Janium Collect catalogs photographs from the digitized image, from the catalog card or inventory that accompanies them, or from both, and produces records in ISAD-G or in Dublin Core depending on how the institution describes its fonds. In a photograph collection, the record has to separate three layers that arrive mixed together: what the photo shows, the physical support it is on and the data about the document, which are almost never visible in the image.
A photograph of a building under construction, for example, has the building and the construction work as its subject. The photographer, the date the picture was taken and the photographic process are data about the document, and the mount of a slide, with the film brand or the lab stamp, is part of the support. A record that mixes those layers confuses the person searching, and separating them is the core of the work in a photograph collection.
What is seen
Collect reads the image with a vision model and describes the scene: the place, the type of building or landscape, the people and what they are doing, the objects, and the signs and inscriptions legible on the front or the back. That description feeds the scope and content, the subject terms and the geographic coverage, which is what makes it possible to find the photo by what it depicts.
What belongs to the support is handled separately. The mark printed on a slide mount, the name of the lab or the film format describe the copy, and the photograph collection profile records them as technical information in the notes of the record without letting them decide the title or the subject, so a mount with the word “JAPAN” stays as a value about the support and does not carry Japan into the geographic coverage.
What comes from the catalog card
The record number, the label, the physical location, the documented date and the remarks come from the inventory. When the photograph collection has an inventory, Collect receives it together with each photo: the model uses it as context to describe the scene and carries it over to the notes of the record, so the source value remains visible next to the description. If the inventory has the date, that date is the basis of the record.
In ISAD-G, the creator is whoever formed the fonds, which in an institutional photograph collection is usually the institution itself. In Dublin Core, the photographer goes in as creator when the documentation provides it. How the image and the catalog card are combined in general is covered in From the image and the catalog card to the record.
When there is no catalog card
Many photos arrive without documentation. In that case Collect estimates the date from what is visible (the clothing, the architecture, the technology that appears, black and white or color) and records it as approximate, in a form such as “circa 1970”. The estimate enters the record marked as such, so nobody takes it for a documented date, and someone who knows the fonds can refine it later. How what the model proposes is marked is explained in Collect marks AI-made metadata.
Photographs of artworks and sites
Part of many photograph collections reproduces artworks, objects or archaeological sites. There the work and its reproduction coexist, and the record has to say who made each one. For this material, Collect has an artwork profile (CDWA) that describes the work on one side and the photograph that reproduces it on the other. With that profile, the culture of what is pictured enters as subject matter and is not presented as the origin of the photo, and resemblance to a known artist is not enough to put that name in the creator field: the hypothesis stays in a note. How these layers are separated is described in An art collection and its three layers.
Limits in a photograph collection
Data that are not in the image. The photographer’s name, the precise technique and the exact date depend on the documentation. Without it, the date arrives as an estimate and the rest is left for whoever knows the fonds.
Digitization quality. An inscription on the back can only be read if the back was digitized, and a small stamp needs enough resolution.
Review. Besides the records that carry a review note because of a low score, in a photograph collection it is worth looking at the estimated dates and at the proper names that do not come from the inventory.
To continue the conversation
If your photograph collection has its digitized images in one place and inventories or catalog cards in another, or you have a large fonds with no documentation, write to us at info@janium.com. We would like to know what your documentation looks like today and what authorship and date information your fonds has.