Message-Id: <mailto:199408020318.WAA25159@library.wustl.edu> Date: Mon, 1 Aug 1994 21:12:15 MST From: Joanne Langston <mailto:langstonj@MAIL.FWS.GOV> Subject: Re: Data Elements for Image Collections To: Multiple recipients of list IMAGELIB <mailto:IMAGELIB@ARIZVM1.BITNET>
I'm responding generally to the issues raised by Linda McRae
yesterday, and especially to the need for discipline-specific thesauri
for imagebases.
Judy Buys and I are the librarians at the National Biological Survey
in Lafayette, Louisiana. We have been doing a great deal of
preliminary concept work for descriptive cataloging in order to put
together an Imagebase of our research center's 10,000 plus and rapidly
growing slide/photographic/digital collection of basically
ecological/biological/botanical/spatial analysis/aerial photography
etc. types of images. Until recently our primary research mission was
the study of wetland habitats and migratory waterfowl, and national in
scope. Our mission has been broadened to ecosystem/ecoregion coverage
and narrowed to the southern part of the US and the flyways that cross
the Gulf and Caribbean
We too have assumed that LCSH would need to be augmented by thesauri
to make this imagebase truly functional on a search and retrieval
basis. We have intended to use Cowardin's wetland classification
scheme, Bailey's Ecoregions of the United States, NOAA's NODC
Taxonomic Code, Gray's Manual of Botany (though in botany, LCSH seems
to hold its own and may be preferable), and the Federal Geographic
Data Committee's Content Standards for Digitized Geospatial Metadata.
However, there appear to be quite a few classification systems out
there for botanicals, vegetation, habitats, ecosystems, zoology, soils
(hydric soils), hydrological systems, etc. and many seem to be
parochial to certain governmental agencies or particular groupings of
scholars.
Much of the conversation on this list has dealt with art,
architectural, and human historical aspects of image management, which
will be of use to us for many of our images. However, our major need
for image description lies in the bio/eco sciences.
I would like to hear from those of you who have worked on similar
scientific research imagebases and how you tackled the descriptive
cataloging and specialized thesauri/classification schemes in your
metadata records of the images. I'm sure NAL, NLM and the USGS must be
into something like this, and I'm hearing that the Missouri Botanical
Garden and partners (Smithsonian, UC Berkeley?) are planning or already
doing special botanical imagebases.
We're drowning in the wealth of possibilities and hoping to find some
sage advice from practiced hands out there. Has someone cut a clear
path through to an imagebase that covers these types of subjects using
widely accepted classification standards and that works for their user
groups. If so, can we talk? We're on the verge of making a major
purchase of one of those highly touted, multimedia library automation
systems that we hope to parlay into an enterprise-wide information
management system. O tempora! O mores! O jargona! ;-)
Sincerely,
Joanne E. Langston
Judy Buys
Library
National Biological Survey - SSC
700 Cajundome Boulevard
Lafayette, Louisiana
e-mail: Langston ˙ailto:mailto:langstonj@nwrc.gov
Buys ˙ailto:mailto:buysj@nwrc.gov
318-266-8545 voice
318-266-8513 fax