Glossary of Metadata TermsThe metadata fields used in Cultural Heritage come from the
Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1 with additions for the collection as defined in the metadata guidelines for content contribution.
Alternative title: If the material has been submitted with more than one title, the alternative is also shown.
Attribution: Information about rights held in and over the resource. If marked ‘unknown’, the rights are assumed to lie with the author and/or the repository.
Author: The author or authors of published documents. For example, while a book has one or more authors, a photograph may have one or more photographers, and a poster will have the organization that published or created the poster.
Collection: The intellectual, topical, or contextual grouping of digitized materials within Cultural Heritage where the material resides (you can use this to browse and find materials in the collection).
Contributor: The institution or individual that contributed the materials to be digitized.
Coverage (spatial): The country or countries of origin.
Coverage (temporal): The time period covered by the material.
Data last modified: The date on which the data in Cultural Heritage was last updated.
Date: The creation or publication date of the material.
Description: May include but is not limited to: an abstract, table of contents, a graphical representation, or a free-text account of the resource.
Format extent (length/size): For documents, the number of pages.
Language: The language of the document. The Cultural Heritage collection contains documents in several original languages (English, Afrikaans, French, Portuguese, and so on).
Publisher: For documents that have been published, the publisher.
Relation: A reference to a related resource.
Repository: The partner institution that provided the material for digitization.
Resource Type: The physical format of this material, such as book, article, painting, drawing, photograph, poster, and so on. Note that this might be implied rather than displayed directly.
Source: A combination of collection and repository information.
Title: This is the text shown as the title for all views of the material in Cultural HeritageSFF/CH .
Topic: One or more topics/subtopics from the intellectual architecture for the content area. You can view the topic hierarchy in ‘Browse’. For a complete list of topics/subtopics see the subsection below.
Resource Types3D Models: Refers to three-dimensional scaled visual representations of physical objects or structures in digital form. The level of represented detail varies and is differentiated on a relative scale as high-, medium- or low- resolution. Surfaces of 3D models are represented by polygons, generally in triangle form.
Aerial Photographs: Photographs of the earth’s surface taken from an aircraft or other airborne platform, typically for the purpose of generating maps using photogrammetric methods.
Articles: Literary compositions prepared for publication as an independent portion of a journal, magazine, newspaper, encyclopedia, or other work.
Bibliographies: Lists of books or other textual materials arranged in some logical order giving brief information about the works, such as author, date, publisher, and place of publication; may be works by a particular author, or on a particular topic.
Books: Collections of wood or ivory tablets, sheets of paper, parchment, or similar material, that are blank, written on, or printed, and are strung or bound together; commonly many folded and bound sheets containing continuous printing or writing; when printed, a bound volume, or a volume of some size.
Dissertations: Written treatises or records of discourse on a subject, usually prepared and presented as the final requirement for a degree or diploma; typically based on independent research and giving evidence of the candidate's mastery of the subject and scholarly method.
Digital Images: Digitally encoded images stored and displayed as “picture elements”, better known as pixels. Digital images can be generated directly by means of a digital camera or by scanning hard copy images.
Drawings: Visual works produced by drawing, which is the application of lines on a surface, often paper, by using a pencil, pen, chalk, or some other tracing instrument to focus on the delineation of form rather than the application of color.
Engravings: Used specifically for prints obtained from an engraved printing surface. Historically, has sometimes been used loosely to refer to all prints.
Façade Views: Dimensionally correct projections of rendered, laser scan-derived 3D models on reference planes, which are typically parallel to building facades. Façade views show building details and outlines and are visually enhanced by the addition of equidistance, or contour lines, indicating equal distance from the reference plan.
Field Notes: Notes, often in books, kept by researchers or surveying parties while on site.
Floor Plans: Line drawings showing the layout of an individual floor level of a building. Floor plans are derived from conventional survey methods or by the projection of laser scan point clouds onto a reference plane.
Illustrations: Refers to pictures or diagrams that clarify or provide an example or visualization. They usually accompany a text; the term is most often used to refer to pictures in books or published journal.
Ground Plans: Line drawings showing the layout of buildings by means of plans taken near ground level and showing the foundation and ground floor of the building. They are derived from conventional survey methods or by the projection of laser scan point clouds onto a reference plane. Sometimes enhanced with contour lines, which show areas of equal height.
Individual Laser Scans: Results of laser scanning operations being a collection of xyz- coordinates of points on an object's surface. When displayed on a computer screen point clouds provide a visual impression of the object surface. Individual point clouds of an object can be combined and processed to create a 3D model.
Letters (Correspondence): Pieces of correspondence that are somewhat more formal than memoranda or notes, usually on paper and delivered.
Manuscripts: Handwritten documents; may also be used to distinguish certain documents from published or otherwise printed documents, as in the cases of typed personal letters or a typescript from which printed versions are made.
Maps: Refers to graphic representations of the Earth's surface or parts thereof, including physical features, political boundaries and other thematic content. Each point or feature on the map corresponds to a geographical position according to a scale, projection and reference surface. Maps are generally depicted on a flat medium, such as paper, a wall, or a computer screen. The term may also refer to similar depictions of planets, suns, other heavenly bodies, or areas of the heavens.
Negatives (Photographic): Refers to photographs, usually on a transparent support, in which the tones or colors are reversed from their appearance in nature.
Notes: Brief statements of a fact or experience, written down for review, or as an aid to memory, or to inform someone else; also includes short, informal letters.
Outline Drawings: Dimensionally correct silhouette drawings of buildings including some detail of structures within the outlined areas such as doors and windows. Outline drawings are derived by an automated process by extracting clearly visible line features from 3D laser-scan point clouds. They are not necessarily complete as far as interior detail is concerned and are meant to serve as a general abstracted view of the structure.
Outline Maps: Maps that present just sufficient geographic information to permit the correlation of additional data placed on it.
Paintings: Unique works in which images are formed primarily by the direct application of pigments suspended in oil, water, egg yolk, molten wax, or other liquid, arranged in masses of color, onto a generally two-dimensional surface.
Pastels: Works of art, typically on a paper or vellum support, to which designs are applied using crayons made of ground pigment held together with a binder, typically oil or water and gum.
Panoramas: Pictorial representations with very broad horizontal ranges of view. The term is also used specifically for photographs that show a wide view produced by a panoramic camera or by joining photographs together.
Photogrammetric Images: Analog or digital photographs captured with calibrated amateur cameras or specialized metric cameras.
Photographs: Still images produced from radiation-sensitive materials (sensitive to light, electron beams, or nuclear radiation), generally by means of the chemical action of light on a sensitive film, paper, glass, or metal. It does not include reproductive prints of documents and technical drawings, for which descriptors found under "<reprographic copies>" are more appropriate. Photographs may be positive or negative, opaque or transparent.
Plans Elevations & Sections: Refers to drawings, sketches, or diagrams of any object, made by projection upon a flat surface, usually a horizontal plane. The term is particularly used to refer to drawings or diagrams showing the relative positions of the parts of a building, or of any one floor of a building, projected upon a horizontal plane. The term can also be used for a set of drawings for a project. For general reference to depictions or photographs showing structures or sites seen from directly above, use "plan views." For representations of portions of the Earth's surface use "maps".
Plan Views: Refers to depictions or photographs showing structures or sites seen from directly above. For scaled orthographic drawings specifically, see "Plans (drawings)."
Redrawings: Illustrations depicting rock art drawings.
Renderings: Use for architectural drawings, usually perspectives or elevations, showing shadows, textures, sometimes colors, often executed with watercolor washes, and showing some setting. Intended as visualizations of the full conception of the project.
Rock Art: Use for paintings or carvings worked on living rock.
Rock Engravings: Images carved or inscribed into living rock with relatively linear incisions.
Satellite Images: Digital images produced by imaging the earth’s surface from an earth orbiting platform. Images are generally in digital form and captured by a scanning device. Space born image sensors typically record infrared radiation in addition to visible light.
Slides (Photographs): Positive transparencies in mounts suitable for projection, usually 35mm film in a mount of 2 by 2 inches.
Stereoscopic Photographs: Refers to two images of the same object or scene captured from different positions. This emulates the process of human 3D vision which is, at least partly, based on the fact that the brain receives two separate images of a viewed scene. The effect of three dimensionality can be achieved when viewed through a stereoscope or similar devices.
Tracings: Images made by tracing, which is copying of a transparent or translucent piece of paper, cloth, or other material.
Video Recordings: Used for works presented in the form of a series of pictures carried on photographic film or video tape, presented to the eye in such rapid succession as to make it impossible to distinguish individual images and thus give the illusion of continuous, natural movement.
Watercolors: Refers to two-dimensional works of art, usually on a paper support, to which pigment suspended in water is applied with a brush to create an image or design.
Cultural Heritage TopicsTopics in ‘Cultural Heritage’ were identified and grouped by a panel of subject experts.
Topic areas are grouped into four major categories, each of which have two to seven subtopics. The major topics are ‘Sites’, ‘Cultural Landscapes’, ‘Economy’, and ‘Society’.
The topics and their corresponding subtopics are:
Sites
Architecture
Site Preservation & Conservation
Excavations
Material Culture
Historical Sources
Site Today
Rock Art
Cultural Landscapes
Natural Landscape
Settlement & Land Use
Economy
Peoples
Tangible Heritage
Intangible Heritage
Heritage Management
Wider Connections
Trade (Including Slave Trade)
Cultural Connections
Society
Religion & Belief Systems
Political Organization
Diplomacy & War
Slavery