User Manual - Glossary

Glossary 

Acquisition: Documenting and managing the addition of objects and associated information to the collections of the organization and their possible accession to the permanent collections.

Authority: In short, an authority is a "compilations of authorized terms or headings used by a single organization or consortium in cataloging, indexing, or documentation." [1]An authority may be made up of one or more vocabularies (e.g. a local Person vocabulary and an outside source such as the Getty's Union List of Artist Names). See the Vocabulary and Authority Overview on the project wiki for a full definition for an extended discussion of authority use in collecting institutions.

Calendar date: A specific day, month, and year.

Collection object: A physical or digital object (such as a cuneiform tablet, a dried plant specimen, or a digital video recording), that is considered to be an object in the collection(s) of the organization.

Controlled list: A controlled list is a limited type of vocabulary used to control terminology. Controlled lists tend to be made up of unique terms that are equal in granularity/specificity. Examples of controlled lists include departments in an institution, currencies (dollars, pounds), or relationship types.

Deaccession: Formally removing an object from the collection. Objects may be removed for various reasons (e.g. no longer fitting a collecting policy, something no longer working), and via various methods (transfer to another institution, sale, etc.).

Group of fields: Two or more fields that are related to one another. For example, an object's title, the translation of that title, and the title's currency are a group of fields. Groups of fields may be repeatable.

Identification number: A unique number identifying a procedure, object or specimens, including any separated parts.

Intake (Object entry): The management and documentation of the receipt of objects and associated information which are not currently part of the collections. Any object which does not currently have an object number assigned by the receiving organization must be dealt with within this procedure.

Predictive text search: An input method that returns search results based on the first few characters entered by a user. CollectionSpace uses predictive text search interfaces in fields tied to controlled vocabularies.

Primary and secondary tabs: The CollectionSpace information architecture supports easy access to records related to the record a user is working with via a primary/secondary tab structure. When a user enters a record of any kind, s/he will see both the "primary" tab, and a series of "secondary" tabs. From the secondary tab, the user has the ability to see and edit related record information.

Procedural record: Records used to capture and manage information that revolves around a specific collections management workflow such as intake, acquisition, loans, or cataloging.

Repeatable field: A field that can hold multiple values. Additional values may be created or deleted by the user. Fields may repeat singly or as groups.

Vocabulary: A vocabulary is a body of knowledge represented by language. It answers the question - "How do we talk (or write) about this particular subject area?" Glossaries, dictionaries, thesauri, and word lists are all examples of vocabularies. Most vocabularies focus on a special subject area (e.g. a glossary of geographical terms) or audience (e.g., a dictionary for the architecture and construction trades).

Structured vocabularies are collections of words and phrases (called terminology) that are structured to show relationships between terms and concepts. One of the tasks of a structured vocabulary is to allow better retrieval be it in a card catalog or a computerized database. These vocabularies may be applied as "controlled vocabularies," where a given term (such as the "descriptor" or "preferred term") is used consistently to represent a given concept.[2]