Process
There’s something about the esthetic nature of cats that make me enjoy observing them. They are graceful, bashful, and loving in their own ways. I’ve never been able to have a cat as a family member, but I do hope in the near future I get to be family members with one. Considering my love of cats, I don’t know much about their history. I can name various breeds of cats and gush over my current favorite Instagram-famous cat. But when it comes to cats as symbols, in art, or in history, I have very limited knowledge. My perspective of these items are as objects - things that can help describe the cat as symbols. Although my access to them are through images from the institutions that own them, I put myself in the mindset of a cataloger so I can catalog it with a specific audience in mind. I hope this project has given you a broader look at the symbolic nature of the cat.
Described below are the reasons why certain DublinCore and standardized controlled vocabularies were used:
Dublin Core Elements
Title and Description: Kept at default setting. I renamed some of the items in my project from their original catalog entries on the respective institution's websites. Many of the items were cataloged and entered from many decades ago and did their names were long and included additional information that can be detailed in the description.
Date, Format, Identifier, Medium, Provenance, Rights Holder, Rights, and Source were kept at the default settings. The particular items in my collection did not require any specific types of controlled vocabulary for these fields.
My Identifier field is created as such: the word “Cat” with three digits from 1-11, the “_” (underscore), follwed by the acronym of the institution each item is from. For example - “Cat001_AMNH".
Standardized Controlled Vocabularies:
Creator: I selected Getty: The Union List of Artist Names (ULAN). All the items I selected have some sort of artistic value attached to it. I did not have the specific artist name of each item, but I think tagging them to an authoritative database that lists artists by geographic location/culture is the next best thing.
Subject: I selected Library of Congress: Subject Headings. This helped appropriately link the items in my collection to the specific label used by LOC.
Items were sourced from the American Museum of Natural History, New York Public Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art. The image on the About page is taken by Christopher Ku and is not part of the 10 images that are to be selected for the project.