The Whitney Museum of American Art collects books in a variety of genres as part of both its Permanent and Special Collections. Permanent Collection items are catalogued in The Museum System (TMS), parts of which are displayed online in the Whitney’s collection search. Special Collections items are catalogued using Voyager, parts of which are displayed online in the library’s catalog, WhitneyCat.
When beginning this project, Artist books in the Permanent collection were not consistently catalogued in TMS. The Medium line often did not describe the item as a book, referencing only the drawing or printing techniques inside. Artist books in the Special Collections were not always catalogued in any greater depth than a standard book. The discrepancies in cataloguing and the separation of Artist books into the two collections meant that the items were difficult to discover through searches and that information about the structure of the books was often missing.
The goals of this internship were as follows:
1. Standardize the terminology for the description of books in the Whitney’s collections.
2. Test out this terminology on as many items as possible and adjust as needed.
3. Discuss the possibility of crosswalking information across TMS and Voyager platforms.
4. Document the process so the project can continue in the future.
The following internship booklet describes completed activities- a literature review, the creation of content standard element sets, the examination & description of books in the collection- and suggests possible continuations. The appendices contain the full sets of terminology created for the project as well as references and further reading.