How Taxonomies Work¶
Taxonomies provide a way to organize and re-use metadata values, and to link them together. They provide a way to ensure that metadata is consistent throughout your repository, avoiding common errors like misspellings, and also provide a way to give more detail about the metadata value itself. Each taxonomy term has its own Drupal node (page), and lists all items that reference it.
Many of our metadata fields are taxonomy term references rather than free text. When filling out metadata forms, existing taxonomy terms are available to select. In many cases, if a term does not already exist, filling out the field will create it for you, so it can be used again later.
Taxonomies in Arca and their purposes¶
COAR Access Rights¶
Referenced by: Access Conditions
Purpose: Describes the level of access provided to the resource (open access, embargoed, metadata only, etc.)
Notes: Static and controlled; should not be added to.
COAR Resource Type:¶
Not in use; Library of Congress Resource Types are used instead.
COAR Version Types¶
Referenced by: Resource Publication Status
Purpose: Version identification
Notes: Static and controlled; should not be added to.
Conference/Events¶
Referenced by: Conference/Events
Purpose: Creates an entity for a specific Conference or Event. Identifies objects that are related to that particular event (eg conference papers).
Notes: Entities can be created directly in the Taxonomy menu, or on-the-fly while creating Repository Items. Be sure to watch the auto-complete in case your entity already exists.
Corporate Body¶
Referenced by: Funder, Organizations, Subject Name Organization, Institution [Repository Item]; Affiliation [Person taxonomy]
Purpose: Entities for organizations, corporate bodies, etc. Includes institutions, companies, performance groups - any kind of corporate entity.
Notes: Entities can be created directly in the Taxonomy menu, or on-the-fly while creating Repository Items. Be sure to watch the auto-complete in case your entity already exists.
Country¶
Not used
Creative Commons Licenses 4.0¶
Referenced by: Use License
Purpose: Specify a Creative Commons license that applies to the item.
Notes: Static and controlled; should not be added to.
CSL Type¶
Referenced by: Object Type (Citation)
Purpose: Indicates for the Citation module exactly what kind of object this is, so it can generate the appropriate citations.
Notes: Static and controlled; should not be added to.
Culture¶
Referenced by: Person taxonomy
Purpose: Indicates the Person's cultural context. Does not appear on Repository Item metadata, only when viewing the Person and any associated views.
DCMI Relation Types¶
Referenced by: Relationships (organizations, persons, related item, etc.)
Purpose: Indicates the type of relation the item has to the referenced entity. Has both functional purposes (e.g. isMemberOf a given collection) and descriptive purposes (e.g. isBasedOn a different entity).
Notes: Static and controlled; should not be added to.
DCMI Resource Types¶
Not used as far as we know
Degree Levels¶
Referenced by: Thesis metadata
Purpose: Controlled vocabulary indicating degree level. Important for ETD deposits.
Notes: Static and controlled; should not be added to.
Degree Names¶
Referenced by: Thesis metadata
Purpose: "Name of the degree associated with the work as it appears within the work." Thesis metadata. Required for ETD deposits.
Notes: Entities can be created directly in the Taxonomy menu, or on-the-fly while creating Repository Items. Be sure to watch the auto-complete in case your entity already exists.
Discipline¶
Referenced by: Thesis metadata
Purpose: "Area of study of the intellectual content of the document. Usually the name of a program or department."
Notes: Entities can be created directly in the Taxonomy menu, or on-the-fly while creating Repository Items. Be sure to watch the auto-complete in case your entity already exists.
Family¶
Not used as far as we know
Funders¶
Referenced by: "Funder" field
Purpose: Indicates the entity that funded the production/creation of the item.
Notes: The Funder field on repository items draws from both the Funders taxonomy and the Corporate Body taxonomy. Entries in the "Funders" taxonomy specifically must be created ahead of the objects. Any new entires in the "Funder" field on Repository Items are automatically placed in the "Corporate Body" taxonomy.
Genre¶
Referenced by: Genre
Purpose: Required field for organizing and classifying content.
Authorities: Authority may be specified, selecting from:
* Getty AAT
* Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Terms
* Library of Congress Genre/Form Terms
* Library of Congress MARC Genre Terms
* Local
* Other
Notes: Entities can be created directly in the Taxonomy menu, or on-the-fly while creating Repository Items. Be sure to watch the auto-complete in case your entity already exists. Authority Source may have to be edited after record creation.
Geographic Location¶
Referenced by: Geographic Subject
Purpose: Organizes geographic locations.
Notes: Not a controlled field; it is up to you to standardize your terms.
Institution¶
Referenced by: Institution field for ETD metadata; Affiliation field in Person taxonomy
Purpose: Institution entity specifically for academic affiliations.
Notes: OFFICE TODO -- look into including Institution on the list of taxonomies that the Organization field can reference, and including Corporate Body on the list of taxonomies that the Institution and Affiliations can reference.
Islandora Access¶
Referenced by: field_access_terms on the Repository Item content type.
Purpose: Used in Permissions By Term, one of the access control methods available in Arca.
Notes: This is not a recommended approach for access control, particularly in sites with large numbers of objects.
Islandora Display¶
Referenced by: The Display Hints section on the Repository Item content type.
Purpose: Defines which methods are used to display Media on Repository Items. Specifically important for paged content, newspapers, documents, and images.
Notes: For the most part, these terms are automatically populated when filling out your metadata. If ingesting with Workbench, you will need to use these terms to tell Islandora how they are going to be displayed.
Islandora Media Use¶
Referenced by: Media
Purpose: Tells Islandora how the media will be used - i.e. what derivatives to generate, and how to display.
Notes: For the most part you will be using Original File, though some content types use Service File instead. These differences are documented in the notes about specific types of content. This is a restricted taxonomy; it should not be edited.
Islandora Models¶
Referenced by: Content Type field
Purpose: Defines the type of item you are ingesting. Islandora uses this information to determine how to handle the item.
Notes: This is a restricted taxonomy; it should not be edited.
Language¶
Referenced by: Language field; Record Cataloguing Language field
Purpose: Descriptive metadata.
Notes: Starts out empty. You may add to this list. Allows for authority sources to be specified.
Library of Congress Resource Types¶
Referenced by: Resource Type field
Purpose: Descriptive and categorization.
Notes: This is a restricted taxonomy; it should not be edited.
Local Access Conditions¶
Not used
MODS Relation Types¶
Referenced by: Relator fields (i.e. Related Item)
Purpose: Describes how the item is related to other items.
Notes: This is a restricted taxonomy; it should not be edited.
OpenAIRE Object Types¶
???
Organizational Units¶
Referenced by: ???
Part Type¶
Referenced by: Part fields on the Repository Item content type
Purpose: If the object is part of another item, defines more specifically what part it is (i.e. chapter, issue, paragraph, volume, etc.)
Notes: This is a restricted taxonomy; it should not be edited.
Person¶
Referenced by: Persons and Affiliations fields, relationship fields, collections of scholars
Purpose: Person entities for identifying authors, artists, etc.; as well as identifying Scholars specific to your institution's needs.
Notes: Any named entity should end up here. If when creating a Repository Item your Person does not already exist in the taxonomy, they will be created. There are many fields available on the Person terms, which will be empty in the case of automatically-generated Persons. There is also an "Institution scholar" field which, if selected, will identify the person as a Scholar for use in any particular views you want to generate.
Physical Form¶
Referenced by: Physical Form field
Purpose: Defines the physical form of the item. Uses a taxonomy so you can group and classify items by physical form.
Notes: Starts out empty. You may add to this list.
PSO Fields¶
PSO: Publishing Status Ontology. These taxonomies relate specifically to the publishing status of academic articles. It is unclear whether our implementation makes any use of these vocabularies at all.
Rights Statements¶
Referenced by: Rights Statement field
Purpose: Controlled list of Rights Statements defining the usage and copyright status of a work. Good choice for a search facet.
Notes: This is a restricted taxonomy; it should not be edited.
Scholars¶
Not in use - all Scholars in Arca are Persons.
Series Titles¶
Referenced by: Series Titles field (in the Series paragraph)
Purpose: Allows multiple Repository Items to be linked to the same Series entity
Notes: Starts out empty. You may add to this list.
Subject¶
Referenced by: Subject field
Purpose: Controlled or uncontrolled list of Subject terms. Having them in a taxonomy makes your items easier to classify and group together.
Notes: This is an empty taxonomy that is automatically populated as you add to item metadata. It may also be pre-populated by adding terms. Authority sources may be specified.
Tags¶
Default Drupal taxonomy; not in use
Temporal¶
Referenced by: Temporal Subject field
Purpose: Defined temporal periods (e.g. "1970s", "Cretaceous Era", etc.)
Notes: Authority sources may be specified. Good idea to follow an authority, but not required.
Titles¶
Referenced by: Publication Title
Purpose: Controlled list of titles of works, journals, or other publications. Allows individual articles to be marked as belonging to the same journal.
Notes: This is an empty taxonomy that is automatically populated as you add to item metadata. It may also be pre-populated by adding terms.