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The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning: Formalisms for Modeling

Images
Allen C. Benson a
a
School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

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DOI: 10.1080/15332740903554770

The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning:

Formalisms for Modeling Images

ALLEN C. BENSON
School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA

This article explores ontological principles and their potential appli-

cations in the formal description of archival photographs. Current
archival descriptive practices are reviewed and the larger ques-
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tion is addressed: do archivists who are engaged in describing

photographs need a more formalized system of representation, or
do existing encoding schemes and description standards provide
enough foundation and structure? The emerging semantic Web 3.0
environment presents new challenges. Ontology, formalizations, se-
mantic annotations, and effective machine processing are of imme-
diate and practical importance. To begin exploring these concepts
within the context of archival description, a new semantic archives
model is proposed.

KEYWORDS archival description, archival descriptive standards,

photography, photographic collections, knowledge representation,
ontology, knowledge bases

INTRODUCTION

The following statement, taken from Victor Burgin’s Thinking Photography,

addresses the relationship of text to the photograph, and is worth quoting at
length:

We rarely see a photograph in use which is not accompanied by writing:

in newspapers the image is in most cases subordinate to the text; in
advertising and illustrated magazines there tends to be a more or less
equal distribution of text and images; in art and amateur photography
the image predominates, though a caption or title is generally added. But
the influence of language goes beyond the physical presence of writing

Address correspondence to Allen C. Benson, 3613 Butler Street, Apartment 4, Pittsburgh,

PA 15201. E-mail: [email protected]

148
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 149

as a deliberate addition to the image. Even the uncaptioned photograph,

framed and isolated on a gallery wall, is invaded by language when it is
looked at.1

Many individuals are engaged with describing photographs, including

critics and curators of the photograph,2 philosophers interested in aesthetics,3
ethnographers using photographs in social research both as data and data
generators,4 photographers describing their work,5 and archivists describing
archival photographs in finding aids and item-level records.6 This article ex-
plores the principle systems used by archivists for describing photographs.
By reviewing how archivists describe photographs and the tools they use for
representing descriptions, an attempt is made to discover what role, if any,
archival representation plays in assigning meaning to photographs. Concur-
rent with the evolution of archival representation there has been an attempt
in artificial intelligence (AI) to represent knowledge itself. This essay exam-
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ines the differences between archival representation and systems of knowl-

edge representation when applied to the photograph. It explores whether
finding aids and item-level records provide sufficient degrees of expressive-
ness and formality in representing the meaning of photographs or whether a
more formalized system of representation is needed, especially in light of the
emerging Web 3.0.7 In the process of examining the myriad archival encod-
ing and description standards and AI’s levels of knowledge representation
there lies the possibility of uncovering a new framework for understanding
knowledge representation in the context of archival description.

OVERVIEW OF THE ARCHIVAL PHOTOGRAPH

The existing literature on archival photographs is vast. To help focus the anal-
ysis and understanding of the literature as it pertains to this article it is helpful
to organize this literature into a few general categories. Using Photographs:
Archival Care and Management (2006) as a framework for discussion,8 the
management of photographs passes through various stages of archival work
as shown in Figure 1. The following analysis focuses on one functional

FIGURE 1 Photographs Pass through Several Stages of Archival Work before They Become
Available to Researchers.
150 A. C. Benson

component: the nature of description and how archivists associate text with
photographs. The act of describing originates during the initial phases of
archival work. It begins during accessioning and arrangement when the
archivist records information relating to collection title, dates, administrative
history, biographical information, scope and content, organization and ar-
rangement, and so on. In the Australian series approach, engagement with
records may begin even earlier, focusing on provenance and context. These
concepts lie outside the boundaries of the recorded document, focusing
on relationships between creators, functions, activities and record-keeping
systems.9 Description eventually manifests itself in the form of finding aids,
calendars, registers, inventories, and other forms of representational artifacts
during the “description and cataloging” stage shown in Figure 1. The fol-
lowing section explores how archival description and arrangement has been
defined in the literature.
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Defining Archival Description

In his essay “A Few Remarks on the Lens, the Shutter, and the Light-Sensitive
Surface,” David Campany considers why photography attracts definition. The
need to define something, he argues, “happens when we are attracted to it,
or when we find it threatening, when it is disappearing from us.”10 Campany
adds, “The more elusive the photograph is, the greater the wish to pursue
it.” Perhaps this is why archivists have a penchant for defining archival
description and debating its purpose. The topic is elusive, threatening and
disappearing, or perhaps not disappearing as much as calling out for radical
change.
Luciana Duranti, in an article exploring the origin, meaning, and evo-
lution of archival description, explains that that term means “writing about
archival material.”11 She tracks the meaning of archival description over a
period of eighteen years, beginning with the Society of American Archivists’
(SAA) glossary of terms published in 1974. Archival description was then
defined as “the process of establishing intellectual control over holdings
through the preparation of finding aids.”12 Long before this, the Dutch
archivists Muller, Feith, and Fruin conceptualized and codified the mean-
ings of description and arrangement in Manual for the Arrangement and
Description of Archives (1898).13 They placed constraints on level of descrip-
tion, suggesting that it should provide an outline of the collection and not
a description of the contents of the documents in the collection. “The guide
to the archival collection,” they stated, “must not seek to make consultation
of the collection itself superfluous.”14
Theodore Schellenberg reinforced this principle when he described the
researcher as someone who wants to know something about the entire hold-
ings of a collection. He suggested that archivists “should thus describe his
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 151

entire holdings immediately in summary finding aids consisting of guides

and catalogs in which descriptions are provided of record series within large
or significant groups and collections,” and he advised them to “forgo the
detailed description of individual record items until he has provided a com-
prehensive description of his holdings.”15 Contrast this to Kenneth Duckett’s
advice to archivists to perform extensive background research before begin-
ning and then carefully unpacking materials and keeping formal note cards
for items or groups of items.16
In her article, Duranti next introduces a definition developed in 1989
by an SAA working group who defined description as “the process of
capturing, collating, analyzing, and organizing any information that serves
to identify, manage, locate, and interpret the holdings of archival institutions
and explain the context and records systems from which those holdings
were selected.”17 This definition became the basis for Fredric Miller, who
highlighted the process-oriented and content-oriented nature of description
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in his 1990 SAA manual on arrangement and description. He defined de-

scription as “the process of capturing, collating, analyzing, controlling, ex-
changing, and providing access to information about (1) the origin, context,
and provenance of different sets of records, (2) their filing structure, (3) their
form and content, (4) their relationship with other records, and (5) the ways
in which they can be found and used.”18 Duranti explores other definitions,
concluding with a context-based definition in use by the Canadian Working
Group on Archival Descriptive Standards in 1985: “Description is a major
function in the processing of archival material, and the products of this
function are finding aids of various sorts which give administrators control
over their holdings and enable users and archivists to find information about
particular topics.”19
To bring the discussion full circle, it is worth mentioning Richard Pearce-
Moses’s most recent definition of description published in the 2005 edition of
A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology: “The process of creating a
finding aid or other access tools that allow individuals to browse a surrogate
of the collection to facilitate access and that improve security by creating a
record of the collection and by minimizing the amount of handling of the
original materials.”20 It is tempting to say that after many years of discussion
about what archival description means, a muddled definition has been placed
on the table.

Relationship between Description and Arrangement

When discussing description, archivists relate this important archival function
to that of arrangement. As Kathleen D. Roe states, the practice of arrange-
ment and description are unified tasks, constructs inextricably intertwined
that apply structure and meaning to materials housed in archives.21 She de-
scribes this unique relationship as a process of physically organizing records
152 A. C. Benson

based on an understanding of their intellectual structure. Even though ar-

rangement and description share a close relationship, they describe two
distinct processes. Arrangement is the intellectual process of identifying and
bringing together sets of records, records that share a common source and
common characteristics and structure. Where description creates a represen-
tation of the records, arrangement identifies relationships between records
and between records and their creators.22
Provenance and original order govern both arrangement and descrip-
tion. They are the overarching principles that determine how archival col-
lections are processed and how archivists arrange and describe collections.
The principle of provenance is identified primarily with the creator and dic-
tates that a body of records must be linked to its creator and not mixed
or combined with the records of another individual or organization.23 The
concept of original order establishes the organic nature of records and that
their internal structure and arrangement, as established by their creator, “are
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to be maintained in the order and with the designations which they received
in the course of the official activity of the agency concerned.”24 Accord-
ing to the Canadian Rules for Archival Description, the principle of respect
des fonds incorporates both provenance and original order, directing that
“the records created or accumulated by one records creator must be kept
together and not intermixed with the records of other creators” and “the
way archives are described depends on their arrangement. Implicit in the
archivist’s observance of respect des fonds is the assumption that the way a
creator ‘automatically and organically created and/or accumulates records’
will affect the way archivists arrange a fonds.”25
The aforementioned principles are concerned with two kinds of infor-
mation: record content and information derived from the context in which
the records are created. As Roe states, “Records have content, thereby pro-
viding specific factual data as well as attitudes and views from a particular
person’s or organization’s perspective.”26 The inventory of 3M Company’s
corporate records held at the Minnesota Historical Society demonstrates that
records also say something about the context in which they are created.27
For example, the records relating to Richard G. Drew (1886–1982), inventor
of masking and Scotch tape, contain factual information on his service at 3M
Company. The context in which these records were created—records that
sometimes consisted of audiotapes of reminiscences—provide insight into
his life as an inventor throughout most of the twentieth century.

DESCRIPTIVE MODELS FOR PHOTOGRAPHIC MATERIALS

Three concepts emerge from the preceding discussion on archival description

and arrangement that apply to photographs: (1) process—the process of ap-
praisal, taking possession of photographs, accessioning, collating, analyzing,
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 153
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FIGURE 2 In the Traditional Archives, Acquisition and Processing of Collections and the
Relationship Between Archival Arrangement and Description are Grounded in the Principles
of Provenance and Original Order.

classifying, preserving, and storing photographs; (2) purpose—the purpose

of providing administrative control over collections of photographs and pro-
viding researchers with access and retrieval capabilities; and (3) product—
creating representational artifacts including finding aids, index cards, in-
ventories, and other devices for describing content, location, provenance,
original order, and context. A diagrammatic view of these concepts and
their relationships presented in Figure 2 can be translated as follows: The
archivist appraises and acquires photographs created by an organization or
individual. The archivist gathers and records information about the pho-
tographs during every phase of their management including the appraisal
process. Description-related processes may continue throughout the life of
the record and cover every element of information no matter at what stage
of management it is identified. The archivist, whose work is shaped by the
principles of provenance and original order, ensures that the records are not
intermixed with the records of other creators. The archivist maintains the in-
ternal structure and arrangement of the records, arranges and describes the
record collection, and then creates a finding aid, inventory, calendar, cata-
log record, or other representational artifact that informs researchers of the
archival depository’s holdings and assists researchers in locating materials.
154 A. C. Benson

In this traditional model, “the archivist’s role in relation to records is to

reveal the meaning and significance—not to participate in the construction
of meanings—through the exercise of intellectual control.”28
The focus now shifts to the representational systems archivists use
for describing photographs and photograph collections. Special attention
is given to two data structures: the catalog item-level record and the finding
aid. Both data structures are used in contemporary practices and continue
to be produced in both paper-based and digital formats. Finding aids are
generally used for collection-level descriptions, but in special circumstances
have also been used to describe a single item. In using these data struc-
tures, archivists have not been concerned with the conceptual landscape of
the photograph or with formalizing its meaning. Instead, archivists generally
focus their attention on the syntax of record building and the business of
developing standards for constructing syntactically accurate and consistent
descriptions of photographs and photographic collections.
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Item-Level Description: The Bibliographic Record Model

Online public access catalogs (OPACs) have replaced most library card cata-
logs in the United States. Through a process called retrospective conversion,
paper-based card catalogs are converted to MARC (machine-readable cat-
aloging) records. It is a relatively easy process to accomplish with library
collections because libraries can go to large bibliographic utilities, such as
OCLC and copy preexisting MARC format records needed for bibliographic
and authority data in their new online catalogs. It’s a different situation for
archives. Archives are collections of unique, one-of-a-kind items and can-
not benefit from copy cataloging. Consequently, many archives still maintain
card catalogs—fondly referred to by Richard Cox and colleagues as “artifacts
of library history.”29
Evidence of the card catalog’s continuing relevance can still be found in
small liberal arts colleges like Washington and Jefferson College in Washing-
ton, Pennsylvania. There the Learned T. Bulman ’48 Historic Archives and
Museum houses items relating to Washington and Jefferson College and its
history along with a large collection of manuscripts and other material re-
lating to eighteenth and nineteenth century United States history.30 Samples
of current, typewritten subject cards describing photographs are shown in
Figures 3 and 4. As these cards readily demonstrate, paper-based catalogs
offer limited information about photographs. No information is offered re-
garding the format, size, photographer’s name, and so on. In some instances,
access to the catalog itself is limited. The card catalog from which these
samples were taken is located within the archives, which is a locked facility
within the main library.
The cards shown in Figure 4 are more abbreviated than those shown
in Figure 3. The subject is simply “Washington College,” which could mean
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 155

FIGURE 3 Subject Cards Describing a 1954 Photograph of the Bradford House, Washington,
Pennsylvania. Learned T. Bulman ’48 Historic Archives & Museum, Washington & Jefferson
College. Reprinted with permission.

it is a long view (in terms of distance from camera to subject) taking in the
entire campus, or the photograph may show only Old Main, the centerpiece
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of the campus. Many details are left unrepresented on the card.

It is not unusual for catalogs of this nature to lack authority control,
which in turn affects accessibility. Robert H. Burger, in examining the role of
authority control, notes that authority control is directed at access points in
catalog records and that the access points must be unique and consistent.31
Whiskey insurrection (Figure 3) may be consistent within this archives’ cata-
log, but it is not consistent with, for example, the Library of Congress subject
heading authority, which lists Whiskey Rebellion, Pa., 1794 as the correct
subject heading. Helen Schmierer, in a study about the relationship of au-
thority control to the library catalog, identifies two general purposes of a
library catalog: (1) the library catalog should enable a user to ascertain if the
library has a particular item, and (2) the library catalog should show what
items the library has that share a common characteristic.32 In the sample
cards shown in Figure 4 there are no logical connections made between
these cards or any of the other materials in the collection that share the same
subject. Another example of missing links is shown in Figure 5.

FIGURE 4 Subject Cards Describing a Photograph of Washington College, 1847, Washington,

Pennsylvania. Learned T. Bulman ’48 Historic Archives & Museum, Washington & Jefferson
College. Reprinted with permission.
156 A. C. Benson
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FIGURE 5 Two Catalog Cards Make Reference to the Same Individual, Jeanette F. Reibman,
but Include No Cross-Referencing. Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. Unau-
thorized reproduction or usage prohibited. Reprinted with permission.

The point here is simply to recognize that paper card catalog systems
still exist; they are used by archivists to describe archival photographs and
other materials, and the semantics of a handwritten or typed card is not
accessible to machines, only to people.
The Hoover Institution Library and Archives at Stanford University pro-
vides an example of the card catalog model adapted to an online catalog.
Most of the library’s original card catalog descriptions have been converted
to MARC and can be searched using Stanford University Libraries’ online
catalog Socrates.33 The following search was entered as a query in the on-
line catalog:
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 157

subject “Russian” AND contents note “photograph”

The query returned a record that describes a collection titled “O.É. Tuganova
papers, 1906–2006.” The OPAC view is a typical, user-friendly translation of
a MARC record. Behind the scenes in the underlying MARC record each line
is given a name and assigned a unique number. The line labeled “title,”
for example, is assigned a unique tag number 245. A computer system that
supports MARC reads the various tags and knows in what field to display
the appropriate matching information. It reads 245 and displays the data in
the title field. The physical description of these papers is at the collection
level and lists “12 ms. boxes, 1 oversize box.” There is no evidence given re-
garding the nature or characteristics of the individual photographs contained
in the collection such as photographer’s name, dimensions, or format, and
there are no descriptions. The abbreviation “ms.” may mean “manuscript” to
some searchers and to others it may not mean anything. The summary field
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provides a hint that there is only a single photograph represented by this

record with a general indication of the photograph’s subject: Soviet Union.
Joan M. Schwartz warns that in adopting bibliographic models such
as these for image classification the archivist necessarily focuses on factual
content.34 Schwartz believes that the structure of bibliographic records dis-
allows representing the functional origins of visual images. She cites this as
the reason archivists “fail to engage fully with new and exciting ideas about
representation and reality, context and meaning.”35 Schwartz argues there
is a relationship between users’ appreciation for archival photographs and
the standards applied by archivists when describing photographs. Schwartz
discusses at length a phenomenon she calls linguistic othering, in which
textual materials are taken as the norm and photographs, which are non-
textual, are viewed as the archival “other.” Schwartz’s arguments against
using bibliographic records to describe photographs can be extended to the
search syntax researchers choose when querying an archives’ databases. In
the earlier example searching the Hoover Institution Archives, given the na-
ture of bibliographic indexing systems where only certain access points are
made available, the syntax used to query the online catalog consisted of only
two atomic statements: Subject is Russian and ContentNote is photograph. It
wasn’t so eloquent as “Show all of the black and white gelatin silver prints
depicting social conditions in early twentieth century Soviet Union.” As an
experiment, this declarative statement was entered as a search in Socrates,
and the system reformatted the question and provided an answer in one fell
swoop:

SEARCH+EVERYTHING “Show and all and black and white and gelatin-
silver and prints and depicting and social and conditions and in and early
and twentieth-century and Soviet and Union” found no matches in any
library.
158 A. C. Benson

The machine was unable to process the query effectively. Since the search
results were an empty set, the system attempted guessing the intended mean-
ing of the query and provided as an alternative some possible see references
including show biz, show business, show cards, and show horses, among other
topics. The irrelevance of these suggestions demonstrates a major drawback
in using representational systems that focus on matching search terms with
index terms as opposed to semantics and machines that are capable of pro-
cessing information effectively. Humans know what is meant by the query
“Show me all of your black and white gelatin sliver prints,” but to a ma-
chine it is meaningless. In online catalogs that encode data in MARC the
machines process tagged retrieval points in records—a name, keyword, sub-
ject, phrase, or some other code it can use for searching and identifying what
it decides is a relevant archival description. In spite of its shortcomings, the
catalog is a dependable workhorse for minimal levels of intellectual control
over collections.36 Ruth B. Bordin and Robert M. Warner, in their manual
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for manuscript libraries, strongly agree: “The great advantage of the general
catalog is that it works equally well for a collection of 800 feet or a single
item. The larger collection will need a larger number of added entry cards
and will take much longer to catalog . . . but the same methods are equally
appropriate for both.”37

Collection-Level Description: The Finding Aid

When Richard Cox wrote “writing effective finding aids is a complicated
business,”38 he was asking whether anyone really understood what archival
finding aids say to researchers. While there is a note of irony in his statement,
it should matter that finding aids are hardly treated as simple descriptive
architectures in Cox’s article. He questions why the finding aid, the preem-
inent model for describing archival materials, has not been the subject of
more controversy. Cox comments, “it seems unlikely that they can repre-
sent effectively all the layers, details, nuances, and vagaries that constitute
records.”39 Steven L. Hensen reduced the role of a finding aid to a simple fact
nineteen years earlier when he said “If there is a practical equivalent to the
bibliographic title page, it is the archival finding aid.”40 Archivists have failed
to seriously investigate users of archival materials, what questions searchers
ask, what kinds of information searchers seek, the formats they prefer, or
the time frames in which they expect delivery of information. It isn’t clear
to anyone what finding aids say to researchers or whether it is necessarily
useful.
It can be assumed, however, that after many generations of use, re-
searchers generally understand the nature of library catalogs, digital or ana-
log, and the fact that they are access tools pointing to monographs, serials,
or bound periodicals setting on bookshelves. Integrating EAD (encoded
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 159

archival description) finding aids into library cataloging systems demands

a different mind-set, a different kind of conceptualization on the part of re-
searchers. Finding aids are a catalog-like structure within a catalog. A finding
aid does not use a call number to point users to a single item on a shelf.
When searchers retrieve a finding aid in an online catalog they are looking
at a document that describes a collection of materials contained within an
archives group, fonds, or historical collection—an assemblage of materials
that may represent thousands of items stretching for hundreds of linear feet
stored in files and boxes.
Retrieving a finding aid using an online catalog can be a challenge in
itself, a process of serendipitous discovery, unless a researcher can limit
the search results to a record type of “finding aid.” That is not an option
in the University of Pittsburgh Library System. The scene that is about to be
described is not unique to this university’s archives but can be found in many
university and college archives, large and small, public and private. The best
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hope for accessing a finding aid in University of Pittsburgh’s library system is

by either locating the three-ring binders that hold hardcopies of typewritten
and word-processed finding aids or by using PITTCat, the Library’s OPAC
that provides links to finding aids formatted in EAD. To accomplish the
former, researchers must ask a reference librarian in what locations paper-
based finding aids can be found. To accomplish the latter, researchers must
formulate a keyword search that includes the term “finding aid” or otherwise
prepare for a fortuitously long journey browsing through multiple menu
items to locate a dedicated finding aid search engine.
There is one particularly large photographic collection in the University
Archives Service Center titled Collection of the Pittsburgh City Photographer,
which is described by an archival finding aid. The finding aid can be found
in PITTCat by entering a Boolean conjunctive keyword search: finding aid
AND Pittsburgh photographer. This search returns a small set of five results,
one of which is the finding aid for the collection in question. The abstract of
the finding aid informs searchers that the collection consists of approximately
150,000 photographs and negatives, “excellent building, transportation, in-
dustrial, housing, and peripheral details of the history and development of
Pittsburgh.” The full text of the finding aid includes a “Collection Scope and
Content Notes” statement and within that statement the archivist provides ex-
amples of only three photographs: the 1905 construction of the filtered water
reservoir, the 1911 North Side flood district survey, and the 1912 excavation
of the “Hump.”
One cannot help but ask what it is that systems librarians and archivists
fixate on when building well-intentioned systems like this. Richard Cox was
justified in asking, “Is there anything natural in how archivists construct find-
ing aids, except for the millennia old tradition of making lists that date back
nearly to the beginning of writing?”41 Atul Nerkar, professor of management
at the Columbia Business School, shares an old story about a drunk who
160 A. C. Benson

has been in a bar all evening and on his way to his car he realizes he has
lost his keys. “So he’s walking back to the bar, looking for his keys, but it’s
pitch-dark and he can’t see anything. Along the way there’s only one light,
coming from a lamppost. He could have dropped his keys anywhere, but
he keeps searching under the lamppost because that’s where the light is.”42
In a similar way, archivists keep returning to the finding aid as the basis for
designing new representations for digital archives accessed on the Internet.
Paraphrasing Nerkar, “archivists tend to look for solutions, or new knowl-
edge, in the neighborhood of existing expertise.”43 They keep searching for
answers in finding aids because that is what they understand best.
Before leaving the finding aid it should be recognized that EAD is the
de facto standard for encoding finding aids.44 Most EAD finding aids are
encoded in XML (extensible markup language) and defined by a DTD (doc-
ument type definition) or other schema. XML in combination with DTDs
offers a significantly richer language for describing archival photographs and
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photographic collections. However, as with paper and online card catalog

systems, the semantic information in XML-based finding aids is not machine
accessible in conformance with the semantic Web vision as expressed by
Tim Berners-Lee and others.45 The semantics of an EAD finding aid is only
accessible to people.

DESCRIPTIVE STANDARDS

Thus far this article has explored what archival description means, what its
role is in describing archival materials, and two common models used for
presenting descriptions, namely the catalog record and finding aid. It has
become evident in the process that archival description and the architectures
for representing descriptions evolved from a tradition of describing biblio-
graphic and text-based materials. There is a general reluctance to recognize
the unique and complex nature of archival photographs, collections, and
image-constructed knowledge.
Now it is time to explore the description process from another viewpoint
based on the rules and standards that govern how archival information is
represented. Generally speaking, all of the rules that guide archivists in cata-
loging materials fall under one or more of these three headings: (1) Data
Structure Standards, (2) Data Content Standards, and (3) Data Value
Standards.46
Some institutions use custom-built descriptive models rather than us-
ing nationally or internationally based standards. The current card catalog
at Washington and Jefferson College discussed earlier is an example. In a
survey of European institutions conducted during 1998 to 2000, it was shown
that of the 141 respondents who together manage a total of about 120 mil-
lion photographs, “[o]nly a small minority use standard models developed
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 161

for photographs.”47 It isn’t known how many nonstandard systems are in

use around the world or to what degree they are interoperable. Not only
do standards help establish consistency across cataloging entries within a
system, but if they are broadly accepted, they enable disparate, heteroge-
neous systems to search and access one another’s collections. Since there
are many standards from which to choose, archivists generally decide on
one that they will adopt as a standard for their organization. Depending on
the standard chosen, the archives may be complicating matters by adding
another layer of non-image-related descriptive elements to the final repre-
sentation. For example, the Biblioteca Nacional de España adopts the non-
photographic descriptive standard known as ISBD and combines this with
the MARC format. The result is photograph-specific information entered into
a non-photographic-based model.48 When nonspecific systems are used to
describe photographs, “cataloguers may be forced to stretch the meaning of
elements to squeeze in information that is specific to photographs.”49 This
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stance was strongly reinforced by Gigliola Fioravanati, Director of the Ital-

ian Center for Photoreproduction, Binding and Restoration (CFLR) who said,
“[D]espite the fact that the law on the protection of cultural assets includes
photographs among items to be protected and preserved, numerous bodies
in Italy have still to formulate a policy and action plan for the conservation
and promotion of photographs as items of culture heritage.”50 Fioravanati
went on to say, “The descriptive standards in use for other types of records
are applied to photographs, and a specific standard is very rarely used, even
when its characteristics have been identified.”51
The most common standards and their applications in item-level and
collection-level descriptions are briefly discussed in the sections that follow.52
Some of these standards are used for describing individual photographs and
photograph collections even though the standards were never specifically
designed for these purposes. The first category addressed is data structure
standards.

Data Structure Standards

Data structure standards define what data elements are included in a system
and can be transmitted and read by other systems supporting the same
standard. Data structures such as MARC 21 and EAD using DTDs, already
discussed elsewhere in this article, rely on data content standards and data
value standards for much of their content.

METADATA AS A MODEL FOR DESCRIBING PHOTOGRAPHS

There has been slow, wavering progress made in building better models
for describing photographs using metadata structures. The term metadata
is usually defined in just three words: data about data, a definition that
162 A. C. Benson

“provokes more questions than it answers,” according to Ron Daniel Jr.

and Carl Lagoze.53 Clifford Lynch, Director of the Coalition for Networked
Information, doesn’t acknowledge its relevance and questions why a meta-
concept should be applied to data. Lynch is credited with saying “[a]ll of it
is just data—no Meta-metadata—all data requires mechanisms for discovery,
management and access control.”54 Daniel and Lagoze agree, saying, “there
is no essential difference between data and metadata. Metadata is data, no
more and no less.”55
In spite of these observations, there remains persistence on the part
of information professionals to formalize and adopt more, not less, meta-
data standards and to expand further its definition. Metadata is defined in
a summary report provided by the Association for Library Collections and
Technical Services Task Force on Metadata as “structured, encoded data that
describe characteristics of information-bearing entities to aid in the identifi-
cation, discovery, assessment, and management of the described entities.”56
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This broad definition could be describing all of the encoding schema dis-
cussed throughout this paper, including the paper card catalog record for
that, too, is “data about data.” The metadata encoding schemes explored here
fall under a narrower definition of metadata and share these characteristics
(and weaknesses) in common:

• They provide limited interoperability.

• They attempt to standardize content.
• They are interpretive.
• They are concerned with networked information discovery.
• They are adaptable to a wide range of formats.
• They are accessible to a wide audience of amateur record builders.
• They lack specificity.

The International Press Telecommunications Council (IPTC) was adopting

photograph metadata standards as early as 1990 with their development
of the Information Interchange Model (IIM), later adopted by Adobe for
their image editing software Photoshop.57 Michael Steidl, author of IPTC’s
most recent Photo Metadata White Paper (2007), offers practical reasons
for using metadata to identify and manage photographs: “Lack of image
metadata can delay projects, requiring additional research to confirm caption
details and establish rights and permissions.”58 Steidl claims that without
metadata “resources are wasted, opportunities are lost, liability increases
and intellectual property rights are eroded.”59 Steidl drew attention to one
of metadata’s less visible roles, encouraging respect for the rights of creators
and rights holders and minimizing the risk of an image becoming orphaned
(losing its identity). Steidl explains how this protection can be facilitated:
“The protection of embedded metadata is supported by laws that are based
on the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) Copyright Treaty
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 163

of 1996, which prohibits the removal or alteration of rights management in

information.”60

DUBLIN CORE METADATA INITIATIVE

One of the better known, more widely used metadata schemes is Dublin
Core. Dublin Core was developed and is maintained by the Dublin Core
Metadata Initiative (DCMI), which was founded in 1994.61 A weakness of
Dublin Core is that it is intended to provide a standard for data exchange, but
because of its simplicity, it does not enforce consistency in its internal data
structure. For example, Dublin Core allows the record makers to redefine and
extend fields and choose from a number of authorized vocabularies or ignore
controlled vocabularies altogether. In 2004, Leif Andresen, Library Advisory
Officer, Danish National Library Authority, explored description formats that
would support record sharing among archives, museums, and libraries. He
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concluded, “[I]t is not feasible to use Dublin Core internally in the sectors,
as it is far too general and unable to cope with specific needs. The choice
of Dublin Core is problematic, because this rather simple format is basically
focusing on Web resources.”62 Again, Daniel and Lagoze concur: “Metadata
efforts often fall into the trap of trying to create a universal metadata schema.
Such efforts fail to recognize the basic nature of metadata: namely, metadata
is far too diverse to fit into one useful taxonomy.”63

VRA CORE
At about the same time DCMI was developing Dublin Core, the Visual Re-
sources Association was developing a set of core elements called VRA Core,
which focused on the description of “visual cultural works.” The term vi-
sual takes on a broad meaning in VRA Core to include artworks, artifacts,
paintings, sculpture, architecture, and photographs.64 VRA Core does a better
job of making a distinction between records describing an actual photograph
and records describing representations of photographs, a problem sometimes
found in Dublin Core records.65
The VRA Core element set accomplishes this by providing a categorical
organization for the description of a photograph (the “created object”) or a
description of the image that documents the photograph (a visual surrogate
of the original photograph). The Cleveland Museum of Art uses VRA Core
metadata standards to describe their museum photographs. One record, a
Lewis Hine photograph titled “Cotton Mill, South Carolina,” presents a view
describing the original gelatin-silver print rather than the digital representa-
tion shown in the record itself.66 This is a critical distinction. A surrogate—the
concept of substituting one thing for another—sometimes creates a problem
in archival description because it is not clear by reading a record what it is
that is being substituted.
164 A. C. Benson

CATEGORIES FOR THE DESCRIPTION OF WORKS OF ART

Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA) is another emerging
data structure standard.67 CDWA is a product of the Art Information Task
Force funded by the J. Paul Getty Trust, edited by Murtha Baca and Patricia
Harpring. It describes a metadata element set consisting of 512 categories
and subcategories that can be used to describe or catalog many object types
including photographs. To paraphrase Daniel’s and Lagoze’s earlier comment
about metadata, CDWA is yet one more data structure, “no more and no less.”
Or, as some would say, the good thing about standards is that there are so
many to choose from.

INTERNATIONAL STANDARD FOR BIBLIOGRAPHIC DATA (ISBD)

International Standard for Bibliographic Data (ISBD)68 provides a standard
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form of description for the international exchange of bibliographic records.

The standard does not define output formats.69 The International Institute for
Social History (IISH), founded in Amsterdam in 1935, holds about 225,192
photographs as of January 2004.70 About 102,000 photographs have been
digitized and entered into the IISH automated catalog using ISBD rules in
MARC format records. Information on the other photos in their collection
can be accessed on their Web site at the collection level.71 A MARC record
display retrieved from IISH’s image collection presents only a brief record
about its subject. For example, in the case of a photograph showing Vincent
Auriol and Mrs. Auriol, the description mentions only their names and that
they are standing in the library of the Elysée. While the textual detail is
quite limited, the record’s role as surrogate for the original photograph is
very powerful compared to the relationship between a bibliographic records
standing in for a monograph. The IISH record includes a small digital version
of the analog photograph. The searcher can, in one sense, see the original
photo in its entirety.

GENERAL INTERNATIONAL STANDARD FOR ARCHIVAL DESCRIPTION (ISAD(G))

General International Standard for Archival Description, or ISAD(G), is a
structural standard first established in 1994 for use by archives in cataloging
collections. ISAD(G) serves as a general guideline for multilevel description
and consists of twenty-six elements organized under seven general head-
ings. According to the Second Edition (1999), only six of these elements are
considered essential for the effective international exchange of information.72
The guidelines are general in the sense that they broadly apply to all archival
descriptions regardless of their output formats or the way in which ISAD(G)
elements are applied, for example, as lists, catalogs, finding aids, etc.73 The
ISAD(G) standards are used by national and international committees who
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 165
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FIGURE 6 A Full Example Illustrating ISAD(G), The Robert E. Peary Family Collection Illus-
trating Fonds Level and Series Level Descriptions. Copyright International Council on Archives.
Reprinted with permission.

are responsible for developing codes and cataloguing rules. ISAD(G) is not
directly used to describe a particular item. Instead, it provides structure and
categorizes information as demonstrated in the finding aid shown in Fig-
ures 6 and 7, where the Robert E. Peary Family Collection is described on
three levels: the fonds level, series level, and file level.74 It is content stan-
dards like Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) that explains
what information should be placed in the categories such as Title, Date(s),
and Level of description.
The Swedish Fotosekratariat and National Archives of Sweden provides a
good example of a national organization that developed a descriptive model
based on ISAD(G) for photographs. The Swedish model, known as Dataele-
mentkatalogen, was introduced in 1996 and uses a multilevel structure that
supports materials description at any level.75 Torsten Johansson of the Stock-
holm City Museum describes the structure of the Dataelementkatalogeni as
consisting of four levels: fonds, series, file, and item.76

ENCODING SCHEMATA: MODS, MADS, METS, AND NISO MIXD

The phrase encoding schemata is generally used in conjunction with stan-
dards utilizing XML document formats and serve as standards for encod-
ing structural metadata. MODS (Metadata Object Description Schema) is a
166 A. C. Benson
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FIGURE 7 Robert E. Peary Family Collection Showing File Level Description. Copyright In-
ternational Council on Archives. Reprinted with permission.

bibliographic element set much like a MARC record, except it is encoded

using XML. MODS can be used to carry certain data elements from an ex-
isting MARC 21 record or it can be used to build an original description
record.77 MODS utilizes a much simpler set of elements than what is found
in a full MARC format. MADS (Metadata Authority Description Schema) is an
XML schema used for an authority element set and serves as a companion
to MODS. MODS is to MARC 21 Bibliographic format as MADS is to MARC
21 Authorities format.78
METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) is a schema for
encoding data about digital library objects. METS evolved from an earlier
XML document format called MOA2. According to the METS: Primer and
Reference Manual, the MOA2 DTD “defined a digital object standard for en-
coding structural, descriptive and administrative metadata along with primary
content.”79 METS built on this model adding the ability to “share, archive,
and display digital objects,” including digital audio and video. To encode
a digital library object in METS means to record the relationships that exist
between pieces of content and the metadata that make up the digital object.
The pieces of content could be, for example, the three different digital files
typically associated with a digital photograph: the high-resolution archival
master copy in TIFF format, the reference copy in JPEG format, and the
thumbnail image in GIF format. METS provides a framework for locating
these files and their associated metadata.
The last XML schema discussed in this section is NISO MIX (NISO Meta-
data for Images in XML), which can be used as a stand-alone or as an
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 167

extension to METS for describing technical metadata associated with digital

still images.80 MIX schema provides a format for storing and/or exchang-
ing image data specified in ANSI/NISO Z39.87—Data Dictionary—Technical
Metadata for Digital Still Images (2006). The Data Dictionary describes in
detail the technical metadata elements, which are designed to enable in-
teroperability between systems and long-term management of digital image
collections.81

Data Content Standards

Data content standards govern the syntax and form in which information
is presented in data structure standards. For example, if Boris Mikhailov is
the authorized name in the authority file containing photographers’ names,
the data content standard might specify that the last name should be en-
tered first, followed by a comma, and then the photographer’s first name, as
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in Mikhailov, Boris. Cataloging becomes more complicated when describing

photographs because it is a process that engages the archivist in an inter-
pretive process and the quality of description depends on the archivist’s
expertise and background in describing images and contextual information.

ANGLO-AMERICAN CATALOGING RULES AND RDA

First developed in 1978, the Anglo-American Cataloging Rules, Version 2
(AACR2) is a content standard, not an encoding or a display standard, and
has no connection or influence on how a system stores or communicates
information.82 It should not be confused with MARC 21, which is an encoding
standard and serves a different purpose.
Resource Description and Access (RDA) is a new standard slated for
release in 2009 and is intended to replace AACR2.83 The original AACR was
designed for an environment where paper card catalogs were the dominant
access tool to collections. The RDA guidelines, which will be co-published by
the American Library Association, the Canadian Library Association, and the
Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, will be more
flexible and accommodate both digital and analog cataloging systems.84
RDA’s primary role is not significantly different from AACR2’s. FRBR, which
stands for Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records, provides the
conceptual foundation for RDA.85 As its name implies, FRBR is firmly rooted
in the bibliographic record model, and one of the major roles of RDA will
be to reflect attributes of and relationships between the entities in FRBR as
well as in FRAD (Functional Requirements for Authority Data).86

DESCRIBING ARCHIVES: A CONTENT STANDARD (DACS)

Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS) is a standard designed
by and for the archival community. It was deemed an official standard by
168 A. C. Benson

the Society of American Archivists in 2004 and replaces an earlier standard

known as Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts (APPM). The intention
of DACS is to expand on the brief rules presented in AACR2, which concerns
archival materials. The Visual Materials Archivists at the University of North
Carolina at Chapel Hill Library utilize EAD as their encoding scheme and
apply DACS when writing guidelines for their photographic collections.87
DACS, like its predecessor APPM, is a content standard and describes what
to put into the categories that appear in structural standards like ISAD(G).

CATALOGING CULTURAL OBJECTS (CCO)

Closely related to VRA Core is a Visual Resource Association initiative called
the Cataloging Cultural Objects Project (CCO),88 which has gained national
recognition as a new project on standardizing the cataloging of visual infor-
mation. Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works
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and Their Images is a manual for describing, documenting, and cataloging

cultural works and their visual surrogates.89 Where VRA Core is a data struc-
ture standard, CCO is a data content standard that focuses on cultural ma-
terials. CCO provides prescriptive guidelines for selecting, ordering, and
formatting data used to populate VRA Core catalog records and a subset of
CDWA categories.

Data Value Standards and Authority Control

Data value standards govern the terminology that is employed in the given
categories or data elements established by data structure standards. Thesauri,
controlled vocabularies, and authority files help maintain consistency and
standardize the terminology so that information about like materials are
brought together on retrieval. A name authority file, for example, the Library
of Congress Name Authority File, indicates which personal names among a
number of spelling variants and pseudonyms should be used in a description.
Controlled vocabularies are structured lists of terms, usually in the form
of thesauri that provide values for MARC-coding and metadata elements.
The standard tools used by archivists for controlled vocabulary include Li-
brary of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH),90 Art and Architecture Thesaurus
(AAT),91 and the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (TGM). The TGM was pub-
lished in 1995 as a single volume incorporating two separate thesauruses:
The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials I: Subject Terms (TGM I) and Thesaurus
for Graphic Materials II: Genre and Physical Characteristic Terms (TGM II).
As of October 2007, the TGM I and the TGM II were merged into a single
vocabulary and can be accessed from the Library of Congress Prints and
Photographs home page.92 The Art & Architecture Thesaurus was originally
developed for use as a controlled vocabulary in text-based materials when
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 169

making references to objects and images, but it has since evolved to become
a tool for describing and cataloging objects and images.93 ICONCLASS is a
subject-specific classification system, a hierarchically ordered collection of
definitions of objects, persons, events, and abstract ideas that can be used
as subject terms for images.94 Art historians, researchers, and curators use it
to describe, classify, and examine the subject of images represented in vari-
ous media such as paintings, drawings, and photographs. Graphic Materials:
Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Collections, compiled by
Elisabeth Betz Parker in 1982, includes a list of subject headings for arrang-
ing and indexing images.95 It also provides guidelines for cataloging visual
materials including photographic prints and negatives. In 2008, the Standards
Committee of the Rare Book and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) of the Associ-
ation of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) agreed to develop a second
edition of Graphic Materials as part of the Descriptive Cataloging of Rare
Materials suite. It would be designated as DCRM(G) (Descriptive Cataloging
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of Rare Materials (Graphics).

Catalogers use various combinations of these and other description and
indexing tools for governing content in different encoding standards such as
MARC 21. A concern with this approach is that there will be discrepancies
between lists, and depending on which list an archivist uses to build a record,
the vocabulary list used to build one institution’s catalog may or may not be
consistent with another institution’s catalog. The problem of ambiguity and
inconsistency in terminology, which prompted archivists to use vocabulary
lists in the first place, becomes more complicated as the number of authority
lists being consulted increases.

Summarizing Records, Finding Aids, and Description Standards

The information presented previously describes a complex, lattice-like struc-
ture that archivists negotiate when building finding aids, catalog records,
and other representational artifacts describing photographs. They generally
choose a particular set of tools and standards they like or that are required
by their integrated library system or digital archives platform and then they
stick with them. It’s the most efficient use of time and money. Mixing too
many standards together in one organization’s online and database systems
could lead to complex mapping problems when migrating to new systems.
Item-level records for the majority of archival photographic materials
were not common in early card catalog systems, so consequently there were
no item-level records being migrated into first-generation online catalog sys-
tems. Other record-keeping systems like Carnegie’s Biography/Business In-
dex (see Figure 5) do point to individual items, but they have never es-
caped their original encasements—the wooden card catalog. The cards are
entombed in an analog system with no traces in the World Wide Web
170 A. C. Benson

or online catalogs. In other cases, catalogs contain only skeletal descrip-

tions of large personal collections. These collections may entail thousands
of photographs, handwritten manuscripts, typewritten documents, and as-
sorted realia. Millions, possibly hundreds of millions of individual archival
photographs worldwide are stored in archival boxes and files with no record
or index pointing to them or informing researchers of their existence.
Because of the enormity of the collections and sheer quantity that is
being accessioned daily, it is the usual practice for archivists to catalog their
collections at the fonds or series level using a finding aid. A finding aid
defines the subject of the collection, its scope, content, and may inventory
the collection by assigning titles and classification numbers to the individual
manuscripts and photograph albums contained in the collection, but the
common practice is not cataloging individual prints and/or negatives. For
example, at the time of this writing, the Collection of the Pittsburgh City
Photographer mentioned earlier contains approximately 150,000 images, and
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only 2,349 are cataloged at the item level and made available online. This is
a case where the University of Pittsburgh’s Archives Service Center follows
the principles of provenance and original order describing the photographs
as an aggregate in a finding aid and the University’s Digital Research Library
offers access to a fraction of the collection online at the item level. More
importantly, the data models and description standards that are used by
archivists for describing photographs are not semantic Web models, and
their purpose is not to make semantic information machine-accessible.

THE NATURE OF KNOWLEDGE REPRESENTATION

While Nerkar’s drunk is looking for his keys under the lamppost, we turn
our discussion to exploring other spaces for relevant models of description
that may apply to archival photographs.96 The term knowledge representation
(KR) may be new to the field of archival description, but it is central to the
field of artificial intelligence and so-called expert systems or knowledge base
systems. In this section the meaning of knowledge representation is explored
in the context of archival description.

Knowledge Representation’s Role as Surrogate

In the early 1990s when Duranti was writing her essay on archival de-
scription, three experts in knowledge representation, Randall Davis, Howard
Shrobe, and Peter Szolovits were working on a critical review of knowledge
representation hoping to clarify what knowledge representation means by
defining it in terms of five distinct roles that it plays: (1) at the most fun-
damental level it is a surrogate, (2) it is a set of ontological commitments,
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 171

(3) it is a fragmentary theory of intelligent reasoning, (4) it is a medium for

effective computation, and (5) it is a medium of human expression.97 A close
analysis of these roles in the context of what might be considered a new
model for archival description falls outside the scope of this article, but it
would be useful to look closely at the surrogate role, a concept introduced
in 2005 by Richard Pearce-Moses when defining archival description in A
Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology.98
To say that knowledge representation is a surrogate is to say it is a
substitute for the thing itself. In archival representation, the surrogate is also
a substitute for the thing itself. However, there is a critical difference in how
these two disciplines view “the thing itself.” Archivists neither attempt to
create in the representation a substitute of the document being described
nor do they use the surrogate to think or reason about the content of the
document. While provenance and original order are meaningful principles,
they do not concern themselves with the conceptual landscape of documents
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or with their meaning. They simply require that the whole of the records
created by an individual, family, or organization be kept together, in their
original order, and that they are described and preserved as one fonds, series,
or collection. Davis and colleagues on the other hand, apply knowledge
representation to think and reason about the world rather than take action
on it.99
Artificial intelligence (AI) raises interesting questions for archivists de-
scribing photographs. What do archivists substitute with archival descrip-
tions? What is the finding aid’s intended referent? Is it the photograph itself,
the text describing the photograph, or is it the subject(s) represented by the
photograph? Davis and colleagues ask, “What attributes of the original does
[a surrogate] capture and make explicit, and which does it omit?”100 Davis
and his colleagues admit that the most accurate representation of an object
is the object itself and accept the inevitable imperfection of surrogates.
This suggests that archivists should reconsider the models they use for
representing photographs with meaningful surrogates. When finding aids
state only that “many photographs” are included in a collection, the archivist’s
degree of error in accurately representing the photographs is very high.

Brachman’s and Levesque’s Representer

Ronald Brachman and Hector Levesque, experts in knowledge representa-
tion, describe representation as a “relationship between two domains . . . the
first is meant to ‘stand for’ or take the place of the second. Usually, the
first domain, the representor [sic], is more concrete, immediate, or accessible
in some way than the second.”101 Letting go for a moment of the naming
conventions “finding aid” and “catalog card,” this other way of looking at
things adopts the concept of two domains, one of which is a representer
172 A. C. Benson

that stands in for another, less accessible domain. Applying Brachman’s and
Levesque’s model to the photograph, representation is “a relationship be-
tween a textual description of a photographic print that stands in for a less
accessible photograph stored in an archives.” It could be argued that in the
case of photographs, the representer may also consist of an image or a com-
bination of text and image. In applying Brachman’s and Levesque’s model
to another photographic example, Dorothea Lange’s iconic photograph “Mi-
grant Mother” stands for the much more abstract symbolism of the migrant
worker during the Great Depression.
The index card pictured in Figure 8 is a representer of a black and
white gelatin silver print. This instantiation of a representer consists of both
text and image. The image is a contact print, a miniature black and white
gelatin silver print glued to the card. The text is a typewritten statement, also
glued to the card that includes the photograph’s title, description, photogra-
pher’s name, and date. At the top and bottom of the card the cataloger has
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assigned a record number 11733 and subject heading, “Buildings-Gateway

Center.” The indexing system, known as the Pittsburgh Photographic Library
Index, provides item-level access to portions of several photograph collec-
tions housed in the Pennsylvania Department of the main Carnegie Library
in Pittsburgh.102

FIGURE 8 Paper Index Card in the Current Pittsburgh Photographic Library Index,
Pennsylvania Department, Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh, Main (Oakland). Carnegie Library
of Pittsburgh. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction or usage prohibited. Reprinted
with permission.
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 173

In an abstract sense, the subjects discussed in earlier sections of this ar-

ticle related to knowledge representation: knowledge about what constitutes
collections of photographs and knowledge about individual photographs. In
example after example it was shown that traditional tools used for describ-
ing photographs have serious limitations. The archivist’s approach to archival
representation and item-level description of photographs is limited because
it generally does not describe the photograph in photographic terms, and
in the case of finding aids, it is common to exclude information about pho-
tographs at the item level. Archivists have used generalized architectures
for structuring and encoding records that describe photographs, for exam-
ple Dublin Core, EAD, and MARC 21, and then applied a set of in-house
rules or a set of broader standards such as AACR2 or DACS to explain what
information goes into a chosen data structure.
For generations, the representers archivists used to stand in for pho-
tographs were natural language descriptions written in paper finding aids
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and card catalogs like those pictured in Figures 3 and 4. When display
mechanisms and data structures were digitized and the analog records of
archives were migrated to online catalogs and the Web, archivists ended up
imitating and re-creating what are really nothing more than digital versions
of the failed paper card catalogs and paper finding aids, which are not con-
cerned with semantics and are syntactically inconsistent. The online records
of the Cleveland Museum of Art discussed earlier look eerily similar to the
paper index card shown in Figure 8.
Most important, the information contained in the representers is ex-
pressed in natural language; that is, the language humans use for writing
and speaking. The information is not being formalized in a language that the
machine it is stored on understands beyond what it sees as a series of squig-
gly lines. In effect, the first machine is prevented from sharing its knowledge
with any other machine. Natural language descriptions will be the biggest
inhibitor preventing current archival description models from being “mean-
ingful” and sharable on the semantic Web. In the record illustrated in Fig-
ure 6, a machine can read the number “1960” but doesn’t know it represents
a date or what a date is; a machine can read the string of ASCII characters
“Robert E. Peary Family” but doesn’t know what a “Robert E. Peary Family”
is or what it means to be Robert E. Peary.
A fundamental question to ask at the beginning of this discussion on
the nature of representation and the photograph is this: Do archivists who
are engaged in describing and cataloging photographs need a more for-
malized representation for photographs, or do existing architectures provide
enough foundation and structure for the next generation of knowledge shar-
ing? Tim Berners-Lee, the founder of the World Wide Web, envisions the next
generation of the Web, Web 3.0, as being a semantic Web—a Web where ma-
chines not only read but understands what they read.103 The description mod-
els and standards explored in this paper weren’t designed for communicating
174 A. C. Benson

information about photographs in a semantic Web environment. Two con-

cepts, ontology and logic, are introduced in the last sections of this article
as necessary formalisms for making archival photographs meaningful and
accessible in semantic Web 3.0.

THE SEMANTIC ARCHIVE MODEL

One possible approach for exploring Web 3.0 archival description begins
with redefining the meaning of archival description. The following definition
is proposed as a starting point: Archival description is a formalization that
represents an entity in a way that is accessible to and can be processed
effectively by both humans and machines.
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The Semantic Archive Environment

The semantic archive environment in an institutional setting is illustrated
in Figure 9. The semantic archive does not operate in a closed environ-
ment. The archivist is not a gatekeeper. The semantic archive exists in
an environment populated by external stakeholders. The semantic archive
stores knowledge about photographs and it stores images of archival prints.
The archivist and community of users are external stakeholders. They share
knowledge with each other about photographs. The archivist and the com-
munity of users search for photographs and they ask the machine questions
about photographs. The machine responds with answers to questions, some-
times drawing new inferences from existing knowledge, and it directs users
to photographs that are relevant to their queries. Machines communicate
with one another, listen to one another’s questions, and share their knowl-
edge. As the world changes, the knowledge base is brought up to date. The
institutional semantic model still houses analog photographs in an archives,
although the archives is not a functional component of the semantic archives

FIGURE 9 The Institutional Semantic Archive Environment.

The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 175

FIGURE 10 The Semantic Archive Functional Model.

per se. As shown in Figure 10, the archives exist outside of the functional
model.
The Semantic Archive Functional Model takes a look at what is in-
side the “black box” shown in the earlier semantic archive environment
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(Figure 9). The first functional component is the scribe. The scribe describes
photographs at the ontological level of knowledge representation and de-
scribes and formalizes the photograph’s meaning, including provenance,
context, function, along with descriptive information such as the photogra-
pher’s name, date, place taken, what it is of and about.
The second component is the knowledge base. This is the component
where formalisms describing photographs are stored. Information is not seg-
mented and tagged, categorized, and indexed as being a title, a creator,
a scope note, a subject, or a component of provenance and original or-
der. The knowledge base is simply populated with semantic annotations of
photographs, and the semantic annotations include all of these facts in an
expressive and universal representational language.104
The image silo is the third functional component. The image silo is
responsible for creating archival-quality digital copies of the original pho-
tographs. The image silo manages the long-term storage and preservation of
digital images.
The fourth and last functional component is access. Access provides the
user community with a system for seeing what is available and for locating
photographic prints in the analog and digital archives. Access provides users
with information about photographs and aids in locating and retrieving pho-
tographs relevant to their searches. Users can ask access questions about
photographs and share information they have relating to photographs found
in the semantic archive.

DEFINING ONTOLOGY

It is not likely that everyone will accept a single definition of ontology. Over
time and in different disciplines its meaning has changed, but it is neces-
sary to have a clear understanding of ontology to understand the semantic
176 A. C. Benson

archive model. Ontology originated in the field of philosophy as a branch of

metaphysics concerned with the systematic account of existence or being.105
Ontology subsequently found its way into the field of AI, most notably in the
writings and research of Thomas Gruber. Gruber’s often-cited definition of
ontology describes it as an “explicit specification of a conceptualization.”106
Gruber elaborates on this further, defining conceptualization as “an ab-
stract, simplified view of the world that we wish to represent for some
purpose.” In the context of knowledge representation, to specify means to
formally describe a domain of discourse in terms of concepts and relation-
ships. For example, if our domain of discourse is libraries, concepts or “class
terms” may include staff members, patrons, books, and journals. These are
all common nouns that are representative of objects belonging to sets or
classes, including the class of all staff members, the class of all patrons, the
class of all books, and the class of all journals.
Relationships are typically built by hierarchically arranging these various
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concepts, or classes of objects. All librarians for example, are members of

the class staff members. Reference librarians are a subclass of librarians.
All monographs are books. Trade journals and newspapers are subclasses of
periodicals. Relationships may exist between classes, for example, between
the class consisting of librarians and the class consisting of books. Librari-
ans catalog books and librarians select books. Some assertions made about
this domain of discourse may involve complex relationships among many
objects. The assertion that librarians withdraw books from libraries based
on the Crew Guidelines for weeding collections establishes relationships be-
tween librarians and books, guidelines and weeding, books and collections,
collections and libraries, and weeding and collections. Relationships may
exist between patrons and books as well. Patrons read books and patrons
checkout and request books. And, finally, relationships may also exist be-
tween librarians and patrons. For example, patrons ask librarians questions
and librarians read stories to children.
Another defining characteristic of ontology in the context of AI is the use
of formal constraints on how vocabulary is used. For example, a librarian’s
age is constrained to a value type number with a cardinality of one. Sanford
Berman is an instance of the class “librarian” and can have only one age and
age must be expressed using integers.
Ontologies in the context of the Web, writes Kim Jung-Min and
colleagues, enable sharing and reuse of information among people and
machines.107 This leads to sharing different terms that represent the same
object. Again, applying this to our sample domain of interest “libraries,” aca-
demic library A may call journals serials while public library B calls journals
periodicals. These differences can be overcome by mapping terms to specific
ontologies or by defining mappings of topics between ontologies.108
Photographs and their descriptions involve a universe of discourse that
is both interpretative and factual. Looking at a photograph and describing
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 177

what it means could be as simple as listing the names of elements recognized

in a picture or as complex as interpreting abstract symbolisms represented by
those elements. Viewers consciously and subconsciously involve themselves
in processes that create relationships between abstract ideas and concrete
objects; viewers identify concepts and properties, bringing to the interpretive
process all of their past experiences. Graham Clarke, one of Britain’s most
popular authors and illustrators said, “Whenever we look at a photograph
image we engage in a series of complex readings which relate as much to
the expectations and assumptions that we bring to the image as to the photo-
graphic subject itself.”109 There are characteristics shared in common among
all photographs while other characteristics belong only to one photograph.
The ontology of the photograph is a formal conceptualization of this world
and all it entails; the common elements that join together all of its parts
and the unique properties that define and characterize each photograph’s
individuality.
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At this point in the discussion readers may ask, “How can one archivist
build an ontology that conceptualizes a domain of interest so large as to
include the photograph and all possible subjects a photographic image may
entail?” It requires a stretch of the imagination, but one could think of an
ontology of photography as being an authority file or controlled vocabu-
lary in terms of taxonomy, something like the Library of Congress Subject
Headings or the Getty Art & Architecture Thesaurus, but it’s dangerous to
make such comparisons because an ontology is much more. The taxonomy
of terms used to describe photographs might provide a simple backbone for
designing an ontology, but an ontology is also a conceptualization expressed
in a formal language. Referring back to the example that used libraries as a
universe of discourse, an ontology expresses relationships between entities.
The methodology for building an ontology, as Adam Pease describes it, “is
a theoretically and philosophically informed approach . . . both top-down
and bottom-up (as well as middle-out.)”110 There is not yet in existence an
ontology of the photograph, and it is a formidable process to build one, but
there are many other general-purpose ontologies, upper ontologies, midlevel
ontologies, and domain ontologies already in existence.

LEVELS OF REPRESENTATION

Knowledge representation and levels of representation are now introduced

and briefly discussed in an attempt to build a foundation for understanding
the relationship between ontological knowledge and natural language un-
derstanding. In order for machines to understand the archival descriptions
of photographs, archivists must understand the semantics of the natural lan-
guage along with the relationship between the language and the world.
A cataloger who describes a photograph using MARC 21 and AACR2
views their representations on two levels: (1) the level of the physical
178 A. C. Benson

object—the photograph housed in its file folder or protective sleeve, which

is in turn stored in an archival box or filing cabinet, and (2) the represen-
tational artifact that stands in for the actual photograph. The next section
introduces a different view of levels of representation.

Guarino’s Levels of Representation

John McCarthy and Patrick Hayes made early efforts at formalizing knowl-
edge and making explicit representations of the world. In 1969, McCarthy
and Hayes said, “A computer program capable of acting intelligently in the
world must have a general representation of the world in terms of which
its inputs are interpreted. Designing such a program requires commitments
about what knowledge is and how it is obtained.”111 John F. Sowa described
two distinct levels of representation that McCarthy and Hayes called epis-
temological and heuristic: “The epistemological level is solely devoted to
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knowledge about objects and processes in the application domain . . . the

heuristic level introduces data structures for representing the objects and
programs for simulating the processes.”112
Further refinement of these levels was made in 1979 when Ron Brach-
man divided knowledge representation into the following five levels: (1)
implementation level, (2) logical level, (3) epistemological level, (4) concep-
tual level, and (5) linguistic level.113 Nicola Guarino looked at philosophical
concerns and in 1995 introduced an ontological level, which falls between
the epistemological and conceptual levels.114 The distinctions introduced by
Brachman along with Guarino’s ontological level are illustrated in Figure 11.
The first three levels (logical, epistemological, and ontological) are explored
in more detail to illustrate three levels of representation that would be used
in a semantic archive model.

LOGICAL LEVEL
To begin thinking more in terms of photography, the phrase some calotype
print is used in the following examples of formalizations at the logical and
epistemological levels. The most basic level of representation is the level of

FIGURE 11 Guarino’s Levels of Formalizing Representations.115

The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 179

FIGURE 12 The Logical Relationships and Their Notations.

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first order logic where, as Guarino described it, “primitives are predicates
and functions, which have given a formal semantics in terms of relations
among objects of a domain.”116 The logical relationships are presented in
Figure 12.
This is the level of formalization that is understood as the most “basic”
level in the sense of being the most neutral. Guarino described first-order
logic as being “notoriously neutral with respect to ontological choices. This
is one of its strengths.”117 For example, the fact that there is some calotype
print could be represented in first-order logic as two unary predicates:

∃x print(x) ∧ calotype(x)118

Guarino refers to interpretations like this as being “totally arbitrary,”119 which

is to say that at this basic level there is no ontological difference (or any other
kind of difference) between the terms print and calotype.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL LEVEL
The epistemological level is the next level of representation. At this level
certain decisions are made about the concepts and their interrelationships
as conceptual units. More structure is being imposed on the information
being represented at this level. It is here that the decision is made that a
relationship exists between “print” and “calotype” and that this relationship
exists within a hierarchical framework. The term calotype represents a class
of objects, and print represents a super class. There is a relationship between
“calotype” and its corresponding super class indicated by a binary “typeOf”
relation. This can be expressed in predicate logic as:
180 A. C. Benson

∃x calotype(x) ∧ typeOf(x,print)

This formula can be read as: There exists an x such that x is a calotype and
x type of print.

ONTOLOGICAL LEVEL
At the epistemological level of representation there was no methodological
reason for choosing to treat “calotype” as an object and to treat it as a subclass
of “print.” There was nothing preventing the knowledge worker from making
the reverse true, that “print” is a subclass of “calotype,” or making “print”
a concept and “calotypeness” a property where “calotype” is the value of a
binary “hasQuality” relation. The important point here is that depending on
the decisions made at the epistemological level, it may be easier or harder
to setup certain inferences later on.
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It is at the ontological level where modeling decisions are clarified,

where specifications of what is meant by “print” and “calotype” are made
explicit. The ontological level is the level of meaning. Decisions made at
this level are no longer arbitrary because ontological choices reflect the
real world where prints and calotypes are concrete objects with physical
qualities. Guarino states that ontological commitments can be made in two
ways, “either by suitably restricting the semantics of the primitives, or by
introducing meaning postulates expressed in the language itself.”120
Ontologies provide a basis for interoperability and information sharing
among different domains of knowledge in much the same way that authority
lists and controlled vocabularies enable sharing of bibliographic data among
disparate library systems. Ontologies differ, though, in that they are not
restricted to describing things. Ontologies are equally concerned with the
relationships that exist between entities, states of existence, and temporal
qualities.

CONCLUSION

In the literature review it was established that there is a long-standing tra-

dition in the archival profession that the arrangement of archival records is
based on the precepts of provenance and original order, and this arrange-
ment provides the basis for description, a process that continues throughout
the life of the record. It was determined that these precepts of arrangement
and description also apply to the photograph, whether accessioning a single
photograph or a collection of photographs and negatives.
A number of problems surface in the current record-keeping mod-
els used by archivists when envisioning their application in a semantic-
based Web 3.0 environment where machines not only read but understand
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 181

meaning. This is not to say card index systems like the Pittsburgh Photo-
graphic Library Index are not functional. They function within a prescribed
set of rules that work well for the individual researcher who is standing at the
card index thumbing through broad subject categories. When the researcher
finds an index card relevant to his or her topic of interest, the searcher asks
the archivist for assistance in retrieving a photograph stored in the archives.
The same holds true for collection- and item-level descriptions in online cat-
alogs. Within their prescribed rules they may serve a useful purpose under
some circumstances.
The domain of interest investigated in this article focused on the world
of archival photographs and photographic archives. The main problem is
one of representation and choosing an artificial intelligence language to
describe this world, a world that exists at the junction where ontology, pho-
tography, and archival science collide. The research that proceeds from this
point forward requires choosing an already existing and functioning artifi-
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cial intelligence architecture, one that has upper- and midlevel ontologies in
place. To this researcher’s knowledge there is no existing architecture that
includes an ontology of the photograph, so this is where the work begins.
How does one approach building an ontology of the photograph? John F.
Sowa described how philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine expressed the
fundamental question of ontology in just three words: “What is there?” And
the answer was given in one word: “Everything.”121 So the first challenge is
to begin modeling a world that is smaller than everything but big enough to
explain what the photograph means.
Choosing an artificial intelligence architecture in which to carry out this
task is the next challenge. It is a little something like choosing which of the
traditional data content, structure, and value standards one should use for
building item level records and finding aids. In the case of artificial intelli-
gence, however, the main concern is choosing a representation language that
offers the right balance between expressiveness and reasoning. Levesque
and Brachman offer valuable advice regarding this balance by explaining
there is a tradeoff between the degree of expressiveness offered by a rep-
resentational language and the ability to reason with that language.122 They
suggest that as a representational language’s expressive power increases,
one’s ability to handle that system and effectively reason with it decreases.
Two likely candidates that deserve serious consideration for an ontology of
photography are SUMO, which is expressed in a language called SUO-KIF
(standard upper ontology–knowledge interchange format) and Scone, which
uses Common Lisp to build its knowledge base.123
To begin exploring this model further, a small experimental knowledge
base should be built and its effectiveness tested by measuring whether it
can answer a set of predetermined competency questions. These questions
should inquire about the nature of the photograph in the context of a photo-
graphic archive, a world where the photograph’s meaning is not only derived
182 A. C. Benson

from its physical nature and image content but from its provenance, its loca-
tion within an institution, and its relationship to and function within a larger
record set.

NOTES

1. Victor Burgin, “Photography, Phantasy, Function,” in Thinking Photography, ed. V. Burgin,

(London: Macmillan, 1982), 192.
2. An example is Gilda Williams, a critic and curator of contemporary art and photography and
former managing editor of Flash Art International. For an example of her work, see Gilda Williams, Boris
Michailov (New York: Phaidon, 2001).
3. Jonathan Friday, “Looking at Nature through Photographs,” Journal of Aesthetic Education 33,
no. 1 (Spring 1999): 25–33.
4. Dona Schwartz, “Visual Ethnography: Using Photography in Qualitative Research,” Qualitative
Sociology 12, no. 2 (Summer 1989): 119–154.
5. For one of the most historically significant commentaries on photography by a photographer,
see the description of “View of the Boulevards at Paris” in William Henry Fox Talbot, Pencil of Nature
Downloaded By: [Benson, Allen C.] At: 04:22 9 February 2010

(New York: Da Capo Press, 1969).

6. For examples, see pages 81–118 in Helena Zinkham and Elisabeth Betz Parker, eds., Descriptive
Terms for Graphic Materials: Genre and Physical Characteristic Headings (Washington, DC: Library of
Congress Cataloging Distribution Service, 1986).
7. Tim Berners-Lee, J. Hendler, and O. Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” Scientific American 284,
no. 5 (May 2001): 34–43.
8. Mary Lynn Ritzenthaler and Diane Vogt-O’Connor, with Helena Zinkham, Brett Carnell, and
Kit Peterson, Photographs: Archival Care and Management (Chicago: Society of American Archivists,
2006).
9. Sue McKemmish, Glenda Acland, Nigel Ward, and Barbara Reed, “Describing Records in
Context in the Continuum: The Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema,” Archivaria 48 (Fall 1999):
3–43.
10. David Campany, “A Few Remarks on the Lens, the Shutter, and the Light-Sensitive Surface,”
in Photography Theory, ed. James Elkins (New York: Routledge, 2007), 206.
11. Luciana Duranti, “Origin and Development of the Concept of Archival Description,” Archivaria
35 (September 1992), 47.
12. Frank B. Evens, Donald F. Harrison, and Edwin A. Thompson, comp., “A Basic Glossary for
Archivists, Manuscript Curators, and Records Managers,” American Archivist 37, no. 3 (July 1974), s.v.
“description,” 421.
13. S. Muller, J. A. Feith, and R. Fruin, Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives,
trans. Arthur H. Leavitt (New York: H. W. Wilson Co, 1968).
14. Muller, Feith, and Fruin, Manual for the Arrangement and Description of Archives, 100.
15. T. R. Schellenberg, The Management of Archives (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965):
111–112.
16. Kenneth W. Duckett, Modern Manuscripts (Nashville, TN: American Association for State and
Local history, 1975), 118–130.
17. Duranti, “Origin and Development of the Concept of Archival Description,” 47.
18. Fredric M. Miller, Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts (Chicago: Society of
American Archivists, 1990), 7.
19. Duranti, “Origin and Development of the Concept of Archival Description,” 48.
20. Richard Pearce-Moses, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology (Chicago: Society of
American Archivists, 2005), 112–113.
21. Kathleen D. Roe, Arranging & Describing Archives & Manuscripts (Chicago: The Society of
American Archivists, 2005).
22. Miller, Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts, 7.
23. Miller, Arranging and Describing Archives and Manuscripts, 25.
24. Ernst Posner, “Some Aspects of Archival Development since the French Revolution,” The
American Archivist 3 (1940): 168.
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 183

25. Bureau of Canadian Archivists, Rules for Archival Description (Revised version, 2008), xviii,
available at http://www.cdncouncilarchives.ca/RAD/RAD Frontmatter July2008.pdf (accessed October
29, 2008).
26. Roe, Arranging and Describing Archives & Manuscripts, 15.
27. Minnesota Historical Society, “3M Company: An Inventory of its Corporate Records at the Min-
nesota Historical Society,” available at http://www.mnhs.org/library/findaids/00281.xml (accessed Octo-
ber 26, 2008).
28. Wendy M. Duff and Verne Harris, “Stories and Names: Archival Description as Narrating
Records and Constructing Meanings,” Archival Science 2 (2002), 264. The context in which this statement
is being made is historical. The authors are describing some key assumptions made by archivists rooted
in the “traditional streams” of archival description. They later outline new questions raised by postmod-
ernists; for example, “Do archivists participate actively in the construction of a record’s meanings and its
significances?” (p. 265).
29. Richard J. Cox, Jane Greenberg, and Cynthia Porter, “Access Denied: The Discarding of Library
History,” American Libraries (April 1998): 57–61.
30. Washington and Jefferson College, “Archives and Special Collections,” available at http://
www.washjeff.edu/content.aspx?section=1399&menu id=399&crumb=398&id=1400 (accessed October
23, 2008).
31. Robert H. Burger, Authority Work (Littleton, CO: Libraries Unlimited, 1985), 4.
Downloaded By: [Benson, Allen C.] At: 04:22 9 February 2010

32. Helen F. Schmierer, “The Relationship of Authority Control to the Library Catalog,” Illinois
Libraries 62, no. 7 (September 1980): 599–603.
33. Hoover Institution, “Library and Archives,” available at http://www.hoover.org/hila/ (accessed
October 19, 2008).
34. Joan M. Schwartz, “Coming to Terms with Photographs: Descriptive Standards, Linguistic
‘Othering,’ and the Margins of Archivy,” Archivaria 54, (Fall 2002): 142–171.
35. Ibid., 142.
36. The MARC for Archival Visual Materials: A Compendium of Practice sets out the rules for
creating individual records for photographs. See Maryly Snow, “Visual Depictions and the Use of MARC:
A View from the Trenches of Slide Librarianship,” in Beyond the Book: Extending MARC for Subject Access,
eds. Toni Petersen and Pat Molholt (Boston, MA: G. K. Hall, 1990). Snow discusses the advantages of
shared cataloging. She explains that the Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) is approved for use in
entering controlled subject vocabulary in MARC’s 654 field. By entering item level records in national
bibliographic utilities such as OCLC, librarians are able to view other libraries’ records and borrow terms
they see are appropriate for their collections or, if authorized, can add terms to each other’s records. Snow
made the observation that where an image is located in a book there is also related textual information.
She suggested that creating links for an image item record to its source book would create a de facto
subject index to specific persons and places.
37. Ruth B. Bordin and Robert M. Warner, The Modern Manuscript Library (New York: Scarecrow
Press, 1966), 55.
38. Richard J. Cox, “Revisiting the Archival Finding Aid,” Journal of Archival Organization 5,
no. 4 (2007): 16.
39. Ibid.
40. Steven L. Hensen, Archives, Personal Papers, and Manuscripts: A Catalog Manual for Archival
Repositories, Historical Societies, and Manuscript Libraries, 2nd ed. (Chicago: Society of American
Archivists, 1989), 5.
41. Cox, “Revisiting the Archival Finding Aid,” 20.
42. Atul Nekar, “Managing Technological Innovation,” Fathom Knowledge Network, 2002, Avail-
able at http://www.fathom.com/feature/35108/ (accessed November 10, 2008).
43. Ibid.
44. To learn more about EAD, see the Encoded Archival Description Version 2002 Official Site,
Library of Congress, http://www.loc.gov/ead/ (accessed on December 12, 2008).
45. Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” 34–43.
46. This terminology is borrowed from a framework proposed by David Bearman for classi-
fying standards, which was presented at the first meeting of the Working Group on Standards for
Archival Description (WGSAD) who in turn developed a three-dimensional matrix that viewed stan-
dards in terms of strength of standard, developer of standard, and level of description. The matrix
presents four levels of description; however, this paper is concerned with only three, leaving out
184 A. C. Benson

the broadest level information systems standards. See David Bearman, “Strategy for Development and
Implementation of Archival Description Standards,” in Toward International Descriptive Standards for
Archives, papers presented at the ICA Invitational Meeting of Experts on Descriptive Standards, Na-
tional Archives of Canada, October 4–7, 1988 (Munich: K. G. Saur, 1993), 161–171. The matrix can be
viewed at the Society of American Archivists Web site, “Standards for Archival Description,” available at
http://www.archivists.org/catalog/stds99/intro.html#6 (accessed November 7, 2008).
47. Edwin Klijn and Yola de Lusenet, “In the Picture: An Overview of European Photographic Col-
lections,” ECPA report 11, European Commission on Preservation and Access (2000) cited in Edwin Klijn
and Yola de Lusenet, SEPIADES: Cataloguing Photographic Collections (Amsterdam: European Commis-
sion on Preservation and Access, 2004): 8, 13, available at http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/publ/pdf/2719.pdf
(accessed November 9, 2008).
48. Web site of the National Library of Spain, available at http://www.bne.es/ (accessed November
10, 2008).
49. Klijn and de Lusenet, SEPIADES, 14.
50. Gigliola Fioravanati, “Present Activities and Future Projects of the Italian Center for Photorepro-
duction, Binding and Restoration (CFLR) in the Field of Archival Photographic Collections Preservation,”
paper presented at SEPIA conference “Changing Images: The Role of Photographic Collections in a
Digital Age,” Helsinki, September 2003, available at http://www.knaw.nl/ecpa/sepia/conferencePapers/
Fioravanti.pdf (accessed November 14, 2008).
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51. Ibid.
52. For a more thorough examination of archival description standards, see Victoria Irons Walch,
comp., Standards for Archival Description: A Handbook (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 1994),
available at http://www.archivists.org/catalog/stds99/index.html (accessed May 1, 2009).
53. Ron Daniel Jr. and Carl Lagoze, “Extending the Warwick Framework: From Metadata Con-
tainers to Active Digital Objects,” D-Lib Magazine (November 1997), available at http://www.dlib.org/
dlib/november97/daniel/11daniel.html (accessed November 8, 2008).
54. Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, “Committee on Cataloging: De-
scription & Access, Task Force on Metadata,” available at http://www.libraries.psu.edu/tas/jca/ccda/tf-
meta3.html (accessed on November 10, 2008).
55. Daniel Jr. and Lagoze, “Extending the Warwick Framework.”
56. Association for Library Collections and Technical Services, “Committee on Cataloging.” See
also Tony Gill and others, Introduction to Metadata (Los Angeles: Getty Research Institute, 2008), available
at http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting research/standards/intrometadata/index.html (accessed
October 30, 2008).
57. Michael Steidl, IPTC Standards: Photo Metadata White Paper 2007 (Berkshire, United
Kingdom: IPTC, 2007), 7.
58. Ibid., 8.
59. Ibid.
60. Ibid. Another rights metadata solution is copyrightMD version 0.9 developed by the California
Digital Library (CDL). The copyrightMD schema is designed to be incorporated with other XML schemas
for descriptive and structural metadata (e.g., CDWA Lite and MARC XML). See http://www.cdlib.
org/inside/projects/rights/schema/. See also Karen Coyle, “Descriptive Metadata for Copyright Status,”
First Monday 10, no. 10 (October 2005). Available at http://firstmonday.org/htbin/cgiwrap/bin/ojs/index.
php/fm/article/view/1282/1202.
61. Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, “History of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative,” available at
http://dublincore.org/about/history/ (accessed November 7, 2008).
62. Leif Andresen, “After MARC—What Then?” Library Hi Tech 22, no. 1 (2004): 47.
63. Daniel Jr. and Lagoze, “Extending the Warwick Framework,” 1997.
64. The Data Standard Committee of the U.S.-based Visual Resources Association developed VRA
Core elements in 1996. The standards are currently on Version 4.0, released in 2007 and can be accessed
at http://www.vraweb.org/organization/committees/datastandards/.
65. Worthington Memory is a project of Worthington Libraries and Worthington Historical Society
in Ohio that utilizes Dublin Core as their encoding scheme. The Dublin Core element used for describing
the photograph’s format describes a digital image file, not the original photograph for which the online
records serves as surrogate. Available online http://www.worthingtonmemory.org/ (accessed April 20,
2009).
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 185

66. The Cleveland Museum of Art, available at http://www.clemusart.com/explore/ (accessed

April 21, 2009).
67. Murtha Baca and Patricia Harpring, eds., Categories for the Description of Works of Art
(Los Angeles: J. Paul Getty Trust), available at http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting research/
standards/cdwa/index.html.
68. International Federation of Library Associations and Institution, International Standard Bibli-
ographic Description (Berlin, De Gruyter, 2007).
69. International Council on Archives, ISAD(G): General International Standard Archival De-
scription, 2nd ed. (Ottawa: ICA, 2000), available at http://www.ica.org/sites/default/files/isad g 2e.pdf
(accessed November 1, 2008), 7.
70. International Institute of Social History, MARC record search, available at http://search.
iisg.nl/search/search?action=transform&xsl=marc images-form.xsl&col=marc images&page=1&lang=en
(accessed November 1, 2008).
71. International Institute of Social History, “Photo Collections,” available at http://www.iisg.
nl/image sound/photo/ (accessed November 1, 2008).
72. International Council on Archives, ISAD(G), 9.
73. Ibid., 7.
74. Ibid., Appendix B, n.p.
75. Klijn and de Lusenet, SEPIADES, 10.
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76. Ibid., 11.

77. MODS does not support “round-tripability” with MARC 21. In other words, a MARC 21 record
converted to MODS cannot be converted back to MARC 21 without some loss of data. See Library of
Congress, “Limitations of MODS,” available at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/ (accessed November
12, 2008).
78. MADS is a development of the Library of Congress available at http://www.loc.gov/
standards/mads/ (accessed November 11, 2008).
79. Library of Congress, Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard: Primer and Reference
Manual (Washington, DC: Digital Library Federation, September 2007), 6, available at http://www.
loc.gov/standards/mets/METS%20Documentation%20final%20070930%20msw.pdf (accessed April 23,
2009).
80. NISO MIX is a set of technical data elements being developed in partnership by the Library
of Congress and the NISO (National Information Standards Organization) Technical Metadata for Digital
Still Images Standards Committee. Available at http://www.loc.gov/standards/mix/ (accessed April 15,
2009).
81. National Information Standards Organization, “NISO Standards,” available at http://www.
niso.org/kst/reports/standards/ (accessed April 20, 2009).
82. American Library Association, Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed., 2002 revision.
(Chicago: American Library Association, 2002)
83. Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA, “Strategic Plan for RDA 2005–2009,” (De-
cember 7, 2007), available at http://www.rda-jsc.org/stratplan.html (accessed November 10, 2008); Joint
Steering Committee for Development of RDA, “RDA: Resource Description and Access” (October 30,
2008), available at http://www.rda-jsc.org/rda.html (accessed November 10, 2008).
84. Home page of the Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, available at http://www.aacr2.org/
(accessed November 11, 2008).
85. Joint Steering Committee for Development of RDA, “RDA FAQ,” available at http://www.rda-
jsc.org/rdafaq.html (accessed November 3, 2008).
86. For a more detailed explanation of the FRBR model and the impact of FRBR on cataloging
standards, see Pat Riva, “Introducing the Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records and Related
IFLA Developments,” Bulletin of the American Society for Information Science and Technology 33, no. 6
(August/September 2007): 7–11.
87. University of North Carolina University Libraries, “North Carolina Collection Photographic
Archives,” available at http://www.lib.unc.edu/ncc/photos.html (accessed November 3, 2008).
88. Murtha Baca, Patricia Harpring, Elisa Lanzi, Linda McRae, and Ann Baird Whiteside, eds., Cata-
loging Cultural Objects: Guide to Describing Cultural Works and Their Images. (Chicago: American Library
Association, 2006.) Additional material available at http://www.vrafoundation.org/ccoweb/index.htm (ac-
cessed November 7, 2008).
186 A. C. Benson

89. Cataloging Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and their Images. (Chicago:
American Library Association, 2006). A companion Web site to this manual can be accessed at
http://www.vrafoundation.org/ccoweb/cco/selections.html (accessed November 9, 2008).
90. Library of Congress Authorities (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2002– ). LCSH can be
searched online at http://authorities.loc.gov/ (accessed December 3, 2008).
91. Getty Vocabulary Program, Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) (Los Angeles: J. Paul
Getty Trust, Vocabulary Program, 1988). Available online at Art & Architecture Thesaurus Online,
http://www.getty.edu/research/conducting research/vocabularies/aat/ (accessed October 2, 2008). The
Art & Architecture Thesaurus was originally developed for use as a controlled vocabulary for use in
text-based materials when making references to objects and images, but it has since evolved to become
a tool for describing and cataloging objects and images. Edie M. Rasmussen, “Indexing Multimedia: Im-
ages,” in Annual Review of Information Science and Technology, vol. 32, ed. Blaise Cronin (Medford, NJ:
Information Today, 1997), 169–196.
92. The Thesaurus for Graphic Materials can be accessed online at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/
tgm2/ (accessed September 24, 2008) .
93. Rasmussen, “Indexing Multimedia,”169–196.
94. H. van deWaal, D. Couprie, E. Tholen, and G. Vellekoop, eds., ICONCLASS: An Iconograph-
ical Classification System (Amsterdam: North-Holland Publishing Company, 1973–1985), available at
http://www.iconclass.nl/ (accessed September 24, 2008).
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95. Elisabeth W. Betz, Graphic Materials: Rules for Describing Original Items and Historical Col-
lections (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1982). A 1996 version is available online in various formats
at http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/gm/graphmat.html (accessed November 1, 2008).
96. The concepts of knowledge representation presented in this section could be extended to any
number of document forms, but the focus of this paper is on the archival photograph. The reason for
this focus becomes more apparent when the discussion shifts to ontology. Reasoning about knowledge
associated with the photograph (physical entity) and the image portrayed on its surface raises markedly
different ontological questions than does say reasoning about an audio file or textual document.
97. Randall Davis, Howard Shrobe, and Peter Szolovits, “What Is a Knowledge Representation?”
AI Magazine 14, no. 1 (1993): 17.
98. Pearce-Moses, A Glossary of Archival and Records Terminology, 112–113.
99. Davis, Shrobe, and Szolovitz, “What is Knowledge Representation?” 17.
100. Ibid., 18.
101. Ronald J. Brachman and Hector J. Levesque, Knowledge Representation and Reasoning (New
York: Elsevier, 2004): 3.
102. This card indexing system could be considered a precursor to the modern online photo
archives—for example, the British Columbia Archives, whose records include “thumbnail” images
and text. British Columbia Archives, Royal BC Museum, “Visual Records: Overview,” available at
http://www.bcarchives.gov.bc.ca/sn-278EA8D/visual/visual.htm (accessed November 22, 2008). The
British Columbia Archives consists of several collections, including a visual records index that contains
over 179,000 textual descriptions and over 84,000 images online.
103. Berners-Lee, Hendler, and Lassila, “The Semantic Web,” 34–43.
104. One possible specification language for representing formal ontologies in the semantic Web
is Knowledge Interchange Format (KIF). KIF is an expressive, declarative first-order predicate logic
language. A variant of KIF is used for describing the largest public ontology SUMO (Standard Upper
Merged Ontology). KIF, along with Ontolingua Frame Ontology, is the representation language used
in Stanford University’s Ontolingua System. See http://www.ontologyportal.org/ and http://www.ksl.
stanford.edu/software/ontolingua/.
105. Thomas R. Gruber, “A Translation Approach to Portable Ontology Specifications,” Knowledge
Acquisition 5 (1993): 199; Thomas R. Gruber, “Toward Principles for the Design of Ontologies Used for
Knowledge Sharing,” International Journal Human-Computer Studies 43, no. 5–6 (November 1995): 1.
106. Ibid.
107. Jung-Min Kim, Byoung-Il Choi, Hyo-Phil Shin, and Hyoung-Joo Kim, “A Methodology for
Constructing of Philosophy Ontology Based on Philosophical Texts,” Computer Standards and Interfaces
29 (2007): 302.
108. Laura Hollink, Guus Schreiber, Jan Wielemaker, and Bob Wielinga, “Semantic Annotation
of Image Collections,” available at http://www.cs.vu.nl/˜laurah/1/papers/Hollink03 saic.pdf (accessed
September 1, 2008).
The Archival Photograph and Its Meaning 187

109. Graham Clarke, The Photograph (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 27.
110. Adam Pease, The Suggested Upper Merged Ontology (SUMO), “Frequently Asked Ques-
tions,” (April 16, 2006), available at http://www.ontologyportal.org/FAQ.html#methodology (accessed
November 10, 2008).
111. John McCarthy and Pat Hayes, “Some Philosophical Problems from the Standpoint of Artificial
Intelligence,” Machine Intelligence 4 (1969): 1.
112. McCarthy and Hayes, “Some Philosophical Problems,” cited in John F. Sowa, Knowledge
Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Foundations (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole,
2000), 186–187.
113. R. J. Brachman, “On the Epistemological Status of Semantic Networks,” in Associative Networks:
Representation and Use of Knowledge by Computers, ed. N. Findler (New York: Academic Press, 1979).
114. Nicola Guarino, Philosophy and the Cognitive Science (Vienna: Holder-Pivhler-Tempsky, 1994).
115. Nicola Guarino, “Formal Ontology, Conceptual Analysis and Knowledge Representation,”
International Journal of Human-Computer Studies 43 (1995): 632.
116. Ibid.
117. Ibid., 631.
118. In first-order logic, unspecified objects are represented by variables, in this example “x.” If
reference was being made to a specific calotype print named “Washington,” then it could have been
formalized as: print(Washington) ∧ calotype(Washington).
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119. Guarino, “Formal Ontology,” 632.

120. Ibid., 633.
121. John F. Sowa, Knowledge Representation: Logical, Philosophical, and Computational Founda-
tions (Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole, 2000): 51.
122. Hector J. Levesque and Ronald J. Brachman, “Expressiveness and Tractability in Knowledge
Representation and Reasoning,” Computational Intelligence 3 (1987): 78–93.
123. Astute readers may wonder why the author has not suggested, for example, the popular
ontology editor Protégé and OWL ontology language in the closing paragraphs of this paper. For one
reason, this paper is at its close and the topics of languages and editors, as well as reasoners and
ontologies, deserve a separate treatment in another, future paper. It’s also worthwhile bringing to the
forefront two less well known architectures (possibly due to their complexity and absence of user friendly
help guides) that are quite powerful for very different reasons. What is most important is to begin hunting
for answers to questions about effective ways of representing the meaning of photographs in a Semantic
Web environment by letting go of card catalogs and finding aids along with their myriad standards and
to begin exploring new approaches.