Adam Scriveyn in Cyberspace: Loss, Labour, Ideology, and Infrastructure in Interoperable Reuse of Digital Manuscript Metadata

Abstract

33 See Clarkson, "Rediscovering Parchment," 5. The Library of Congress's Thesaurus for Graphic Materials , a key reference guide for metadata librarians, suggests "parchment" as the proper term for "skins and hides" and presents it as synonymous with, but preferable to, "vellum." Similar use of the term "parchment" for the entire genre of animal membrane can be found throughout da Rold, "Materials," and in Holsinger, "Of Pigs and Parchment."34 See, for instance, the distinction drawn by Gillespie in "Bookbinding," 165n53.35 On the terminology debates, see Ryder, "Parchment: Its History, Manufacture, and Composition," 392-93. Clemens and Graham also present an excellent concise overview of the terminology debates in Introduction to Manuscript Studies , 9-10.36 Recently, shared standards for describing manuscripts have been created. However, these standards do not offer guidelines on the "parchment" versus "vellum" debate, preferring to leave that choice to local institutions. See Descriptive Cataloging of Rare Materials (Manuscripts) , 86. http:// rbms.info/ iles/ dcrm/ dcrmmss/ DCRMMSS.pdf. I am indebted to my colleague, and Binghamton University metadata librarian, Laura Evans for this reference. It is worth noting that although the standards do not differentiate between animal types for "parchment" or "vellum" or attempt to mandate what institutions ought to use, they appear to prefer "parchment" as their general term for animal-skin writing support. See, for example, the de initions of "membrane," "parchment," and "vellum," on pages 144, 145, and 147 respectively.64 "Dublin Core (DC)," Dictionary for Library and Information Science , 234, my italics. See also, "Understanding Metadata," 3. 65 Following the descriptive metadata system known as MARC. Cole and Han, XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians, 98. 66 Cole and Han, XML for Catalogers and Metadata Librarians, 101. 67 NISO, "Understanding Metadata," 3. 68 The history and use of MARCXML, while not part of this chapter, is covered extensively in Cole and Han.