimes called a Collections Information System, is software used by the collections staff of a collecting institution or by individual private collectors and collecting hobbyists or enthusiasts. Collecting institutions are primarily museums and archives and cover a very broad range from huge, international institutions, to very small or niche-specialty institutions such as local historical museums and preservation societies. Secondarily, libraries and galleries are also collecting institutions. Collections Management Systems (CMSs) allow individuals or collecting institutions to organize, control, and manage their collections' objects by “tracking all information related to and about” those objects. In larger institutions, the CMS may be used by collections staff such as registrars, collections managers, and curators to record information such as object locations, provenance, curatorial information, conservation reports, professional appraisals, and exhibition histories. All of this recorded information is then also accessed and used by other institutional departments such as “education, membership, accounting, and administration."
The Répertoire de vedettes-matière de l'Université Laval (RVM) is a controlled vocabulary made up of four mostly bilingual thesauruses. It is designed for document indexers, organizations that want to describe the content of their documents or of their products and services, as well as anyone who wants to clarify vocabulary in English and French as part of their work or research.
Murtha Baca was an American educator and professional renowned in the field of information science, particularly for her expertise in the area of metadata and digital information systems.
