Rationale

The Rationale Behind the CCO Decisions Made for this Site 

Resource Template:

• Title: Name of the individual depicted in the woodcut
• Creator: artist or illustrator, when the information is provided about the work in general
• Date: date the book containing the woodcut was published; this is specific to the edition containing this image
• Relation:  This field was changed to “Book Title”. Links were provided to the LC catalog entries for the books that contain the illustrations. 
• List of Authors: This field was changed to “Author.” This field was included to emphasize that many of the details included in the illustrations were inspired by the descriptions given by the authors of the works. The controlled vocabulary LC Name Authority was used for this field.
• Description: specific details about the image, including the location within the book if it is known. Additional information about elements depicted in the image that have relevance to the folklore about the individual or pirates, in general, are also noted, as this will help establish how early these details were being discussed.
• Rights: Rights statement; when known, this will link to a description of the rights status. For LC holdings, this links back to the main page about the image, which states "no known rights issues."
• Subject: This field uses LC Subject headings.
• Medium: Getty AAT. Unless otherwise specified in the description or metadata, the medium was listed as illustration, as the image quality for these scans was not high-res enough to determine specific illustration techniques with any degree of accuracy.
• Contributor:  Where the scanned image of the illustration is currently being hosted. 

Controlled Vocabularies & Local Practice 

• Subject  (LC Subject Headings) - This field was restricted to just the characteristics present in the illustration (pirates, privateers, women pirates, etc. ), while the tags were used to provide additional information about the individuals for SEO purposes (i.e. historical periods, nationalities, locations, etc.) ​
• Medium (Getty AAT)- Unless indicated in the descriptions or metadata of the book, the general category of “illustration” was used due to the poor image quality.
• Authors (LC Name Authority)- The vocabulary was used for the authors, in order to connect the image more directly with the author. This again, was done to reflect that the illustrations were representative of the author's opinions and narratives about these individuals, rather than necessarily being realistic depictions.
  • One local practice that needed to be established for this field related to the General history of the robberies and murders of the most notorious pyrates and the abridged version of the work The History and lives of all the most notorious pirates, and their crews.
  •  These works were ostensibly written by a Captain Charles Johnson, but this is popularly believed to be a pseudonym for a number of well known authors from the time period. One theory concerning the author identifies him as Daniel Defoe, although this is still debated. For the purposes of this site, Defoe is listed as the author of the works, in keeping with the Library of Congress record for these works, along with the abridged version However, Charles Johnson’s name was included as a second author in the list of authors to represent the ongoing debate, although this individual or pseudonym does not have a record in the LC Name Authority.
• Book Titles:  The titles used for this field preserve the style in the LC catalog entry for the “uniform” title; in some cases, this preserves the title in the original language of the work, while in others it preserves more archaic spellings of English words. It was a local practice decision to keep these idiosyncrasies intact to prevent confusion in linking to the catalog entry.