Part Two: Guidelines

In repositories of architectural documents, the main focus of cataloguing is usually the documents themselves, although much of the cataloguing concerns closely related information about people (e.g., draftsmen, architects, clients), subjects and/or built works, and geography (e.g., locations of structures). Accordingly, the first part, Groups/Items, focuses on the information that is most particular to documents, e.g., their date of execution and purpose. Related information, such as the biographical histories of makers, appears in the authorities: Subjects/Built Works, People/Corporate Bodies, and Geographic Locations. (For instance, a biographical history would be found in People/Corporate Bodies.) This approach avoids repetition of categories that otherwise might appear in more than one area.

Cross-references are made between individual categories in order to point out that a relationship exists. These appear under Implementation as authority-controlled, followed by the name of the related area, e.g., People/Corporate Bodies. An example is Name. This category stands not only for a name or names but also for biographical information about the person who made the group/item (this information about the person may be found under People/Corporate Bodies). It is important to be able to retrieve entries through these related categories. For instance, it should be possible to retrieve all documents by makers with a specified locus of activity. Typical queries will almost always involve combinations of categories drawn from two or more areas.

Finally, each area is, where appropriate, divided into a number of sections. These sections collocate categories of information that are interdependent, or closely related, e.g., Technique, Medium, Support, and Watermark are all Physical Characteristics.