Descriptive metadata, iconclass, and digitized emblem literature

TLDR: A digital library Web application designed to better support the ways emblem scholars search for and use digitized emblem books, focusing on metadata design, issues of resource granularity and identification, and the use of Linked Data Web services for Iconclass, a multilingual classification system for cultural heritage art and images is described.

Abstract: Early Modern emblems combined text and image. Though there were many variants, the archetypical emblem literary form (mid-sixteenth through mid-eighteenth centuries) consisted of an image (the pictura), a text inscription (the inscriptio), and a text epigram (the subscriptio), the last usually in verse. Digitized emblem literature poses interesting challenges as regards content and metadata granularity, the use of interdisciplinary controlled vocabularies, and the need to present digitized primary sources in a complex network of associated sources, derivatives, and contemporaneous context. In this paper, we describe a digital library Web application designed to better support the ways emblem scholars search for and use digitized emblem books, focusing on metadata design, issues of resource granularity and identification, and the use of Linked Data Web services for Iconclass, a multilingual classification system for cultural heritage art and images. Outcomes to date, achieved by emblem scholars and librarians working in collaboration, provide a case study for multi-faceted, interactive approaches to curating mixed text-image digital resources and the use of Linked Data vocabulary services. Lessons learned highlight the value of librarian-scholar collaboration and help to illustrate why digital libraries need to move beyond merely disseminating digitized book surrogates.