Hello all, We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about the Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list refers to the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the term type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want to confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was wondering if anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types that are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) or the term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). Thanks for any insights, Al -- Al Bersch Digital Project Coordinator Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 abersch@museumca.org 510-318-8468

At PAHMA, our deployment originally used Term Type for different

Hi Al, At PAHMA, our deployment originally used Term Type for different purposes in different authorities. For persons, we used this field as a "type of person" field (donor, volunteer, collector, etc.), but for most of the other authorities, we used this as a "type of term" field. Given this experience, I highly recommend using Term Type solely as "type of term" (descriptor, alternate) for all of the authorities. To do as we did with persons just led to confusion (because the "type of person" can and does change for many people) and less efficient data entry when creating or editing term records. Michael On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org> wrote: > Hello all, > > We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about the > Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different > authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list refers to > the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term > (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the term > type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want to > confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was wondering > if anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types > that are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) > or the term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). > > Thanks for any insights, > > Al > > -- > Al Bersch > Digital Project Coordinator > Oakland Museum of California > 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 > abersch@museumca.org > 510-318-8468 > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > >

This is confusing to me, too. It seems to me that the options in Term Type for person and citation properly belong in a field outside the term group, in fields called "Person Type" and "Publication Type", respectively. Those options appear to describe the record as a whole, not any particular synonym. The work record is also strange, in that Term Type is free text instead of a controlled list. I actually think the Term Types for place records are appropriate. I'd love to see these get fixed in a future version of CSpace, but it does mean that for existing deployments, data will need to be migrated. Frankly I'm surprised that we don't get more questions about this from our users, but it's possible they don't use Term Type that much, or only use it for certain record types, or like PAHMA, have learned to live with it. If you expect Term Type to be used frequently, I think I'd recommend customizing it to have consistent meaning across the record types. Ray On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org> wrote: > Hello all, > > We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about the > Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different > authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list refers to > the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term > (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the term > type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want to > confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was wondering > if anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types > that are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) > or the term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). > > Thanks for any insights, > > Al > > -- > Al Bersch > Digital Project Coordinator > Oakland Museum of California > 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 > abersch@museumca.org > 510-318-8468 > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > >

 Hello all,

 We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up
 about the Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in
 different authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation,
 the list refers to the type of person, place, or citation, rather
 than the type of term (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for
 term). In Citation, the term type list of citation types would be
 useful for us, but we don't want to confuse things by using this
 term in such different ways. I was wondering if anyone has
 insights here, or if your institutions are using term types that
 are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee,
 Donor) or the term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used
 for term).

 Thanks for any insights,

 Al

 -- 
 Al Bersch
 Digital Project Coordinator
 Oakland Museum of California
 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607
 abersch@museumca.org <mailto:abersch@museumca.org>
 510-318-8468

 _______________________________________________
 Talk mailing list
 Talk@lists.collectionspace.org <mailto:Talk@lists.collectionspace.org>
 http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org

Al, I agree with Ray and Michael. We will do better in the long run by using term type consistently for the type of term in the thesaurus sense (in hopes that it will eventually be made more useful for thesaurus purposes) and adding record-level terms if needed for Organization Type, etc. (though not confusing that with role, which appears in context). I think the cspace demo conflicts with the schema documentation on this. Susan On 05/05/2014 04:56 PM, Ray Lee wrote: > This is confusing to me, too. It seems to me that the options in Term > Type for person and citation properly belong in a field outside the > term group, in fields called "Person Type" and "Publication Type", > respectively. Those options appear to describe the record as a whole, > not any particular synonym. The work record is also strange, in that > Term Type is free text instead of a controlled list. > > I actually think the Term Types for place records are appropriate. > > I'd love to see these get fixed in a future version of CSpace, but it > does mean that for existing deployments, data will need to be > migrated. Frankly I'm surprised that we don't get more questions about > this from our users, but it's possible they don't use Term Type that > much, or only use it for certain record types, or like PAHMA, have > learned to live with it. > > If you expect Term Type to be used frequently, I think I'd recommend > customizing it to have consistent meaning across the record types. > > Ray > > > > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org > <mailto:abersch@museumca.org>> wrote: > > Hello all, > > We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up > about the Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in > different authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, > the list refers to the type of person, place, or citation, rather > than the type of term (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for > term). In Citation, the term type list of citation types would be > useful for us, but we don't want to confuse things by using this > term in such different ways. I was wondering if anyone has > insights here, or if your institutions are using term types that > are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, > Donor) or the term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used > for term). > > Thanks for any insights, > > Al > > -- > Al Bersch > Digital Project Coordinator > Oakland Museum of California > 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 > abersch@museumca.org <mailto:abersch@museumca.org> > 510-318-8468 > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org <mailto:Talk@lists.collectionspace.org> > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > > > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org

Thanks, Michael, Ray, and Susan, for your cogent responses to Al. (And a good catch / question, Al, to kick off this discussion!) There's an existing JIRA to fix the Work Authority term type discrepancy: http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6330 I'll make a new JIRA, as well, to provide consistent values in Term Type for every authority type, along the lines of the consensus recommendations. We can then figure out, with the community, how and when to introduce those changes with the minimum disruption to any existing implementations, perhaps also with data update scripts where needed. Aron On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Ray Lee <rhlee@berkeley.edu> wrote: > This is confusing to me, too. It seems to me that the options in Term Type > for person and citation properly belong in a field outside the term group, > in fields called "Person Type" and "Publication Type", respectively. Those > options appear to describe the record as a whole, not any particular > synonym. The work record is also strange, in that Term Type is free text > instead of a controlled list. > > I actually think the Term Types for place records are appropriate. > > I'd love to see these get fixed in a future version of CSpace, but it does > mean that for existing deployments, data will need to be migrated. Frankly > I'm surprised that we don't get more questions about this from our users, > but it's possible they don't use Term Type that much, or only use it for > certain record types, or like PAHMA, have learned to live with it. > > If you expect Term Type to be used frequently, I think I'd recommend > customizing it to have consistent meaning across the record types. > > Ray > > > > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org> wrote: >> >> Hello all, >> >> We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about the >> Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different >> authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list refers to >> the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term >> (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the term >> type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want to >> confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was wondering if >> anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types that >> are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) or the >> term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). >> >> Thanks for any insights, >> >> Al >> >> -- >> Al Bersch >> Digital Project Coordinator >> Oakland Museum of California >> 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 >> abersch@museumca.org >> 510-318-8468 >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Talk mailing list >> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org >> >> http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org >> > > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org >

That new JIRA for this work is here: http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6387 And it's initially been assigned to Megan for functional review. (Michael, Ray, Susan, please feel free to correct/comment on this issue, as you see fit. And Al, if you don't already have an account on this JIRA instance, please feel free to set one up so that you can comment, if you wish, as well.) Aron On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Aron Roberts <aron@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote: > Thanks, Michael, Ray, and Susan, for your cogent responses to Al. > (And a good catch / question, Al, to kick off this discussion!) > > There's an existing JIRA to fix the Work Authority term type discrepancy: > http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6330 > > I'll make a new JIRA, as well, to provide consistent values in Term > Type for every authority type, along the lines of the consensus > recommendations. > > We can then figure out, with the community, how and when to introduce > those changes with the minimum disruption to any existing > implementations, perhaps also with data update scripts where needed. > > Aron > > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Ray Lee <rhlee@berkeley.edu> wrote: >> This is confusing to me, too. It seems to me that the options in Term Type >> for person and citation properly belong in a field outside the term group, >> in fields called "Person Type" and "Publication Type", respectively. Those >> options appear to describe the record as a whole, not any particular >> synonym. The work record is also strange, in that Term Type is free text >> instead of a controlled list. >> >> I actually think the Term Types for place records are appropriate. >> >> I'd love to see these get fixed in a future version of CSpace, but it does >> mean that for existing deployments, data will need to be migrated. Frankly >> I'm surprised that we don't get more questions about this from our users, >> but it's possible they don't use Term Type that much, or only use it for >> certain record types, or like PAHMA, have learned to live with it. >> >> If you expect Term Type to be used frequently, I think I'd recommend >> customizing it to have consistent meaning across the record types. >> >> Ray >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org> wrote: >>> >>> Hello all, >>> >>> We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about the >>> Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different >>> authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list refers to >>> the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term >>> (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the term >>> type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want to >>> confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was wondering if >>> anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types that >>> are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) or the >>> term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). >>> >>> Thanks for any insights, >>> >>> Al >>> >>> -- >>> Al Bersch >>> Digital Project Coordinator >>> Oakland Museum of California >>> 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 >>> abersch@museumca.org >>> 510-318-8468 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Talk mailing list >>> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org >>> >>> http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Talk mailing list >> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org >> http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org >>

Thanks for the great discussion and the new Jira. I'll ask our other known implementers how they're using the type field to get a sense of what kind of disruption changing it would cause. Thanks, Megan Megan Forbes CollectionSpace Community Outreach and Support Manager megan.forbes@lyrasis.org 800.999.8558 x 2917 Main 917.267.9676 Cell meganbforbes Skype ________________________________________ From: Talk <talk-bounces@lists.collectionspace.org> on behalf of Aron Roberts <aron@socrates.berkeley.edu> Sent: Monday, May 5, 2014 9:19 PM To: Ray Lee; Michael T. Black; Susan Stone Cc: talk Subject: Re: [Talk] Term Type intended use in authorities That new JIRA for this work is here: http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6387 And it's initially been assigned to Megan for functional review. (Michael, Ray, Susan, please feel free to correct/comment on this issue, as you see fit. And Al, if you don't already have an account on this JIRA instance, please feel free to set one up so that you can comment, if you wish, as well.) Aron On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Aron Roberts <aron@socrates.berkeley.edu> wrote: > Thanks, Michael, Ray, and Susan, for your cogent responses to Al. > (And a good catch / question, Al, to kick off this discussion!) > > There's an existing JIRA to fix the Work Authority term type discrepancy: > http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6330 > > I'll make a new JIRA, as well, to provide consistent values in Term > Type for every authority type, along the lines of the consensus > recommendations. > > We can then figure out, with the community, how and when to introduce > those changes with the minimum disruption to any existing > implementations, perhaps also with data update scripts where needed. > > Aron > > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Ray Lee <rhlee@berkeley.edu> wrote: >> This is confusing to me, too. It seems to me that the options in Term Type >> for person and citation properly belong in a field outside the term group, >> in fields called "Person Type" and "Publication Type", respectively. Those >> options appear to describe the record as a whole, not any particular >> synonym. The work record is also strange, in that Term Type is free text >> instead of a controlled list. >> >> I actually think the Term Types for place records are appropriate. >> >> I'd love to see these get fixed in a future version of CSpace, but it does >> mean that for existing deployments, data will need to be migrated. Frankly >> I'm surprised that we don't get more questions about this from our users, >> but it's possible they don't use Term Type that much, or only use it for >> certain record types, or like PAHMA, have learned to live with it. >> >> If you expect Term Type to be used frequently, I think I'd recommend >> customizing it to have consistent meaning across the record types. >> >> Ray >> >> >> >> >> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org> wrote: >>> >>> Hello all, >>> >>> We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about the >>> Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different >>> authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list refers to >>> the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term >>> (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the term >>> type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want to >>> confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was wondering if >>> anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types that >>> are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) or the >>> term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). >>> >>> Thanks for any insights, >>> >>> Al >>> >>> -- >>> Al Bersch >>> Digital Project Coordinator >>> Oakland Museum of California >>> 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 >>> abersch@museumca.org >>> 510-318-8468 >>> >>> _______________________________________________ >>> Talk mailing list >>> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org >>> >>> http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org >>> >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> Talk mailing list >> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org >> http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org >> _______________________________________________ Talk mailing list Talk@lists.collectionspace.org http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org

Hello all, Thanks everyone! It's great that this is an issue people are thinking about and working on. For OMCA's current migration, I like Ray and Susan's suggestion of using term type for thesaurus types and creating new fields for the type of person and publication, etc - that seems to make the most sense to us as well. thanks again, Al On Tue, May 6, 2014 at 7:27 AM, Megan Forbes <megan.forbes@lyrasis.org>wrote: > Thanks for the great discussion and the new Jira. > > I'll ask our other known implementers how they're using the type field to > get a sense of what kind of disruption changing it would cause. > > Thanks, > Megan > > > Megan Forbes > CollectionSpace Community Outreach and Support Manager > megan.forbes@lyrasis.org > 800.999.8558 x 2917 Main > 917.267.9676 Cell > meganbforbes Skype > > > > ________________________________________ > From: Talk <talk-bounces@lists.collectionspace.org> on behalf of Aron > Roberts <aron@socrates.berkeley.edu> > Sent: Monday, May 5, 2014 9:19 PM > To: Ray Lee; Michael T. Black; Susan Stone > Cc: talk > Subject: Re: [Talk] Term Type intended use in authorities > > That new JIRA for this work is here: > http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6387 > > And it's initially been assigned to Megan for functional review. > (Michael, Ray, Susan, please feel free to correct/comment on this > issue, as you see fit. And Al, if you don't already have an account > on this JIRA instance, please feel free to set one up so that you can > comment, if you wish, as well.) > > Aron > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 5:22 PM, Aron Roberts <aron@socrates.berkeley.edu> > wrote: > > Thanks, Michael, Ray, and Susan, for your cogent responses to Al. > > (And a good catch / question, Al, to kick off this discussion!) > > > > There's an existing JIRA to fix the Work Authority term type discrepancy: > > http://issues.collectionspace.org/browse/CSPACE-6330 > > > > I'll make a new JIRA, as well, to provide consistent values in Term > > Type for every authority type, along the lines of the consensus > > recommendations. > > > > We can then figure out, with the community, how and when to introduce > > those changes with the minimum disruption to any existing > > implementations, perhaps also with data update scripts where needed. > > > > Aron > > > > > > On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:56 PM, Ray Lee <rhlee@berkeley.edu> wrote: > >> This is confusing to me, too. It seems to me that the options in Term > Type > >> for person and citation properly belong in a field outside the term > group, > >> in fields called "Person Type" and "Publication Type", respectively. > Those > >> options appear to describe the record as a whole, not any particular > >> synonym. The work record is also strange, in that Term Type is free text > >> instead of a controlled list. > >> > >> I actually think the Term Types for place records are appropriate. > >> > >> I'd love to see these get fixed in a future version of CSpace, but it > does > >> mean that for existing deployments, data will need to be migrated. > Frankly > >> I'm surprised that we don't get more questions about this from our > users, > >> but it's possible they don't use Term Type that much, or only use it for > >> certain record types, or like PAHMA, have learned to live with it. > >> > >> If you expect Term Type to be used frequently, I think I'd recommend > >> customizing it to have consistent meaning across the record types. > >> > >> Ray > >> > >> > >> > >> > >> On Mon, May 5, 2014 at 4:26 PM, Al Bersch <abersch@museumca.org> wrote: > >>> > >>> Hello all, > >>> > >>> We're mapping authorities to CSpace, and a question has come up about > the > >>> Term Type field, which seems to be used differently in different > >>> authorities. In the demo for Person, Place and Citation, the list > refers to > >>> the type of person, place, or citation, rather than the type of term > >>> (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). In Citation, the > term > >>> type list of citation types would be useful for us, but we don't want > to > >>> confuse things by using this term in such different ways. I was > wondering if > >>> anyone has insights here, or if your institutions are using term types > that > >>> are descriptors of the term's meaning (i.e. Artist, Employee, Donor) > or the > >>> term itself (descriptor, alternate descriptor, used for term). > >>> > >>> Thanks for any insights, > >>> > >>> Al > >>> > >>> -- > >>> Al Bersch > >>> Digital Project Coordinator > >>> Oakland Museum of California > >>> 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 > >>> abersch@museumca.org > >>> 510-318-8468 > >>> > >>> _______________________________________________ > >>> Talk mailing list > >>> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > >>> > >>> > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > >>> > >> > >> > >> _______________________________________________ > >> Talk mailing list > >> Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > >> > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > >> > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > > _______________________________________________ > Talk mailing list > Talk@lists.collectionspace.org > > http://lists.collectionspace.org/mailman/listinfo/talk_lists.collectionspace.org > -- Al Bersch Digital Project Coordinator Oakland Museum of California 1000 Oak Street, Oakland, CA 94607 abersch@museumca.org 510-318-8468