Patricia Harpring's book on controlled vocabularies is now available online

The Getty Research Institute just announced that Patricia Harpring’s Introduction to Controlled Vocabularies which was published in hard copy earlier this year, is now also available as an online edition at this site:

http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting_research/standards/intro_controlled_vocab/index.html

It is billed as “an online publication that defines the characteristics, scope, and uses of controlled vocabularies for art and cultural materials, and explains how vocabularies should be integrated in cataloging systems and utilized for indexing and retrieval.”

The Getty does a lot of work with controlled vocabularies, so it’s great to see the research institute compliment the vocabularies with this online  publication.  Patricia is the Managing Editor of the Getty Vocabulary Program, so she writes with an expert knowledge of vocabulary development and descriptive standards.  It is an extremely useful reference source.

Here’s the table of contents:

Home

Foreword

Acknowledgments

1. Controlled Vocabularies in Context

2. What Are Controlled Vocabularies?

3. Relationships in Controlled Vocabularies

4. Vocabularies for Cultural Objects

5. Using Multiple Vocabularies

6. Local Authorities

7. Constructing a Vocabulary or Authority

8. Indexing with Controlled
Vocabularies

9. Retrieval Using Controlled Vocabularies

Appendix: Selected Vocabularies and Other Sources for Terminology

Glossary

Selected Bibliography

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