The Getty terms do seem to be more or less what I'm looking for, under 
"information artifacts by physical forms". I'm not sure if I can re-use 
them without a license from them though? 

And oddly it breaks things into different hiearchies than I would. To 
me, "CD" vs. "phonograph record" are peers, when the CD is being used to 
hold sound.  But AAT keeps "CD" out of the "sound recordings" 
hieararchy, and instead just puts it in "machine-readable artifacts".  I 
guess this is the danger of hieararchy, especially with such a slippery 
concept as form.

It's also a bit more in-depth then I really need. Hmm.

For digital sans container format, I think Internet Content Type (MIME 
Type) is probably sufficient.

Jonathan

Custer, Mark wrote:
> Perhaps I'm not sure what you're looking for, but the Getty has the Art
> & Architecture Thesaurus:
>
> http://www.getty.edu/vow/AATHierarchy?find=dvd&logic=AND&note=&page=1&su
> bjectid=300220523 (got your cd, dvd, but not blu-ray... yet)
>
> But when you're talking "digital" (sans container), I guess you're just
> talking format, like you said.  For that, there's the PRONOM registry:
>
> http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/pronom/
>
> Either of those helpful?
>
>
> Mark
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Code for Libraries [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of
> Jonathan Rochkind
> Sent: Wednesday, January 14, 2009 12:24 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: [CODE4LIB] multimedia carrier vocabulary?
>
> Anyone know of any good existing controlled vocabulary for 'format' or 
> 'carrier' for multimedia materials?  I'm thinking of things like "CD", 
> "DVD", "digital", etc.
>
> The closest I can get is from RDA at 
> http://metadataregistry.org/concept/list/vocabulary_id/46.html (thanks 
> Karen and Diane), but it seems _really_ insufficient. As far as I can 
> tell "audio disc" is used for both a CD and a vinyl disc, and there's 
> nothing available there for "DVD" at all.   Or for "digital". Although 
> I'm not sure what I mean by "digital", I guess CD and DVD are both 
> digital, but I was thinking of something to identify a digital file on a
>
> computer network free of particular carrier. I guess that wouldn't be in
>
> a carrier vocabulary at all, after all, that would be sort of a null 
> carrier. Phew, this stuff does get complicated quick. Which I guess is 
> why nobody's worked out a good one yet.
>
> Too bad RDA's is so _far_ from good though. Any others anyone knows
> about?
>
> Jonathan
>
>   

-- 
Jonathan Rochkind
Digital Services Software Engineer
The Sheridan Libraries
Johns Hopkins University
410.516.8886 
rochkind (at) jhu.edu