An Examination of the AAT (.pdf)
This is the final research paper I wrote for Organization of Information (LI804). This class introduced the context and perspectives of organization of information. It explored theories of organization in terms of information retrieval systems. The assignment for the final research paper was to investigate an information agency or structure and discuss how it reflects the world view of its users and/or its creators.
I chose to examine the Art and Architecture Thesaurus, which is part of the Getty Research Institute Vocabularies. I use these vocabularies at work, cataloging art and cultural objects, and I wanted to examine why some types of terminology were used instead of others. Specifically, my curiosity started when I realized that subject terms for animals in the AAT used the Latin, rather than the common English, names.
The professor for this class emphasized the point that "information access systems are not neutral conduits of information but reflect, to some extent, the world view of the people devising them." These biases can affect the search terms and subject headings we use and can reflect the prejudices of the society we live in. I wondered what historical development encouraged the AAT to choose some terminology over others.
The professor for this class emphasized the point that "information access systems are not neutral conduits of information but reflect, to some extent, the world view of the people devising them." These biases can affect the search terms and subject headings we use and can reflect the prejudices of the society we live in. I wondered what historical development encouraged the AAT to choose some terminology over others.
My research discovered a long, multi-disciplinary collaboration of several groups of architecture and art professors, librarians, and catalogers who contributed to the project that would eventually become the AAT. The originators of the project were architectural historians, and the architectural terminology included in the AAT is very well fleshed out and hierarchically rational. As the thesaurus grew and more disciplines were considered as potential users of the vocabulary, the focus of the terminology became diluted. The basic elemental hierarchies of the thesaurus (those on the first organizational level) became a constraint to the varied terminologies the collaborative group tried to incorporate.