CCO Title construction

Photo with CCO compliant title:

Title: “The Fire” from Lafayette Square

The title follows the capitalization guidelines as mentioned in Rule 1.2.2.1, the descriptive title rules mentioned in Rule 1.2.2.2.3 especially the use of proper names. The title adheres to Rule 1.2.2.2.6 which describes the title conventions for when both the whole and a part are cataloged. In this case since the photograph is part of the whole collection on the 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, the title of the part does not need to define which fire it is referring to or where Lafayette Square is. It is also possible that “The Fire” was written on the back of the photograph or was a contemporary name for the 1906 fire.  Lafayette Square is the name of a park in San Francisco as stated in the Geographic names information system. While the LCSH term for the fire is “San Francisco Earthquake and Fire, Calif. 1906” since the collection is called “The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake and Fire Digital Collection” including the full name at the item level feels unnecessary.

Photo without CCO compliant title:

Old Title: JAPAN. Tokyo. 2007. I came to Tokyo for the first time in the spring of 2006. My girlfriend Sara had got a job there, and so I decided to move with her to explore the city in which she had grow up. It was a society I had never experienced before, one of which I had little knowledge and to which I had no real sense of relationship. Initially I felt invisible. Each day I would walk the streets without anyone making eye-contact with me. Everyone seemed to be heading somewhere, it was as they had no need of communication. Most mornings I would take the Chuo-line from Nakano to Shinjuko, and even though the train would be packed with salary-men and school girls in uniform, I rarely heard a word being spoken. Though Tokyo and its people seemed unreachable, I felt drawn to the tight and confined reality of the metropolis. My feeling of isolation and loneliness was overwhelming; it was something I had to find a way to change. And so I began taking my pocket camera out with me on the streets and in the parks. Rather than focusing on the impressively tall buildings and the eternal swarm of people , I began searching for the narrow paths and the individual human presence in the city that felt both attractive and repulsive at the same time. I wanted to meet the people , to get involved in the city, to make Tokyo mine. JAPAN. Tokyo. 2007

New Title: Display of Items in Tokyo (Japan), Probably Buoys

My constructed title conforms to Rule 1.2.2.2.4 which allows for uncertainty in descriptive titles, which is the case here since no image level information is provided. Buoys is the relevant LCSH term and so is Tokyo (Japan). It addresses Rule 1.2.2.1 which describes capitalization, and Rule 1.2.2.2.3 which describes constructing descriptive titles when the current title is too long. The provided title would work better as a description for the collection as whole, as it contains no information about the work in question besides the date and location. I chose not to include the year because it would make the title too disjointed.

Rules can be found in Part II, Chapter 1 of Cataloging Cultural Objects