Resource Type
Resource types
The Resource Type Vocabulary and Guiding Principles are attached as documents to this page.
See also: Guiding Principles and Best Practice Guidelines for MACAR Resource Type Vocabulary
Click the links for further information about each of the resource types below.
book
book chapter
cartographic material
conference item
conference paper
dataholding
dataset
interactive resource
journal article
moving image
multimedia
patent
report
review
software
sound
still image
thesis
website
working paper
Resource types under discussion
exhibition
page_revision: 10, last_edited: 1216693787|%e %b %Y, %H:%M %Z (%O ago)
What MARCXML fields do you suggest we use for exhibitions? Would you include 'creative work' there too?
Creative work seems far to broad and general to me. A book is a creative work, an image is a creative work. The term doesn't indicate a resource type, it is more descriptive. I'm having similar problems with Exhibition. Is this really a collection of different resource types linked together? A series of images, a pdf of explanatory material, a sound file.
Do repository managers need to have a separate resource type for exhibitions?
Hi All,
Thought you might be interested to know that we have an 'online exhibition' in our repository:
http://hdl.handle.net/1959.3/22042
A lot of the metadata was 'guessed' (and put together very quickly!) so we're suggesting that this is a perfect example.
As always, we welcome feedback from the community.
Helen Wolff
Sorry, how embarrassing - meant to say this is NOT a perfect example. It pays to read what you have typed before hitting the send button!
This is a challenging one and generated a lot of discussion in the MACAR resource type meetings last year. One of the suggestions to use type : event for this kind of content eg exhibition, performance, conference, workshop etc (as in the DC type vocabulary ) was hotly debated and it was agreed that this was not suitable and type : multimedia was more appropriate for this type of resource. This decision was based on the fact that the resource being described was not predominately text, or image or audio or video but a combination of some or all of these types. If we are following whats currently on the MACAR site then you would look at the properties under multimedia and use these to describe this kind of resource. This however doesnt mean that we shouldnt revisit this and discuss if there is a case for a resource type such as event to cover these types of resources or something more granular such as exhibition, performance etc
We have a record for a poem and would like a resource type for this type of material. This record has a DEST category of J1. Last year when we looked at resource types we thought we might something along the lines of:
I don't think multimedia would meet our needs for Exhibitions.
Hmmm. Not happy with this list. It suffers from the same problems as all such lists, in that the objective seems unclear — what is the purpose of "type"? — and also confuses different meanings of "type".
If the purpose of "type" is accurate description of an item, then some of these types are too broad to be useful. Although I will allow that there is a hierarchy of possible types, and a broad term is sometimes the best we can do. You don't have any of these, but I think a reasonable subset of any hierarchy, by way of example, should be Creative work -> Novel/Short story/Musical composition/Musical performance/etc. We have all of these and more in our repository. If you want accuracy in the metadata, then you need types which include that level of detail.
Secondly, you are confusing type with format to some extent. "Sound", "Still image" and "moving image" are all formats, in a broad sense. (And again, there is a clear hierarchy in format from, e.g. "image" to "jpeg" etc.) Sound is particularly useless. Is it a voice recording? Music? Bird song? A recording of a musical performance would be better to have a type of "musical performance" rather than sound, since the performance is the thing described, and the recording format somewhat incidental.
Given that we have a music school here, we need a number of types relating to music: composition, score, performance, … Other repositories are going to have different needs, depending on their collections. So I think attempting a definitive list of types is possibly doomed, or at least destined to be a much longer list than yours.
What would be useful. perhaps, is for repository systems to allow for multiple types to be added to an item, reflecting a hierarchy and a variety of needs.
Apologies for the length here. Hope it's useful.
I think any list of resource types for research output is going to be a compromise.
It should include terms that are sufficiently granular and yet not be so long that it is unwieldy and difficult to apply.
It should include terms for content (e.g. "moving image") and also terms for different types of scholarly text (e.g. "conference paper") that are commonly used to describe research output.
It should be interoperable with other metadata schema, e.g. DCMI.
It should be flat list and not hierarchical as the terms are easier to record in the metadata record.
The MACAR group took a practical approach rather than a purely logical one. We felt that other levels in a hierarchy and other concepts (e.g. genre) can be recorded in the metadata.
It's interesting to note that institutions responding to the survey on use of the MACAR list have said that they intend to apply it in their repositories.
Survey results also show that a review and update of the vocabulary is needed. A number of questions are timely Do the principles/objectives on which the list is based need revising ? The ERA initiative (replacing the RQF) may have new requirements for research publication data? Review of terms, definitions, level of granularity, implementation-specific issues, interoperability, best practice - lots to discuss. MACAR to meet soon
Thanks for your input, Steve. It is great to get feedback and discussion on these matters.
Any list is going to have its shortcomings. We are all too well aware of the issues in confusing type and format and genre and content and carrier. From our work though, and from what the NLA tells us about their harvesting, we see that inconsistency in terminology for resource types is rampant, and that this leads to problems in retrieving and presenting clustered results For harvesting/aggregation to really work well the solutions are: a) for the harvester to develop a multiplicity of scripts to map from all the variations and permutations out there to something consistent (which they are understandably reluctant to do), or b) for some consistency to be applied among the repositories.
We have a chance at this stage in repository development to have a stab at consistency. If there are types missing then we can add them, but we are trying to achieve consistency in terminology for the types that we have.
Of course there are some repositories which already contain data that has non-MACAR resource types. Should they be changed? In VITAL repositories those values could be changed using the FABULOUS. Or the data could be left as is, and perhaps some mapping tools developed.
Is there a need? We think so. Are there gaps? We know so. Should we keep going? We think so, and will take all suggestions very gratefully.
Hi,
Would someone like to comment on the possibility of establishing a new resource type, "field notes"? At Monash we are processing 4 sets of field notes and feel that none of the existing MACAR resource types fit. These notes are unpublished and informal.
I did a search in a number of repositories and compiled the following list of resource types used (MACAR resource types are asterisked). I'm wondering how complete the list is, and would people like to add to it, any resource types they are using or would like to use?
book chapter*
book*
cartographic material*
conference abstract
conference item*
conference paper*
conference poster
dataholding*
dataset*
discussion paper
draft
image
interactive resource*
journal article*
learning object
lecture
literary and artistic work
manual
moving image*
multimedia*
musical score*
newspaper article
non text media
other
patent*
preprint/postprint & refereed/nonrefereed report*
research paper/report
review*
rich media
scholarly text*
seminar lecture
small-sized dataset accompanying paper/article/report
software*
sound*
still image*
survey
technical report
text
thesis (PhD)
thesis*
website*
working paper*
Thanks
Julie
This is an interesting one, Julie, and might fit into the idea of dataset. Then again, maybe not! ANDS would certainly be interested in how to manage this kind of material. When we started, we focused on research publications. Field notes don't fit into that category at all.
I will bring this up with ANDS.