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The following glossary is composed of terms that are defined
specifically for the context of the Guide to the Description of Architectural
Drawings. Names of categories and vocabulary terms for categories are
excluded below, since they can be found in the text of the guidelines.
Access
point: A category of information that is designed to be retrievable.
The term is used to distinguish categories designated as retrievable from
those that are for display only (e.g., DESCRIPTIVE NOTE, see descriptive
category). Access points are analogous to an indexed term in a manual
card catalogue or printed book.
Administrative
origin: The person or corporate body responsible for gathering
together and maintaining a group of documents.
Album:
A bound volume or book of drawings, prints, photographs, texts, etc.,
bound as blank pages to which drawings and other media are affixed (compare
with sketchbook).
Architectural
documents: Any medium that refers to or depicts architectural works,
structures, parts of structures, or designs, whether built or unbuilt.
Included are textual documents such as specifications and letters; graphic
documents such as drawings, prints, and photographs; models; and any other
visual media that concern any portion of the built or unbuilt environment.
Subjects may include not only architectural works, but also related subjects
such as furniture, engineering designs, naval architecture, textiles, architectural
ornaments, paper architecture, studies, landscape designs, and stage designs.
Architectural
work: Any subject or built work. It can be a study or a design of a
structure, or the representation of a design as depicted on a drawing,
model, print, or other medium.
Authorities:
See authority control.
Authority
control: Authority control in the context of the Guide pertains
to entities with proper names, i.e., people/corporate bodies, subjects/built
works, and geographic locations. One of the major functions of authority
control is to govern the form and content of proper names in order to ensure
that all references to a given person or subject are collocated. An authority
record may contain not only the preferred name, but all other names for
the person or subject. An expanded authority record can also include contextual
information, e.g., biographical or corporate histories.
Built
work: A structure, component, or space that exists or has existed at
some time in the past. A built work is often the subject of an architectural
drawing, but many subjects were never built. Built works have many of the
same attributes as subjects, and for this reason the categories of information
used to identify and record the characteristics of both are combined (e.g.,
SUBJECT/BUILT WORK Name).
Catalogue
entry: A verbal surrogate for a group of items or for an individual
architectural drawing or other architectural document. A catalogue entry
consists of information recorded in a number of categories (see category
of information).
Category
of information: A distinct piece of information that pertains to an
entity, such as a group, item, subject, built work, person, corporate body,
or geographic location. This may be a concept (e.g., METHOD OF REPRESENTATION/POINT
OF VIEW), a proper name (e.g., MAKER/ORIGIN NAME), or an attribute such
as the date of an item. In the case of an automated system, a category
of information may be equatable to a single field or a group of
related fields (e.g., the elements that must be combined to form a geographic
location). There are two basic types of categories: descriptive
(those which, when combined, form a description of the group or item),
and access points (those which create indices by which the description
may be retrieved).
Core
categories: The basic information necessary to create a minimum catalogue
entry. The Guide distinguishes between core and optional
categories.
Corporate
body: Any organization, association, or collective of two or more people.
Legal incorporation is not a criterion.
Data
structure: The interrelationships of information within a cataloguing
system. At the broadest level, data structure includes definitions of entire
entities, or files (e.g., groups/items, subjects/built works, etc.); the
relationships among entities (e.g., a person can be the architect of a
built work); the categories or attributes that define the entities (e.g.,
an item has a date of execution); and the relationships of categories to
other categories (e.g., the group of three categories within DATE OF EXECUTION;
such categories often can repeat together within an entry). Data structure
in automated systems most often takes the form of a flat file structure
or a relational file structure.
Descriptive
category: A category of information that is free from terminology control,
that is, expressed as free text. It is intended to be read as part of the
catalogue entry once the entry has been retrieved. It is not meant to be
used for retrieval (compare with access point).
Entity:
A thing of significance about which information needs to be known or
held. In the context of the Guide the principal conceptual entities
are groups/items, subjects/built works, people/corporate bodies, and geographic
locations. Bibliography is an ancillary entity.
Field:
A basic unit of a computerized record. A field is a space reserved
for the recording of a particular, predetermined category of information.
The placing of information in fields imposes a data structure on
the contents of a file which makes them more readily retrievable.
Flat
file structure: A computerized file in which the fields that make up
a record are held in a single file. Files of this type tend to be relatively
simple to use but are not well suited to applications where much of the
information is hierarchical and/or where multiple occurrences of fields
are required (compare relational file structure).
Format
control: Format control is used to ensure uniformity of syntax and
punctuation. This aspect of terminology control is applicable to most types
of information.
Free
text: Natural language prose, often unstructured. In an automated system,
free-text fields are for qualification and display of the contents of separate
fields designated as access points (see also descriptive category).
Groups:
An aggregate of items that share a common history. Groups are defined
by repositories, and they often have several subgroups established according
to archival principles of provenance. A catalogue record will correspond
to one level of a group, be it the top or whole group or one of the parts,
such as a series.
Index:
An index can be any of the following: a written or printed list of
terms, names, dates, etc., usually in alphabetical or numerical order;
a number of file cards arranged in an ordered sequence; a structured computerized
data file. In the context of the Guide, the purpose of a data file
is to allow a catalogue--whether printed, manual, or computerized--to be
searched for particular types of information (e.g., by proper names, concepts,
dates, themes, etc.).
Item:
Any physically integral item, such as a drawing, volume, document,
sheet, or sketchbook.
Maker:
The person who physically created an item (as distinct from the person
who designed the subject depicted, e.g., the architect).
Multiples:
Prints, photographs, or items in other media that can be created in
multiples through graphic reproduction.
Optional
categories: Categories of information that complement core categories;
when these are provided, a fuller, more detailed entry is achieved.
Preferred
term: When a manual or automated catalogue requires that all
variations of a word or name be cross-referenced to one and only one word
or name, the latter is considered to be given favor. In such systems, users
must look for the concept or entity under that preferred form if they wish
to find all the related information available in the catalogue.
Record:
The unit of a file. A computerized file is made up of a number of records,
each of which is in turn made up of fields.
Recursive
relationship: A relationship between information held in a field, group
of fields, or complete record and information of the same type held in
one or more other occurrences of that record, or part thereof. An example
is the relationship between authority records for an architectural firm
and its successor firm(s).
Relational
file structure: A computerized file in which the fields that combine
to make up a record are held in a number of files, or tables. This type
of structure is well suited to applications that require the ability to
relate and combine pieces of information held in a number of files for
purposes of both searching and retrieval. In a relational structure any
hierarchical relationships between elements of records can be modeled explicitly
and reproduced in the structure. (In flat files these relationships are
implicit.) A relational data structure also allows for multiple occurrences
of individual fields or groups of fields (see also flat file structure).
Retrieval:
In this context, the recovery of information from storage. The retrievability
of information is determined to a large extent by the care which has been
taken to make it retrievable through such means as terminology control
and the design of data structure.
Sketchbook:
A volume of drawings, watercolors, or works in other media applied
directly to bound supports or pages.
Subject:
That which is depicted on an architectural drawing or other document.
It can represent a design, an exercise, or an architectural work, built
or unbuilt.
Terminology
control: The various means or methods by which information is expressed
with consistency. The Guide defines three such distinct methods
for the control of terminology: format control, vocabulary control,
and authority control.
Vocabulary
control: Vocabulary control refers to generic terminology,
or common nouns and adjectives, e.g., isometric projection. Various
mechanisms may be employed to ensure that the same word is used whenever
such a concept is made an access point. These range from simple word lists
from which a cataloguer/researcher must select, to thesauri in which words
are arranged in a structured order and are related to other words (e.g.,
synonyms and broader/narrower words). In order to provide guidelines for
the controlling of vocabulary, the Guide suggests ADAG-developed
word lists in a few cases (see, for example, PURPOSE (BROAD)). In addition
to these lists, reference is made to the Art and Architecture Thesaurus
as one possible control for vocabularies within appropriate information
categories.
Volumes:
Volumes are bound albums and sketchbooks, the contents of which may
or may not vary in the subjects depicted, technique, and media. Only volumes
that are currently bound are included in this classification, since
levels of description in core cataloguing are delimited by the current
physical integrity of items. Reconstructions of historical volumes are
not included for this reason, except as a note category (see RELATED ITEMS).
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