The Use and Development of Object Name Thesauri Phil Carlisle

Overview Who am I? What do I do? What can I do for you What can you do for me?

Data Standards Unit Originally set up in 1996 by the Royal Commission on the Historical Monuments of England (RCHME) Based at the NMR Remit: To develop data standards for the wider heritage sector including Museums, Libraries and Archives and Local Government Historic Environment Records

Standards RCHME/EH Oracle Databases –AMIE –LBS –RSM Thesauri/Controlled vocabularies Data Standards –MIDAS Heritage –WHS Data Standard

Controlling the wor(l)d! What is a thesaurus? –Hierarchical –Equivalent –Associative Enables the user to index at either a broad or narrow level Standardizes the vocabulary in use Makes people feel safe (and sometimes very frustrated!) Enables interoperability between systems by sharing common data

Standardizing the world All thesauri conform to British and International standards (BS5723 and ISO 2788) BS8723 New ISO standard based on BS8723 in development

What’s available? Archaeological objects Monument Types Aircraft Maritime Craft Cargo Materials –Building Materials –British Museum Object Materials

What’s available? (2) Railway Object Names Waterways Object Names Evidence Events Time/Periods

Free! All our thesauri are freely available under licence. csv, SKOS Online browser Regular updates EHKOS

Archaeology Terminology Working Group Set up to develop an object names thesaurus for the museum community Members from: –mda (now collections trust) –National Museums and Galleries of Wales –Biab –RCHME (now English Heritage) –HERs –Museum of London –British Museum Published in 1998 and online

Archaeological Objects Thesaurus Misnamed! Over 2500 terms Covers man-portable objects Built in to the exeGesIS SDM HBSMR software Currently under revision for proposed second edition. –Pottery forms –Lithic implements Multilingual –Basis for the Tesauro Regionale Patrimonio (LAm Spanish from Chile) –Dutch –German

Other working groups Railway terminology WG Waterways Thesaurus WG Data Standards Working Party which became the Forum on Information Standards in Heritage CIDOC Archaeological Sites WG

Future Work Re-establish the DSWP Develop multilingual thesauri Provide thesauri in BS8723 XML interchange format

Contacts Phil Carlisle Thesauri: EHKOS: