Digitizing Collections: Controlled Vocabulary

1. Planning 
2. Selection
3. Digitizing materials
4. Processing files, creating master and access files
5. Metadata creation or re-purposing
6. Digital preservation of master files
7. Presentation of access files in an online content management platform

A controlled vocabulary is an organized arrangement of words and phrases used to index content and/or to retrieve content through browsing or searching. It typically includes preferred and variant terms and has a defined scope or describes a specific domain.

-- Getty Research "Introduction to Controlled Vocabulary"

Recommended controlled vocabularies

• ISO 8601 Extended Date/Time Format extension (EDTF) https://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/  

Format (Digital) 

• Internet Assigned Numbers Authority Media Types (IANA Types) https://www.iana.org/assignments/media-types/media-types.xhtml 

Format (Original) and Genre

• Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) http://fast.oclc.org/searchfast/ 
• Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms LCGFT http://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms.html 
• Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM) http://www.loc.gov/pictures/collection/tgm/ 
• Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/

Geographic Names

• Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) http://fast.oclc.org/searchfast/ 
• Getty Thesaurus for Geographic Names (TGN) http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/tgn/ 
• GeoNames http://www.geonames.org/ 
• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) Geographic Type - http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html 

Language

• ISO 639-2 https://www.loc.gov/standards/iso639-2/php/code_list.php

Names (Creator, Contributor, Publisher, Subject)

• Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names.html 
• Virtual International Authority File (VIAF) https://viaf.org/
• Getty Union Li st of Artist Names (ULAN) http://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/ulan/ 

Rights

• RightsStatement.org http://rightsstatements.org/page/1.0/?language=en 
• Creative Commons https://creativecommons.org/ 

Subject

• Faceted Application of Subject Terminology (FAST) http://fast.oclc.org/searchfast/ 
• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html 
• National Library of Medicine's Medical Subject Headings (MeSH) https://www.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/ 
• Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) https://www.getty.edu/research/tools/vocabularies/aat/

Time Period

• Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH) http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects.html 
• ISO 8601 Extended Date/Time Format extension (EDTF) https://www.loc.gov/standards/datetime/  

Type

• Dublin Core Metadata Initiative Media Type (DCMI Type) http://dublincore.org/documents/2010/10/11/dcmi-type-vocabulary/