Cataloguing costume designs from the Trinidad and Tobago Carnival

Abstract

The paper discusses the approaches to cataloguing carnival costume designs adopted by three institutions in Trinidad and Tobago. These institutions are the National Library and Information System Authority (NALIS), the Carnival Institute of Trinidad and Tobago (CITT) and the Alma Jordan Library, University of the West Indies. Catalogue records from these institutions were examined to determine the similarities and differences in the approaches as well as to highlight some of the issues encountered in cataloguing costume designs. The research shows that in addition to core elements found in metadata standards there are other data elements that the cataloguers have identified as being important for the documentation process including the relationship of the costume design to other pieces in the performance as well as the cultural context.

Preserving cultural products

“…Embedding the librarian within the milieu of culture seems to be instructive to the process. Nero (2012), for example, noted the importance of subject knowledge of the festival of Carnival in order to catalogue Carnival costumes. This proved a salient point as, despite the humongous efforts Adele Ruth Tompsett made in building the Resource of Carnival Arts (ARCS) at Middlesex, UK, in support of her Carnival course the collection remains uncatalogued.…”