Home
Preface
Outline of the Categories of Information
Introduction
Building a Common Framework for Catalogue Entries
Implementing a Common Framework
Introduction
Organization of the Guidelines
Groups/Items
Subjects/Built Works
People/Corporate Bodies
Geographic Locations
Bibliographic Sources
Introduction
Group Entries
Volume (Sketchbook) Entry
Item Entries
Glossary
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
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A Guide to the Description of Architectural Drawings


People/Corporate Bodies Categories:

Biographical/Corporate History


Biographical/Corporate Descriptive Note
Life Role(s)
Locus/Location*
Descriptive Date of Existence
Earliest Date of Existence
Latest Date of Existence



Life Role(s)

Roles can be specific to a context (the part a person played in the making of an item) or more generalized (the major life role of an individual, such as author). Specific roles of people and corporate bodies are recorded in the appropriate contexts (Maker or Administrative Origin in an item entry). General, or life, roles are part of a person's biography or a corporate body's history and belong, therefore, to People/Corporate Bodies authority records.


Examples:



NAME:


Urban VIII


LIFE ROLE(S):


pope


NAME:


Parker & Unwin


LIFE ROLE(S):


architectural firm


Relationships to Other Entities

Relationships of people and corporate bodies to items, works, and other people and corporate bodies can be expressed by naming the entity involved, and then characterizing the nature of the relationship or role. [1]


Examples:



NAME:


Francisco de Hollanda


ROLE (BROAD):


maker
Roles (context-specific)


Role (Narrow):


compiler


Related Group/Item:


Madrid, El Escorial, Real Monasterio de San Lorenzo, Biblioteca, A/e ij 6


Name:


Latrobe, Benjamin Henry


Related Role:


architect


Related Subject/Built Work:


Decatur House


Name:


Hearst, William Randolph


Related Role:


client


Related Subject/Built Work:


La Casa Grande


Name:


Howe, John H.


Role (Broad):


maker


Role (Narrow):


draftsman


Related Corporate Body:


Frank Lloyd Wright


Roles can be expressed in varying degrees of specificity, from broader to narrower terms. For example, under architects, the AAT lists several specialties, such as landscape architects and naval architects. These narrower terms reflect the subject of the architect's design work, but other narrow terms reflect different considerations, such as the architect's position within a project (supervising architects ) or the employer (government architects ), for example. Such concepts are often covered, however, in other categories, and therefore may not need to be described within the Life Role(s) category. When there is a need to qualify or give a narrower term for a life role, it is possible to indicate it in the Descriptive Name category under People/Corporate Bodies, as shown in Groups/Items.
Categories that record the names of people and corporate bodies


Some key biographical and corporate information is necessary for retrieval of architectural documents. For example, the habitual working places of makers (Locus of activity) are key to the retrieval of items of a given geographic school. Therefore many of these categories are considered core in group and item cataloguing.

The more central the person or corporate body is to the making of the group or item being catalogued, the more important it is to provide a biographical/corporate history. Generally, makers should always have authority entries.

The illustration below represents a hypothetical data entry screen. The smaller boxes within indicate individual fields, or groups of fields, that can repeat within the screen, and/or which reside in an authority file and appear for purpose of data entry and display. In this example, the fields for name and role repeat in order to allow for the inclusion of alternative (non-preferred) forms of names and to permit more than one life role. The locus/location (one or more) could be recorded here but held in the Geographic Locations file. The screen does not, however, display any linkages made to the Groups/Items, Subjects/Built Works, and Bibliographic Sources authority records.
Sample data entry screen for a People 

authority file


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Category: Biographical/Corporate Descriptive Note

Definition:
A discursive note about a person's life or the history of a corporate body.

Discussion:
This category provides biographical information or corporate history, when available, for any person or corporate body recorded in an authority file. It can therefore enhance the researcher's ability to find related material and to understand the context of the documents retrieved. Group-level cataloguing may emphasize administrative history in order to clarify the reasons for the generation of documents and their use by related agencies.

It is important to record any core information contained in the descriptive note in the appropriate categories.


Example of a Biographical Descriptive Note:

[for Henry Flitcroft, England, 1697\x971769]

Son of a gardener to King William III, Flitcroft was apprenticed to a joiner in 1711. By 1720 he had become draughtsman and architectural assistant to Lord Burlington. For Burlington he surveyed the site of the new dormitory at Westminster School, 1720, supervised the works at Tottenham Park, Wiltshire, c.1721, and prepared the drawings published by William Kent as the Designs of Inigo Jones, 1727. Burlington procured him a clerkship of the works at Whitehall, Westminster and St James, and he remained an important figure in the Office of Works until his death. His architectural works, conservatively in the Palladian mould, include the church of St Giles-in-the-Fields, London, 1731\x9734; work at Wentworth Woodhouse, Yorkshire, ca. 1735\x9770; St Olave's church, Southwark, 1738\x9739 (demolished, 1926), and the rebuilding of Woburn Abbey, Bedfordshire, 1747\x9761.


Example of a Corporate Descriptive Note:



The Public Buildings Service was created in 1949 as part of the General Services Administration. An important direct predecessor of the Public Buildings Service was the Office of the Supervising Architect of the Treasury Department. The Office of the Supervising Architect was established in 1853 as part of the Construction Branch in the Treasury Department. This branch had responsibility for directing the building activities of the Federal government outside the District of Columbia. The major duties of the Construction Branch were to select and purchase building sites, make plans and estimates for buildings, supervise construction, and preserve related records and models. Starting in 1865, the Supervising Architect acted as the head of the branch. At an unknown date, the Construction Branch became known as the Office of the Supervising Architect, a unit of the Secretary's Office. In 1933, an Executive Order transferred the Office of the Supervising Architect to the Procurement Division. The Public Works Branch of this division took over the responsibilities of the former Office of the Supervising Architect. The Public Works Branch later became the Public Buildings Branch. In 1939, the functions of the Public Buildings Branch of the Treasury were transferred to the Public Buildings Administration (PBA) which had been established as part of the Federal Works Agency. By 1949, the PBA was abolished and its functions transferred to the Public Buildings Service of the General Services Administration.


Implementation:
descriptive
optional
single occurrence

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Category: Life Role(s)

Definition:
The major professional and/or social roles played by a person in his/her lifetime or the major roles and activities of a corporate body. These are often broader and more inclusive than the roles played in the context of a given group/item, subject, or built work. In the case of entries for groups or items, the role is defined as the specific action of the person or corporate body within the context of the group or item. For example, a person may be the draftsman for a drawing, although his life profession may be architect.

Discussion:
The recording of general occupations and social roles greatly enhances the ability to retrieve information in innovative ways. For instance, to be able to find all items related to academies would save researchers the time-consuming task of doing so by querying by all the names of such corporate bodies. To be able to sort records for architectural subjects by the professions or occupations of clients could yield, for example, new information about patterns of patronage.

This category is different from roles in other contexts, since it is an overall lifetime role, not the role taken in relation to a given item or Subject/Built work. For example, in an entry for a drawing by Frank Lloyd Wright representing the Guggenheim Museum (the subject/built work), the client (Related Role under Related People/Corporate Bodies) would be the Guggenheim Museum (as a corporate body). However, in the corporate body authority record for the same institution, the larger corporate role (Life Role) would be museum.

Given the wide scope of architectural practice, a very broad range of possible relationships can be recorded in connection with groups and items. The scope may be imagined as a set of concentric circles, with the maker and administrative origin in the center. Certain related persons and corporate bodies may be more important than others. For example, it may be important to record architects, designers, authors, bishops, cardinals, popes, developers, engineers, planners, surveyors, doges, dukes, kings, regents, antiquaries, collectors, donors, patrons, preservationists. Other people, such as craftsmen, may be identified by documents concerning built works, but recording them may be of little retrieval value to most researchers. Examples of low-priority roles are glaziers, inlayers, wood-carvers, brickmakers, blasters, carpenters, slingers, masons, plasterers, scaffolders.

While this is not a core category, repositories are urged to supplement authority records with this information when it is available.

Terminology:
Appropriate terms may be found in the AAT' s People (HG) and Organizations (HN) hierarchies. Other hierarchies may contain terms that would seem to be appropriate, but caution should be taken. For example, for building types that are based on corporate roles or institutional function, such terms are in the Single Built Works (RK). [2] This is true for museums, libraries, archives, churches, stores, banks, etc. According to the AAT, it is acceptable to use such building types as terms for corporate bodies. Cataloguers and researchers will need to be aware of the different meanings assigned to terms, however. To record a Subject/Built work as a church is quite different from recording a corporate body as a church. For example, a researcher may wish to retrieve all instances of patronage by churches during a certain date range and in a given geographic region. This question cannot be answered by retrieving churches in the area of Subjects/Built Works because the result would simply be representations of churches as single built works by function. It would not address the structures which were designed and/or built for churches as corporate bodies, such as campsites, diocesan headquarters, newspaper plants, etc.

Implementation:
access point
terminology-controlled
optional
repeatable

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Category: Locus/Location*

Definition:


People : The locus or loci of activity, or habitual working place(s) of the individual. A locus may be a country, a region, or a specific locale.

Corporate bodies : The geographic place where a firm or institution is or was located or where it was habitually active.

Discussion:
This category records locus of activity or location of a person or corporate body, rather than a place of execution of a group or item. The habitual working locale of a maker often influences his or her approach to design, style, and problem-solving, and is therefore deemed more significant for retrieval than where an item was made, since draftsmen have a tendency to travel widely, and the place of execution may not be ascertainable anyway.

An additional function of this category is to help to qualify the identity of the person or corporate body in question. Because names are not in themselves unique, sometimes the only way to distinguish one entity from another is to provide Locus/Location and Dates of Existence as additional qualifying information.

If a person or corporate body had more than one locus/location or if the exact locus or location, e.g., city, is unknown, the information can be generalized up to the level of country (e.g., for Montreal, Ottawa, and Vancouver one can generalize to Canada). If more than one country is pertinent, it is usually sufficient to provide principal loci.

This is a core category for originators and makers of groups and items because of the need for consistent retrieval of individuals and corporate bodies by their habitual workplaces or locations, e.g., all items by Piedmontese draftsmen,or all repositories of architectural documents in Portugal.


Example:

[The principal city of practice for the following architect is unknown]



Name:


Young, Witherden


Locus:


England


Implementation:
access point
authority-controlled: Geographic Locations
optional
hierarchical
repeatable

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Category: Descriptive Date of Existence

Definition:
A natural-language expression of the dates of existence for the person or corporate body. This is a span of time, beginning with birth or formation, and ending with death or cessation of association. In many instances, exact dates are not known. DESCRIPTIVE DATE OF EXISTENCE allows for approximations, qualifications, and other conventional expressions.

Discussion:
This category retains nuances and expressions of doubt, while the following two categories function as retrieval dates. See Date of Execution, under Groups/Items, for conventions for exact or certain dates, as well as uncertain dates.

Typical uncertain dates for people may be expressed in a number of forms:


Examples:

last quarter 12th century\x97probably mid-1230s [for the life dates of Villard de Honnecourt]
1444?\x9711.IV.1514 [life dates for Donato Bramante, whose birthdate is surmised from Vasari's statement that Bramante was 70 years old at his death]
born 26.IV.1917 [for the living architect Ieoh Ming Pei]
died 1863 [for a client whose birth date is unknown]


It is sometimes important to list other dates associated with a person's life, as with the reign of a pope or monarch. These may be recorded in this category, though only birth and death dates are access points, e.g.,


Descriptive Date of Existence:


23.IX.63 B.C.\x9719.VIII.14; reigned as emperor 27 B.C.\x9714


The following is a descriptive date for a corporate body:
26.V.1917\x97I.1923 [for the administrative origin and dissolution of a corporate body, the American Expeditionary Forces, War Department, United States Government]

Descriptive dates for corporate bodies may clarify the meaning of the dates given, for example: founded 1904\x97dissolved 1936 [for the Toronto-based architectural firm, Wickson and Gregg].

All descriptive dates may be further discussed in the Biographical/Corporate History Descriptive Note, e.g.,


Descriptive Date of Existence:


active by 1880\x97present


Descriptive Note:


This company was active by at least 1880, when the sons of Elisha Graves Otis, Charles and Norton, are documented to have been active in a company based on their father's promotion of his steam engine-driven "safety hoist.''


Implementation:
descriptive
optional
single occurrence

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Category: Earliest Date of Existence

Definition:
The earliest possible date of birth or beginning of existence for a person or corporate body.

Discussion:
When only the terminal date (of death or cessation of a firm) is known, the beginning date (of birth or beginning of activity) must be estimated. This enhances reliable retrieval by date spans.

Dates are treated uniformly throughout the Guide in order to facilitate retrieval. For guidelines see Earliest Date in Groups/Items.

Implementation:
access point
format-controlled: numeric
optional
single occurrence

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Category:Latest Date of Existence

Definition:
The latest possible date by which a person died or by which a corporate body ceased to exist.

Discussion:
Dates are treated uniformly throughout the Guide in order to facilitate consistency of retrieval. For guidelines see Latest Date in Groups/Items.

It should be possible to retrieve records for living people and existing corporate bodies. Some mechanism to allow such retrieval should therefore be in place, such as specifying 9999 as Latest Date.

Implementation:
access point
format-controlled: numeric
optional
single occurrence

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