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I worked on the Union Catalog of Art Images project trying to make a union catalog of art metadata, and what Leslie said goes double for cultural objects. A lot of art image catalogs don't separate work information from item/view information, and it makes it very difficult to figure out what metadata is about the the cultural object, and if two records from different institutions are about the same thing. The lack of widely-adopted metadata standards, including things like identifiers for cultural objects, made it particularly hard. At the end of 5 years of work (2 metadata librarians and 2 programmers working on this full time) we had made only marginal progress on that problem, and the only promising way forward we saw was developing a system for art librarians to review our database and manually merge and split our clusters. This would have been a Herculean undertaking. I know Getty was working on the same problem, and I can only assume they put in a lot of hours of tedious work (either improving their clustering algorithms, getting better data, or manually fixing the data they had). So of course I'd love them to offer it for free. But realistically, it probably cost them a fortune to develop, and they've got to recoup that somehow. -Esme -- Esme Cowles <[log in to unmask]> "Some people don't take no shit. Maybe if they did, they'd have half a brain left." -- Dead Kennedys, A Child and His Lawnmower On Apr 19, 2010, at 2:43 PM, Johnston, Leslie wrote: > That's actually exceptionally reasonable for a 5-year license. They've charged quite a bit more to commercial developers that wanted to include the vocabularies in their systems for resale. I can think of other services that charge nonprofits $1,000/year for use of authorities. > > The vocabularies are copyrighted and not freeware. They're not simple compilations, and I can say this as someone who contributed work to the AAT efforts in the late 80s and early 90s. > > Leslie > > -----Original Message----- > From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ethan Gruber > Sent: Monday, April 19, 2010 1:04 PM > To: Johnston, Leslie; Code for Libraries > Subject: Re: [CODE4LIB] Fwd: Webinar: Introducing Cultural Objects Name Authority (CONA) > > They wanted at least $1000 for the geographic terms. Doesn't sound very reasonable to me, to be honest, especially since I was considering developing an application based on their own CDWA schema. > > On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 12:08 PM, Cory Rockliff <[log in to unmask]>wrote: > >> Actually, their licensing terms for non-profits are very reasonable. >> >> >> On 4/19/2010 11:43 AM, Ethan Gruber wrote: >> >>> I wonder how many thousands of dollars they will charge to use this. >>> >>> On Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 11:26 AM, Mark A. Matienzo<[log in to unmask] >>>> wrote: >>> >>> >>> >>>> ---------- Forwarded message ---------- >>>> From: Erin Coburn<[log in to unmask]> >>>> Date: Mon, Apr 19, 2010 at 9:54 AM >>>> >>>> The Museum Computer Network (MCN), Gallery Systems, and the J. Paul >>>> Getty Trust are pleased to offer a free Webinar on a new vocabulary >>>> under development, the Cultural Objects Name Authority(tm) (CONA). >>>> >>>> "Introducing the Getty's new Cultural Objects Name Authority(tm) (CONA)" >>>> Tuesday, May 4, 2010 11:30 AM - 1:00 PM EDT >>>> >>>> The Cultural Objects Name Authority(tm) (CONA) is a new Getty >>>> vocabulary currently under development. It is scheduled for >>>> introduction to the contributor community in 2011. CONA will join >>>> the other three Getty vocabularies, the Art& Architecture >>>> Thesaurus(r) (AAT), the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names(r) (TGN), >>>> and the Union List of Artist Names(r) (ULAN), as a tool for cataloging >>>> and retrieval of art information. CONA will contain titles, current >>>> location, and other core information for cultural works. The scope >>>> of CONA will include architecture and movable works such as >>>> paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, >>>> ceramics, textiles, furniture, and archaeological artifacts. Murtha >>>> Baca, Head of Digital Art History Access at the Getty Research >>>> Institute, and Patricia Harpring, Managing Editor of the Getty >>>> Vocabulary Program, will present an introduction to CONA and will be available for questions. >>>> >>>> To register, please go to: >>>> https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/307938058 >>>> >>>> >>>> >>> --- >>> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] >>> >>> >>> >>> >>> >> >> >> -- >> Cory Rockliff >> Technical Services Librarian >> Bard Graduate Center: Decorative Arts, Design History, Material >> Culture >> 18 West 86th Street >> New York, NY 10024 >> T: (212) 501-3037 >> [log in to unmask] >> >> --- >> [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] >>