The Subjects

A question peered over the top of the laptop as I was entering my photo collection into Eprints. Which came first, the subject taxonomy or the collection? Do you fit the collection to the taxonomy or taxonomy to the collection? It depends on the type of collection, I think. In the case of my collection of photos from a recent trip to Alaska. I shaped the taxonomy to fit the collection by developing a series of parent child relationships. For example:

A: National Parks
a1: Glacier Bay National Park
B: States
b1: Alaska
b2Washington

This hierarchy proved useful in cataloguing this collection, developing relationships between the photos and increases the searchability of the collection.

The challenges were where to draw the line between parent and child and develop terms that might be consistent with similar collections. Juneau is both a child and a parent.

C: Cities
c1: Sitka
c2: Juneau
c2a:Mt. Roberts
c2b: Gastineau Channel

I wasn't sure how to classify some terms. Should Mt. Roberts be a child of a different parent such as mountains? Consistency across repositories at my level of cataloguing is an ideal that I attempt to attain by drilling down from the general to the specific. In that way queries of my collection will return a useful result. That’s what it's all about, isn't it?