The Getty vocabularies are compiled resources that grow through contributions from various Getty projects and outside institutions. Contributors to the Getty vocabularies include museums, libraries, archives, and bibliographic and documentation projects, including the Bibliography of the History of Art (BHA), the Getty Provenance Index, the Photo Study Collection, and the Research Library at the Getty Research Institute. Various projects in the Getty Conservation Institute and the J. Paul Getty Museum also contribute to the vocabularies. Recent external contributors include the Canadian Centre for Architecture, the Frick Art Reference Library, the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of African Art, the National Art Library in London, the Courtauld Institute, the Mystic Seaport Museum, the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas at Austin, the Bunting Visual Resources Library at the University of New Mexico, and the Canadian Heritage Information Network.

Contributions are being accepted via batch loads in our prescribed XML format, Getty Vocabulary XML Schema for Contributions, which you may download in zipped files. Contributions may also be made via the online Web form. Institutions wishing to contribute to the vocabularies should send an email to the Getty Vocabulary Program, subject line: Contributions. Include the name of your institution and the type and quantity of terms you wish to contribute. Contributions must comply with the Editorial Guidelines. You may also refer to Brief Rules: Training Manual for Contributors and a Power Point presentation, Introduction to Contributing to Vocabs.

The Art & Architecture Thesaurus® (AAT), the Union List of Artists Names ® (ULAN), and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names® (TGN) are copyrighted by the J. Paul Getty Trust. Companies and institutions interested in regular or extensive use of the vocabularies should explore licensing options by reading about Obtaining and Sample Data.

CONA (Cultural Objects Name Authority: to be developed)

We hope to introduce CONA to the user community in 2010. If your institution is interested in contributing to CONA, please write to vocab@getty.edu, subject line: CONA, for further information.

Scope: CONA includes authority records for cultural works, including architecture and movable works such as paintings, sculpture, prints, manuscripts, photographs and other visual media, 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 coverage is global, from prehistory through the present. Names or titles may be current, historical, and in various languages.

Built works: For CONA, built works include structures or parts of structures that are the result of conscious construction, are of practical use, are relatively stable and permanent, and are of a size and scale appropriate for—but not limited to—habitable buildings. Models and miniatures are not built works (they are movable works). Most built works in CONA are manifestations of the built environment that is typically classified as fine art, meaning it is generally considered to have aesthetic value, was designed by an architect (whether or not his or her name is known), and constructed with skilled labor.

Movable works: For CONA, movable works include the visual arts that are of the type collected by art museums. Note that these are works of visual art of the type collected by art museums. The objects themselves may actually be held by an ethnographic, anthropological, or other museum, or owned by a private collector.

With the exception of performance art, CONA records unique physical works. However, CONA may include works that were never built or that no longer exist, for example designs for a building that was not constructed or a work that is now destroyed.

What is excluded from CONA? In general, CONA does not include records for objects in natural history or scientific collections, although there are exceptions for works of particularly fine craftsmanship that are of the type collected by art museums. CONA does not include names of musical or dramatic art, most names of films, and titles of literature. CONA does not include records for corporate bodies (although the building that houses the corporate body would be included, even if it has the same name as the corporate body).