Monday, November 9, 2015

CCO Titles

Title that complies with CCO Rules:




Title: Photograph (Albumen Print) of Annie Rogers and Mary Jackson as Queen Eleanor and Fair Rosamund, by C. L. Dodgson (Lewis Carroll), July 3, 1863

Reasoning: 

It appears the Museum of the History of Science does not include a linked Work Type field in their catalog records on the website.[1] The inclusion of "Photograph (Albumen Print)" in the title immediately makes the search more accessible to the user. Because the Work Type field does not appear, I included it in the title per CCO standards.[2] Also noted in the Descriptive Titles section of Cataloging Cultural Objects, is to, "refer to named or anonymous figures, ... if they are known."[3] The inclusion of Bertram Rogers's note with the donation of the item names both figures photographed (as well as the characters they are representing) and the photographer.[4] 

Interestingly enough, C. L. Dodgson's LC authority heading is Lewis Carroll, so I was pleased to find that included in the title as well. 

Title that does not comply with CCO Rules:


    

Old Title: Untitled (self-portrait in library)
New Title: Silver gelatin photograph, Degas, Edgar, 1834-1917. Self-portrait, Seated in Library circa 1856

According to CCO, "Do not used the term untitled unless the creator has deliberately named the work Untitled."[5] The use of parenthesis does help the user, slightly, but since the subject name is not included in the title, a search for "self-portrait in library" could bring up many, many images. 

I followed CCO standards for keeping the capitalization and punctuation the same as found in LC Authorities, as well as general standards for capitalization and abbreviation.[6]

I don't know if the LC Authority name for Degas is entirely necessary, but I included it anyway. Given that Harvard Art Museum has more searchable fields than Oxford's Museum of the History of Science, the full detail of Work Type, LC Authority and date are not absolutely necessary in the title when searching for this particular photograph within their digitized collection. However, a search for this image outside of harvardartmuseum.org would be incredibly difficult without more information in the title, so I leaned toward "too much information" and included it within this assignment. 

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[1] Museum of the History of Science, "MHS Collection Search Database," http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collections/imu-search-page/
[2] Murtha Baca, Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images (Chicago: American Library Association, 2006), 62.
[3] ibid., 63.
[4] Museum of the History of Science, "Narrative: Bertram Rogers's Note," http://www.mhs.ox.ac.uk/collections/search/display-narrative/?irn=12252&index=3
[5] Murtha Baca, Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images (Chicago: American Library Association, 2006), 66.
[6] ibid., 58-59.

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