1. What is this collection about? Issues in analysing collection subjects Ritchie Thomson Presented at the Electric Connections 2006 seminar, Dundee

2. Overview Collection-level description Subject retrieval of collections Determining the subject Examples

3. Collection-level description Metadata describing a collection as a whole  Not in terms of its constituent items That’s what a catalogue does Applied to collections of all types and sizes  National Library of Scotland collection  Aberdeen Harbour Board photographic archive  Burrell collection

4. Subject retrieval Subject retrieval at the collection level is required to “landscape” information environments by topic, before item searching is carried out Which collections should I search to find items on my subject of interest?  I do not want to waste time looking in a natural history collection for Greek urns!

5. Subject retrieval in SCONE For subject-based collections  Library of Congress Subject Headings Text retrieval of controlled “keywords” Albeit in American English  Dewey Decimal Classification Numeric classification applied in many libraries; designed for item-level retrieval Identified by the HILT project as a tool for landscaping and interoperability with subject topics

6. Is it feasible? At some point, a collection may be determined to be so general that analysis is meaningless  It’s about everything, or too many things  The tipping-point But if a collection is about one topic, or a few, we can legitimately ask  What is this collection about?  What is the subject(s) of the collection?

7. What is the subject of the collection? 1 The subject of the items in the collection?  Yes, but  A collection of Scottish poetry may contain no item about poetry, only examples of it Subject: Scottish poetry The historical context of the items?  The contents of a National Trust property Subject: Social history of Scotland of the 19 th century

8. What is the subject of the collection? 2 The cultural context of the items?  Objects owned, used, or just touched by Robert Burns Subject: Robert Burns The biographical context of the items?  The personal library of a famous person Subject: Sir Walter Scott

9. What is the question? Why does this collection exist? What is the provenance of this collection? Why do people want to access this collection? Where does this collection fit in the wider context? What does this collection say to me?

10. What’s it like? Sticking jelly to walls with six inch nails … But it seems to work!

14. Thank you! Questions? Answers? See SCONE at  http://scone.strath.ac.uk/service/index.cfm