Murtha Baca

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Murtha Baca (born California, October 7, 1950 - deceased Granada Hills, California, August 12, 2023) 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.

Contents

Biography

Baca received a PhD in Art History and Italian Language and Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Baca was hired at the Getty Information Institute in 1988 and transferred to the Getty Research Institute in 1999. Baca was a founding member and leader of the Getty Vocabulary Program, which builds and maintains multilingual controlled vocabularies for art, architecture, and material culture. Her association with the Getty Vocabulary Program spanned three decades. [1]

Baca also worked in the Getty Provenance Index and held various other titles at the Getty Research Institute, including Head of Digital Art History and Head of Digital Resources Management. She accrued three decades of experience as an implementer and teacher of descriptive metadata and controlled vocabularies for art and architecture. She was a Lecturer at the UCLA Department of Information Studies from 1988 to 2017, teaching graduate seminars in Indexing & Thesaurus Construction and Metadata. She was a mentor to many students, several of whom later worked with her in the field.

Scholarship

Baca authored, edited, and co-edited numerous academic publications throughout her career. She was a co-editor of Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images (American Library Association) which "gives the cataloger tools to describe art, images, and cultural objects consistently" and "can be used as a model for evolving cataloging codes." [2] She was the editor of Introduction to Metadata (Getty Research Institute, 3rd edition, 2016), which "presents an overview of metadata, including the methods, tools, and standards that support the access and use of digital resources on the web" and serves as "a recommended resource for information professionals in museums, libraries, and archives who are interested in developing a foundation in metadata concepts and practices." [3] She led a team of scholars and technical experts that developed the Getty Research Institute's first "born-digital" scholarly publication, Pietro Mellini's Inventory in Verse, 1681: A Digital Facsimile with Translation and Commentary, published in 2015. [4] This digital edition was a landmark project in the field of digital art history, which has since grown considerably. She was also a noted and well-published translator of Italian texts on literature and cuisine. [5]

Professional Service and Leadership

Baca was a leader in various professional organizations and groups related to controlled vocabularies, descriptive metadata, and digital art history. She was chair of the International Terminology Working Group, an organization of cultural heritage documentation professionals founded ca. 1988 to work with multilingual thesauri. She served on the board of directors of the Museum Computer Network (MCN) from 2004 to 2006, [6] the Advisory Board of the Built Works Registry (2010-2014), [7] the Helping Interdisciplinary Vocabulary Education (HIVE) advisory Board (2011), [8] and as a technical advisor to the Digital Serlio Project (2010-2018). [9]

Recognition and Honors

Publications

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dublin Core</span> Standardized set of metadata elements

The Dublin Core, also known as the Dublin Core Metadata Element Set (DCMES), is a set of fifteen main metadata items for describing digital or physical resources. It was the first metadata standard for describing web content. The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative (DCMI) is responsible for formulating the Dublin Core; DCMI is a project of the Association for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T), a non-profit organization.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Slide library</span> Library with collection of photographic slides

A slide library is a library that houses a collection of photographic slides, either as a part of a larger library or image archive, or standing alone within a larger organization, such as an academic department of a college or university, a museum, or a corporation. Typically, a "slide library" contains slides depicting artwork, architecture, or cultural objects, and is typically used for the study, teaching, and documentation of art history, architectural history, and visual culture. Other academic disciplines, such as biology and other sciences, also maintain image collections akin to slide libraries. Corporations may also have image libraries to maintain and document their publications and history. Increasingly, these types of libraries are known as "Visual Resources Collections," as they may be responsible for all "visual" materials for the study of a subject and include still and moving images in a variety of physical and virtual formats. They may contain:

Controlled vocabularies provide a way to organize knowledge for subsequent retrieval. They are used in subject indexing schemes, subject headings, thesauri, taxonomies and other knowledge organization systems. Controlled vocabulary schemes mandate the use of predefined, preferred terms that have been preselected by the designers of the schemes, in contrast to natural language vocabularies, which have no such restriction.

Artstor is a nonprofit organization that builds and distributes the Digital Library, an online resource of more than 2.5 million images in the arts, architecture, humanities, and sciences, and Shared Shelf, a Web-based cataloging and image management software service that allows institutions to catalog, edit, store, and share local collections.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Outline of library and information science</span> Overview of and topical guide to library science

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to library and information science:

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 Visual Resources Association is an international organization for image media professionals.

A schema crosswalk is a table that shows equivalent elements in more than one database schema. It maps the elements in one schema to the equivalent elements in another.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metadata</span> Data about data

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.

In library and information science documents are classified and searched by subject – as well as by other attributes such as author, genre and document type. This makes "subject" a fundamental term in this field. Library and information specialists assign subject labels to documents to make them findable. There are many ways to do this and in general there is not always consensus about which subject should be assigned to a given document. To optimize subject indexing and searching, we need to have a deeper understanding of what a subject is. The question: "what is to be understood by the statement 'document A belongs to subject category X'?" has been debated in the field for more than 100 years

Howard Besser is a scholar of digital preservation, digital libraries, and preservation of film and video. He is Professor of Cinema Studies and the founding director of the NYU Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program ("MIAP"), a graduate program in the Tisch School. Besser also worked as a Senior Scientist at New York University's Digital Library Initiative. He conducted extensive research in image databases, multimedia operation, digital library, and social and cultural influence of the latest Information Technology. Besser is a prolific writer and speaker, and has consulted with many governments, educational institutions, and arts agencies on digital preservation matters. Besser researched libraries' new technology, archives, and museums. Besser has been actively contributing at the international level to build metadata and upgrade the quality of the cultural heritage community. He predominantly, focused on image and multimedia databases; digital library aspects ; cultural and societal impacts of information technology, and developing new teaching methods through technology such as web-based instructions and distance learning. Besser was closely involved in development of the Dublin Core and the Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS), international standards within librarianship.

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.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Cultural property documentation</span> Aspect of collections care

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."

References

  1. ↑ Coburn, Eve Meltzer, Julia Meltzer, Murtha Baca, and Erin. "Data and Metadata: An Interview with Murtha Baca and Erin Coburn | Eve Meltzer, Julia Meltzer, Murtha Baca, and Erin Coburn". cabinetmagazine.org. Retrieved 2023-12-07.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  2. ↑ Quimby, Sarah E. (2011-04-29). "Book Review: Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images". Library Resources & Technical Services. 52 (2): 69–70. doi:10.5860/lrts.52n2.69. ISSN   2159-9610.
  3. ↑ Williams, Jessica (2017). "Introduction to Metadata". Collections: A Journal for Museum and Archives Professionals. 13 (1): 47–55. doi:10.1177/155019061701300104. ISSN   1550-1906.
  4. ↑ For information on this project, see the relevant publications listed below and the project page on the Getty website: https://www.getty.edu/projects/digital-mellini/. The digital publication is no longer active, but is still accessible in its digitally archived form: https://conifer.rhizome.org/Getty/pietro-mellini-inventory-in-verse/list/start-here/b1/20200505212806/http://www.getty.edu/research/mellini/
  5. ↑ Including Pelligrino Artusi, Murtha Baca (trans.), Luigi Ballerini (intro.), Science in the Kitchen and the Art of Eating Well (1891, Toronto: University or Toronto Press, 2003); Remo Bodei, Murtha Baca (trans.), The Life of Things, the Love of Things (New York: Fordham University Press, 2015); Donatella Di Cesare, Murtha Baca (trans.), Terror and Modernity (Polity, 2017), Lauro Martines, Murtha Baca (trans.), An Italian Renaissance Sextet: Six Tales in Historical Context (Marsilio, 1994); Vittore Branca, Massimo Ciavolella, Luigi Ballerini, Murtha Baca (trans.). Merchant Writers: Florentine Memoirs from the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015) and others.
  6. ↑ Museum Computer Network website: https://mcn.edu/about/history/board-of-directors-2004-2005/, https://mcn.edu/about/history/board-of-directors-2005-2006/
  7. ↑ "BWR Project Directors & Advisory Council". Built Works Registry (BWR). 2011-06-16. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
  8. ↑ https://mrc.cci.drexel.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/HIVE-1-People.pdf
  9. ↑ "About Digital Serlio | Columbia University Libraries". library.columbia.edu. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
  10. ↑ "2015 VRA Awards Announced at Members and Awards Dinner". VRA Visual Resources Association. Retrieved 2023-12-07.
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