Abbreviations in Metadata

Acronyms and abbreviations are very helpful especially in the case of having metadata on small object such as slides. While you can have a catalog pointing to the object's location, the slide itself still needs to be labeled so that it can be organized. Slides have a limited amount of space on them, and while you can attach papers to them, or put papers next to them in a slide binder or box, eventually the paper and slide will get separated. For a slide to be viewed it must be able to stand alone.

It is, therefore, important to have certain basic information on the slide itself. The most obvious information is what's in the picture. However, even if the picture is self-explanatory, -- e.g. taken in a zoo, with the zebra sign in the foreground and a zebra in the background -- it's only labeled as to what it is, not its context within the collection. For example, without a categorization number or some sort of accession number, how would we differentiate it from other zebra images? How would we shelve it or organize it? And how would we find it again, in a book or box of other slides?

Besides having some basic information of what is in the picture, an accession number and a classification designation will also be needed. If the slide as been added to a digital database, it probably has an additional reference number for that. Some slides may also have a year and a photographer and a location note. All very helpful in case a database, catalog, or other metadata tool is lost, outdated or corrupted.

Think about what this slide might now look like. Let's take an example slide of a flower. Numbers 8983, 1990, and 02-2156 appear on the slide. Letter-type writing included: Lily F., Aletris lutea, L12, and FL. On the back was a stamp of a photographer. Confused? I was too. In fact, I had seen a slide similar to this and assumed the Lily F. refered to a photographer -- which unfortunately was different than the photographer mentioned on the back. Not until looking at several similar slides and then seeing one labeled Rose F. in the same way, did I realize that the F. stood for "family" (as in belonging to the Lily Family and the Rose Family) not a last name. Most of the slides in this collection had the scientific names Liliaceae and Rosaceae. This deviation was confusing. It made me think twice about the types of abbreviations on slides and their consistency.

While just having all the relevant information on the slide is helpful, it is not always enough. The best scenario would be to label each piece of metadata, e.g. accession: xxxx, photographer: xxx, year: xxx, location: xxx, etc. On a slide, with little space, however, that is not feasible. Sometimes it's a challenge to fit the scientific name alone!

Tips to cut the confusion

• A consistent location on the slide can be helpful. If the accession number is always in the bottom left, it will be easier to identify. The family name can always appear on the left side. And so on.
  
• Abbreviations can help. If the accession number always begins with an A, or the year always begins with a Y, it might make it clearer what each piece of information is.
• Formatting can also be a clue. The 2-digit-hyphen-4-digit accession number, if always formatted that way, can be a clue. Consciously selecting special formats for different information types can be a helpful clue.
  
• Finally, having a table to cross reference abbreviations is also necessary. BBNP is a much more helpful location note than TX because it designates Big Bend National Park -- which gives a specific part of TX, a specific city, and perhaps almost geographic coordinates. It's not as obvious as TX = Texas, however, and without a cross reference, may be less helpful in the long run if it can never be decoded.

Metadata is important in preservation, because if there is no information about when, where, or what the image is of, it is almost as if we were unable to preserve the image in the first place.

If we are...

• unable to organize it and give it a place in the collection
• unable to talk about it in relation to the work it was intended for (e.g. botanical images intended for botanical research)
• unable talk about how old it is, who made it, where it was made, or put it into a historical context
  

...then we have not been stewards of the item. We cannot provide adequate access to it. And we have not preserved it.


Have you had to do a bit of decoding in your work to determine what something is, how old it is, or other information about it? Were you able to discover the "answer" you were looking for? What additional tools may have been helpful in your quest?