12/19/17
Since early 2007, the Library of Congress has been developing Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCGFT), whose terms describe what something is rather than what it is about, as subject headings do. In February 2018 the Policy and Standards Division (PSD) will approve approximately 50 new genre/form terms for artistic and visual works.
This genre/form project is a collaboration undertaken by PSD and the Cataloging Advisory Committee of the Art Libraries Society of North America (ARLIS/NA). PSD wholeheartedly thanks the members of the Committee for their time and effort.
The proposed terms appear on Tentative List 1802a (http://classificationweb.net/tentative-subjects/1802a.html), to be approved on February 16, 2018. PSD is requesting comments from the library community; please email Janis L. Young at [email protected] through February 2, 2018.
The proposals represent broad categories of artistic and visual works and can be readily used in general libraries that need to provide high-level genre/form access to their collections of visual works. They do not attempt to replicate the breadth and depth of specialized vocabularies such as the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials and the Art & Architecture Thesaurus.
Materials that are acquired for art collections are usually visual in nature, but are not always inherently artistic. That is, the materials are not “art for art’s sake” but were instead created to serve an informational, documentary, or other purpose (e.g., architectural drawings, trading cards, photographs). The practical need to have terms that describe materials that are not art in the narrow sense led the Cataloging Advisory Committee and PSD to determine that the highest-level broader term for those terms that represent materials that are not inherently artistic should be Visual works.
This decision required the reconsideration some of the existing hierarchies in LCGFT, because numerous approved terms describe visual works. The current top terms Motion pictures, Television programs, and Video recordings will become narrower terms under Visual works, as will the high-level term Maps. The hierarchies for several other individual terms that refer to visual materials will also be adjusted (e.g., Worm’s-eye views). Those proposed revisions appear on Tentative List 1802a along with the proposals for the new terms.
Following standard policy, LC catalogers and members of the Subject Authority Cooperative (SACO) program will be able to propose additional genre/form terms for visual and artistic works as well as revisions to existing terms. PSD will separately announce the date on which it will begin to accept proposals for new and revised genre/form terms to describe those works.
LC subject headings that are analogous to genre/form terms for artistic and visual works will remain valid because the subject headings should continue to be assigned to works about the genres and forms. Catalogers should continue to assign subject headings to works about art according to the principles and guidelines contained in the Subject Headings Manual (SHM).
