June 2008

The word “Ofness” (hereafter simply Ofness), previously unknown to me, became a familiar word as I delved into the subject of image subject retrieval.   The term is used extensively in art and art history journals. The clearest discussion of its meaning that I have found online can be found in a wonderful book produced by the Getty: An Introduction to Art Image Access by Sara Shatford Layne, Patricia Harpring, Colum Hourihane, Christine L. Sundt, that also contains excellent illustrations.   The definition of “of-ness” is given in the glossary as:

“An expression used in the context of subject description to refer to what a work of art depicts. Of-ness may also include a specific identification, as well as a generic description, of what is depicted in a work of art. This expression corresponds to Erwin Panofsky’s identification and description, the first two levels of subject description outlined in Categories for the Description of Works of Art. For example, “The artwork is of a woman with snakes for hair” (description). “The artwork is of the gorgon Medusa, the creature in classical mythology who turned her beholders to stone” (identification). Compare about-ness.”

The term is often hypenated, as in the Getty publication, but I have seen it just as often unhypenated.   I prefer the latter, I guess because it seems less tentative.

It was thus rather startling to me when I discovered that the word “ofness”  cannot be found in standard reference works.  Meanwhile the word appears in lots of other places.  A search at Amazon for “ofness turned up 144 books, including the examples below.  [click to continue…]

Tagged as: Bartelby.com, Dictionary.com, Google, Google search, J. P. Moreland, ofness, OneLook Dictionary Search, Random House Dictionary, Reference Tools, Roget's Thesaurus, School Time, Thesauri, Thesaurus.com, Visual Thesaurus, Vocabulary Lists, Webster's, Wictionary.org

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Tematres partial expansion of Thesaurus of Graphic Materials (Activities)

The image to the right is a screenshot of a partially expanded, but truncated (”A” to “D”), hierarchy of the first (of 26) main subdivisions of the Thesaurus of Graphic Materials (TGM), a controlled vocabulary for “indexing visual materials by subject and by genre/format.”‘   The subdivision is entitled  ” Subject Terms Activities”.  The image shows only the portion between  A to the very beginning of D.  This screenshot is not from official site of The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM), which is maintained under the aegis of the Library of Congress, as one might expect, because that version is  user unfriendly in the extreme. Rather it is from a free vocabulary site, TemaTres Vocabulary Server which is much easier to navigate.  That’s why it’s here, to give a meaningful sense of the TGM’s scope and contents.

As described on the official site:

“The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials is a tool for indexing visual materials by subject and by genre/format. The thesaurus includes more than 7,000 subject terms and 650 genre/format terms to index types of photographs, prints, design drawings, ephemera, and other pictures. In 2007, the subject and genre/format vocabularies, previously maintained separately, were merged into a single list and migrated to new software, MultiTes.  Other minor changes are clarified in the links below. For questions about the thesaurus, contact TGM editors at: tgmed@loc.gov.”

In the overview of the TGM in the Tematres site the TGM is said to contain 11,893 terms, 13,262 relations between terms, and 5,230 non-preferred terms.

The merger of the subject and genre/format terms in a single thesaurus simplifies things in some respects but    [click to continue…]

Tagged as: controlled vocabulary, Library and Information Science, Library of Congress, Metadata, ofness, Tematres, TGM, Thesaurus of Graphic Materials, XML

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