Descriptive System Components: Jazz Solos & Sheet Music

Posted on by
A man playing the sax
Content Standards

For this assignment, I described two descriptive systems: one an existing descriptive system and proposed a new descriptive system. Each separate description identified combinations of content standards, markup formats, and controlled vocabularies. For the existing system, I chose the Sheet Music Collections of York University’s YorkSpace repository. For the second part, I proposed a system that would allow the performances of jazz solos in jazz recordings to be organized and described.

 

System 1: Sheet Music Collections
in Clara Thomas Archives and Special Collections, YorkSpace (York University's Institutional Repository)

1.       Set of items: Thousands of items of digitized historical sheet music—published English-language North American popular songs from the 1810s through the present—to be searched and browsed through the Yorkspace repository’s online interface and to be harvested and included in the Sheet Music Consortium (SMC) at UCLA.

2.       Three elements:

1.       Content Standard: Dublin Core (DCMES)

1.       Source: Referenced in-class lectures and readings, online search, library search

2.       Documentation:

Coleman, A. (2005). From Cataloging to Metadata: Dublin Core Records for the Library Catalog. In R. P. Smiraglia, Metadata: a cataloger's primer (pp. 153-181). Binghamton, NY: Haworth Information Press.

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. (2012, 06 12). Dublin Core Metadata Element Set, Version 1.1: Reference Description. Retrieved from Dublin Core Metadate Initiative: https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dces/

2.      Markup Format: DCMES 1.1 XML Schema and DC-Terms XML Schema (Dublin Core metadata description set is expressed in HTML 4.01, embedded in head).

1.       Source: Looked at web page’s source code found the following that import the schemas dc.xsd and dcterms.xsd: <link rel="schema.DCTERMS" href="http://purl.org/dc/terms/" /> <link rel="schema.DC" href="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" />

Web page viewed for source code: https://yorkspace.library.yorku.ca/xmlui/handle/10315/14116?show=full

2.       Documentation:

The Dublin Core Metadata Initiative. (n.d.). XML schemas to support the Guidelines for implementing Dublin Core in XML. Retrieved from Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: https://www.dublincore.org/schemas/xmls/

Powell, A. (2003). Expressing Qualified Dublin Core in HTML/XHTML meta and link elements. Retrieved from Dublin Core Metadata Initiative: https://www.dublincore.org/specifications/dublin-core/dcq-html/

3.      Controlled Vocabulary: Own subject headings and vocabulary used in descriptions (does not seem to be following a guide for controlled vocabularies)

1.       Source: online searches and online guides; compared vocabulary with the guides

2.       Documentation:

Library of Congress Cataloging & Acquisitions. (2019). Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms PDF Files. Retrieved from The Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeLCGFT/freelcgft.html

Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress. (n.d.). Thesaurus for Graphic Materials. Retrieved from The Library of Congress: http://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm1/

Library of Congress Cataloging & Acquisitions. (2018). Library of Congress Subject Headings PDF Files. Retrieved from Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeLCSH/freelcsh.html

4.     How the three elements work together to describe and organize the set of items:

For each item of sheet music, the cataloger will create a separate record using HTML format.  The cataloguer will use Dublin Core (DCMES) to determine what information to represent the sheet music, including its cover.  Choosing from the 15 elements available in Dublin Core to describe the sheet music, the cataloguer may repeat each element as many times as needed and is not required to include all 15 elements. The 15 elements are title, creator, subject, description, publisher, contributors, date, type, format, identifier, source, language, relation, coverage, rights management. When entering the elements and descriptive contents in the <head> of the HTML document, the cataloguer does not need to nest any elements nor put them in a particular order because Dublin Core has a flat structure, but they must follow some rules. The dc prefix must be separated from the element name by a dot (.), and the elements’ names must be as indicated in the namespace  http://purl.org/dc/terms/. The name and content attributes of the HTML element must be used to encode the Dublin Core element. For example: <meta name="DC.description" content="Cakewalk [form/genre]" />. To sufficiently indicate aspects of the item’s music and illustrations, the cataloguer will use several description elements and will indicate what is being described in brackets. These will indicate such features as instrumentation, key, illustration, first line, or genre/style as in the example of cakewalk above. The terms used in elements do not correspond to a well-known controlled vocabulary. They do not follow the Library of Congress Subject Headings, or the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphical Materials or Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms for Library and Archival Materials (LCFGT) as suggested in the SMC Sheet Music Metadata Guidelines. Examples of terms used not included in these controlled vocabularies: art song, cakewalk (LCGFT), country home (Graphic Materials) African-American, gold digging (LCSH).

System 2: Jazz Solos – recordings

1.       Set of items: Hundreds of jazz solos by highly regarded jazz musicians that are parts of songs/pieces on recordings, digital and analogue, to support researchers of jazz and improvisation and students of jazz performance to be searched and browsed through a university’s music library catalogue.

2.       Three elements:

1.   Content Standard: PBCore

1.       Source: Online search and library search

2.       Documentation:

PBCore. (n.d.). Elements. Retrieved from PBCore: http://pbcore.org/elements

Zeng, M. L., & Qin, J. (2016). Metadata. (2nd, Ed.) London, UK: American Library Association.

2.   Markup Format: PBCore XML Schema PBCore 2.1

1.       Source: Online search, library search

2.       Documentation:

PBCore. (2018). PBCore_2.1. Retrieved from PBCore-AV-Metadata GitHub repository: https://github.com/PBCore-AV-Metadata/PBCore_2.1

3.   Controlled Vocabulary: Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms (LCGFT), Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music (LCMPT), PBCore Controlled Vocabularies

1.       Source: Online searches and online guides

2.       Documentation:

Library of Congress Cataloging & Acquisitions. (2019). Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms PDF Files. Retrieved from The Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/FreeLCGFT/freelcgft.html

Library of Congress Cataloging & Acquisitions. (n.d.). Library of Congress Medium of Performance Thesaurus for Music PDF Files. Retrieved from Library of Congress: https://www.loc.gov/aba/publications/Archived-LCMPT16/freelcmpt.html

PBCore. (n.d.). PBCore Controlled Vocabularies. Retrieved from PBCore: https://pbcore.org/pbcore-controlled-vocabularies

4.    How the three elements work together to describe and organize the set of items:

For each jazz solo, the cataloguer first must listen to the recording to determine descriptive content not included in the description, such as start and end time, level of difficulty, genre, or tempo, and to confirm the performer and instrument. Then they will create a separate record in XML PBCore 2.1 format. The cataloguer must begin with one of the PBCore root elements, for example, pbcoreCollection, and then will choose from PBCore asset elements (representing intellectual content and property information) and from PBCore instantiation elements (representing technical metadata) to best represent the solo.  They can choose which elements to include but must follow a hierarchy when entering the elements in the XML document, following pbcore.org’s guide. The cataloguer will include the soloist as the creator, and include other performers, even if one is the song’s composer, as contributors. They will include information on the solo’s relation to other items, for example, other solos from the same live broadcast or other solos on the same jazz standard (pbcoreRelation). They can include other intellectual content including genre, type, and description, intellectual property information including creator and publisher, and instantiations including media type, location (physical or digital), and duration. The cataloguer will use the attribute descriptionType when using the pbcoreDescription element for clarity: <pbcoreDescription descriptionType="Level of Difficulty">Expert</pbcoreDescription>. To describe the solo adequately, the cataloguer can include various descriptionType attributes to cover musical features such as tempo, key/mode, instrument, or difficulty. PBCore controlled vocabulary will be used for some elements, for example, instantiationPhysical Audio (Wax cylinder, Audio CD) or pbcoreAssetType (Clip). However, they should use vocabulary from LCGFT and LCMPT to better describe musical features. For instance, genre: jazz – free jazz, jazz – bop; instruments: drum set, electric guitar – bass guitar. For other musical features, such as tempo, key/mode, or level of difficulty, the cataloguer should use an in-house standard.

 

Share this learning activity with others