Pondering about Metadata and Description

We cannot predict how people will identify photographs. We do the best we can with recognizable and identifiable subjects, events, people and places. However, everyone has different interpretations and needs for photographs in the archival setting. Different kinds of users have different needs and those needs allow for photographs to have countless contextual meanings and purposes. So what does doing the best we can entail exactly? How much granularity can we reasonably expect? How does MPLP fit into photographs and how do we “reconcile the differences between free-text, user-assigned descriptors and authoritative controlled vocabularies?” (Neal, 2008, p. 12)

There is also discrepancy between how archivists identify documents and photos and how patrons do, especially now with folksonomies. Have folksonomies had an impact on the way archivists describe photos? I obviously do not mean this as something that has been incorporated but rather considered. A lot has been written of the elusive qualities inherent in describing a photo. Folksonomies while not something to be incorporated in the archival setting (but possibly the online digital collection setting) can provide a lot of invaluable information as to how people on a mass scale interpret and define photographs of all kinds. Diane Neal’s article, which goes into how photojournalists and other occupations describe and use their own material, is extremely informative for archivists. The creators have a different relationship with their work. They often have their own systems and additional idiosyncratic context that would be unknown to anyone else. 

That brings me to ponder about digital collections donated to an archive. This is going to become more and more common considering how the photographic medium now exists within a technological world. There is a lot more room in the digital world for various types of organization and description. Do archivists stay loyal to the original order (in this case, the creator’s means of identification?)

Much of the time, if the creator is a photojournalist for example, the description pertains to the immediate purpose of the photo. “Librarians think of future use whereas photographers are more likely thinking in terms of the current photograph assignment or project.” (Neal, 2008, p. 12). So with that in mind, how does one address the creator’s input on their own work when ingesting it into an institution? It is also imperative that the scope of the institution be kept in mind. If the institution is known for collecting a certain type of collection, how does that impact the description? What are the standards of the institution and how does that affect the function of photographs within the archive?

The subjectivity of photographs is something to consider as well and we have talked about it in class extensively. What if a photo has a collective interpretation whether symbolic or thematic that becomes a part of its cultural identity? What happens then? How do archivists incorporate that into its metadata? Any collective interpretation leans towards the subjective which compromises objective description.

These are all issues that I have been thinking about a lot more in the photographically specific context since starting this class. Right now, photographs do not get the same amount of attention as written documents. Hopefully this will change as the evidential value of photographs provides just as much information as the written word. 

Neal, Diane. (2008). News photographers, librarians, tags and controlled vocabularies: Balancing the forces. Journal of Library Metadata; 8.3, 199-219.