Group 5

Zoe Dobbs
Nicholas House
Kamallah Kaplan
Phil Wills
Museum of Masks and Costumes
Community Costume Collection

Introduction
The Museum of Masks and Costumes has worked for many years to preserve and
document a skilled artistic practice that has been used throughout human creative works for
centuries. From the masked chorus of the Greek tragedies, through the bright and colorful
displays of Commedia dellarte, up to current Broadway epics like The Lion King, costumes and
masks have sought to enhance the visual nature of a dramatic performance. The costumes
themselves would not exist without the talented individuals who work tirelessly to create these
intricate pieces that further allow for the suspension of disbelief, and the museum features the
works of many of these individuals such as Colleen Powell, Sandy Atwood, Tim Yip and many
more. Through our collections, anyone can learn about the processes involved, the people that
have created them, and be inspired by generations of work and examples. As a celebration of
community ingenuity and creativity, the Museum of Masks and Costumes has seen the need for a
collective display of the wide range of costumes and disguises that people will create in order to
celebrate Halloween or even for particular themed costume events. It would be narrow to
imagine that only a select handful of individuals are capable of creating elaborate costumes and
masks, and it is with that knowledge that we have founded the Community Costume Collection.

With this digital collection, we invite anyone to submit photos of themselves in costume.
After filling out a few basic questions about the photo and costume pictured, our catalogers will
elaborate on that information, providing more substantive metadata. Through this collective
database of costume creations and materials, the aim is not simply to provide costume ideas,
though that is certainly an added benefit, but also to inspire community members by detailing the
process of how individual costumes were created. Through this we hope to see further innovation
in design and ideas that can then be brought back to the collection. Imagine being able to witness
the various ways a particular technique or design can be utilized when hundreds of different
perspectives and imaginations apply themselves to it. The collection will utilize multiple types of
metadata schemas in order to provide the most robust and detailed information possible.
Beginning with a base of Simple and Qualified Dublin Core, the information will also be mapped
to VRA Core 4.0. Like anything else, these creations are artistic works. In order to properly
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document them, it is important to provide information about the work as the individual is
wearing it, and also information about the image itself as the medium that is bringing this
creation to our eyes.

How was the group work divided?

Once our group finalized the theme and user population for our digital collection for the
Museum of Masks and Costumes, the work was, for the most part, divided organically, with each
individual absorbing the parts of the project they felt their respective strengths would support.
The process of delegating was formed by a team effort and collaborating with the individuals in
this group was seamless, as this group is comprised of individuals who have innate leadership
qualities, integrity, and a tacit understanding of working as a team. The following is an
abbreviated and chronological description of how the work was divided among our group and
will provide insight about our groups process as well as each individuals role in the groups
work:

Kamallah Kaplan created the theme for the digital collection, Community Costume
Collection, and the details, such as the type of collection, user population, and the community
profile were decided on as a collaborative effort. The groups conversations about the above
details led to decisions about the Application Profile, which would later be revised in a
collaborative manner.

Zoe Dobbs worked on the first draft of the Application Profile. As a group, we revisited
the draft on several occasions, once after completing the first draft of the Application Profile, and
then again after our individual records were completed. The insight gleaned from working on our
individual records provided us with new perspectives about how to map our collections
metadata in Simple Dublin Core, Qualified Dublin Core, and VRA Core 4.0.
Philip Wills worked on the first section of the Group Report, providing an introduction to
the Museum of Masks and Costumes and the Community Costume Collection, information about
the museums user population, and the types of metadata schemes used to catalog the collection.

The remainder of the Group Report was divided up between the groups members, with
Kamallah Kaplan, Zoe Dobbs, and Nicholas House responsible for responding to two questions
each. Kamallah Kaplan was responsible for formatting and editing the Group Report and
uploading into Canvas.

All eyes on deck were required for editing and revising our groups work; however,
Nicholas House was our groups designated editor-in-chief. He was primarily responsible for
reviewing the groups final drafts for both metadata records and text.

Did you use any outside sources to create your metadata collection?

A range of outside sources was used as a guide for designing our metadata collection. For
best practices in Simple Dublin Core and Qualified Dublin Core, our group utilized Dublin
Cores Guidelines for Implementing Dublin Core in XML. For VRA Core 4.0, our group
referenced VRA Core Schemas and Documentation, specifically VRA Core 4.0 Element
Description and Tagging Elements. Our group also referenced our textbook, but found it was not
advantageous to reference it for creating Qualified Dublin Core records. Instead, we utilized the
above guidelines for Qualified Dublin Core metadata records. For machine-readable dates, our
group used W3CDTF vocabulary to record dates in our metadata records. To support the subject
vocabulary for our metadata schema, we used vocabulary from The Getty Research Institutes
Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names (TGN).
For name authority files, we used Library of Congress Name Authority File (LCNAF), and for
subject authority headings we used Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). Additionally,
the individuals in our group used Oxygen XML Editor to validate our metadata records.

What were some of the challenges your group faced while creating the
application profile and metadata for the collection?
Our groups major challenge when designing metadata for the Museum of Masks and
Costumes was choosing between MODS 3.5 and VRA Core 4.0 as our third content standard.
MODS seems like the natural choice for a digital collection of Halloween pictures. MODS is the
most detailed schema for describing digital objects, and it is very good at describing an images
genre and subject. This metadata is extremely important for our digital repository, where
Halloween costumes come from a plethora of sources and span a variety of topics. Our group,
however, ultimately decided to use VRA Core 4.0 instead of MODS 3.5, because we believe that
the costumes represent a work in themselves that is distinct from their digital images. Our
collections purpose is to showcase community members costumes and the processes that went
into their creation. The costumes digital photographs are only the medium through which our

collection does this. These digital objects, however, do not change the fact that our collections
objective is to show a work that is related to, but distinct from its medium. VRA Core 4.0 is
better than MODS 3.5 in highlighting this distinction, because VRA Core does a better job at
maintaining the One-to-One Principle by beginning each section with a work or image element.
VRA Core 4.0 also contains elements that are better at artistic description than MODS 3.5. The
techniqueSet and materialSet elements clearly articulate how a costume was made, which is
absolutely necessary information to our end users who are looking to make the costume
themselves. We ended up going with VRA Core 4.0 over MODS 3.5 for the Museum of Masks
and Costumes, because VRA Core is better than MODS at representing artistic works and
adhering to the One-to-One Principle.

How well did each metadata scheme map to your local elements? Was there
any loss of information?
Our local elements mapped well to VRA Core 4.0, but not so well to Simple or Qualified
Dublin Core. Loss of information is an unfortunate side effect of Dublin Core, because Dublin
Core simply isnt descriptive enough to accommodate most local schemas. For instance, our
model and photographer elements lost their meaning in Simple Dublin, because Simple Dublin
Core renders these elements only as contributor. This leaves end users completely unable to
decipher whos who, because only the models and photographer's personal names are shown.
Simple Dublin Cores format, subject, and coverage elements also caused similar problems for
our local elements. Qualified Dublin Core partially rectified this situation by allowing dcterms
for further refinements and xsi:type to delineate controlled vocabularies. Dcterms fixed Simple
Dublin Cores coverage problem by allowing users to distinguish between spatial and temporal
coverage. However, even Qualified Dublin Core lacks the necessary detail to accomplish our
collections objectives. Qualified Dublin Cores subject elements are not descriptive enough to
allow end users to immediately distinguish between techniques and materials. This level of
description can only be achieved using VRA Core 4.0, a metadata schema designed for artistic
works. VRA Core is the only schema that accommodated all of our local metadata content
without any problem. Every element in VRA Core is descriptive enough to portray the local
elements intended meaning, and VRA Cores attributes also provide enough detail for end users
to immediately recognize the local elements controlled vocabulary. VRA Core 4.0 shines
through as an artistic metadata standard, and its ability to meet all of our local elements
requirements shows why we chose it as our third schema.

Did you need to change your application profile once you began creating
records for the photographs? If so, give a few examples of what you changed
and why.
As we began creating metadata records according to our Application Profile, we realized
that some changes needed to be made regarding the encoding of controlled vocabularies. At the
outset, we had decided subject terms could be taken from either the Art and Architecture
Thesaurus (AAT) or Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH). However, we had only
designated a single catch-all subject field in our local element set, meaning that there was no way
for AAT subject values to map to subject elements with attributes designating AAT as the
vocabulary in Qualified Dublin Core and VRA Core 4.0, or for LCSH values to map to LCSHencoded elements in those schemes. This problem was solved by having separate AAT and
LCSH local subject elements, so that each could be mapped to subject elements with different
vocabulary attributes in other schemes. Similarly, we had designed our Application Profile to use
hierarchical terms from the Thesaurus of Geographic Names to indicate where a photograph was
taken, but originally had only one local element for this purpose. In order to maintain the
hierarchy throughout each of the schemes, we split this location element into three, indicating the
country, state, and city where the photograph was taken.

Another change that involved some discussion was the "Time period of costume" local
element. We had envisioned this element mapping to the stylePeriod element in VRA Core 4.0
and the Coverage Temporal element in Qualified DC, but at first there was no firm decision
about whether this value should conform to the VRA Core recommendation of using AAT terms,
or the DC recommendation of using their DCMI Period encoding scheme. We eventually
decided against DCMI Period because it would require multiple local "Time period of costume"
elements to accommodate a period name, start date, and end date, and the matter boiled down to
a choice between controlled date values and controlled period name values. Due to the nature of
some of our own photographs, we realized that AAT terms did not adequately describe many of
the time periods that we wanted to be able to convey, such as decades, but at the same time there
were some periods that could be better described by terms rather than dates. Therefore, we
eventually decided to provide the option of using date ranges encoded in W3CDTF or free text
period names.

How did your group address issues of metadata quality?

During the development of our Application Profile, we addressed many characteristics of
metadata quality. Our element set was designed to describe as many aspects of a costume as
possible, including the techniques and materials involved. Our users will expect these types of
elements in order to be able to recreate or reimagine the costumes using this information. Due to
the nature of costumes, which usually require both a designer and a model, users will also want
to know about the multiple agents involved. This is why our local element set has separate
elements for these two agents in addition to a photographer, since they are not always the same
person. Our process of inviting people to submit metadata along with the photographs
themselves ensures a level of accuracy that may not be possible if the metadata were created
using information from the photographs alone. Furthermore, by expanding upon this
foundational metadata and using controlled terms where appropriate, our catalogers will also
lend an element of legitimacy and interoperability. Knowing that this metadata is coming from
the dual expertise of trained catalogers and those directly involved in the making and capturing
of the costumes gives us confidence in its quality.

Photographs

Wood Nymph (Zoe Dobbs)

Fun World Costumes Men's Medieval Monk Costume (Nicholas House)

Tippi Hedren Attacked by Butterflies (Kamallah Kaplan)

Referees Maintain Order (Phil Wills)