SAHARA Highlights: Experimental

Building on June’s Highlights showing how to get search results related to refuge, this month’s highlights look at how contributors can add metadata (or descriptive text) in Forum to make your images easier to find. We typed in the word "experimental" to see what the system would find, with some interesting examples given below.

If there are concepts and ideas you think your images represent well, you may consider what search terms someone might use to find an image like yours.  A simple search in JSTOR will look to all fields for relevant content.

When cataloguing your image, there are four fields you can flesh out to ensure your image pops up in a search: Work Type, Description, Commentary, and Keywords. 

• Work Type, a required field and one that pulls from the Getty’s Art and Architecture Thesaurus, a controlled vocabulary.  The terms in this field describe what your building/site IS – for example, a church, parking garage, park, or fire station, etc. You can Link and Append more than one term here. 
• Description, Commentary, and Keywords are not required, but they give you an opportunity to add context and natural language that is not from the AAT.  Description and Commentary are fields where you can add context and history, perhaps from text or online sources, and/or from your personal experience when photographing the site.  The Keywords field (which we map to Subjects in JSTOR), , gives you the opportunity to add more terms related to what the building or site is, but also more abstract concepts like experimentation, experiments, case studies, models, etc.  Pro-tip: place a pipe-delimiter (|) between your terms so that they can be clicked individually in the JSTOR record to find other images using the same keyword/subject.

In addition to the essential fields required for publication to JSTOR, consider filling in as much information as you can. More data points lead to more search hits. The SAHARA Cataloguing Guidelines provide field-by-field explanations. If you would like more one-on-one help with your records, please feel free to reach out to the editors. Contact information is available on the SAHARA page.

1. Alfred Lawrence Kocher and Albert Frey, Aluminaire House, Old Westbury, New York, US, 1931. Photograph by Jean France, 2002. Experimental is part of the work type: experimental buildings.

 

2. London County Council, Architects Department and Greater London Council, Vittoria Primary School, Islington, London, UK, designed from 1963, built c.1965-1967. Photograph by Ruth Lang. Experimental is in the description. 

 

3. Moshe Safdie, Habitat 67, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1967. Photograph by Peter Clericuzio, 2011. Experimental is in the keywords list.

 

4. Richard Haag, Gas Works Park, Seattle, Washington, US, 1969-1975. Photograph by Dianne Harris.  Experimental shows up in the description field.

 

5. National Building Research Institute, Row Housing, South Africa, 1951. Photograph by Hannah le Roux, 2005.  Experimental shows up in the description field.

6. Hassan Fathy, Main Building, Dar al Islam Mosque, Abiquiu, New Mexico, US, 1980. Photograph by Jacqueline Spafford, 2012. Experimental Community is a keyword term.

 

7. Design and Research Institute of Tsinghua University, Tsinghua Green Building Research Center, Beijing, China, 2004-2006. Photograph by Dell Upton, 2006. Experimental is part of an alternative title given for the image.

 

8. Experimental Solar House, Font-Romeu-Odeillo-Via, Languedoc-Roussillon, France, 1962-1963. Photography by Paul Bouet. Experimental shows up in the title, keywords and experiment is in the description.

 

9. Alvar Aalto, Experimental House, Säynätsalo, Finland, 1952-1953. Photograph by Sandy Isenstadt, 2004.  Experimental is in the title.

 

10. Paolo Soleri, Arcosanti, Vaults, Cordes Junction, Arizona, US, 1971-Present. Photograph by Caitlin Watson, 2012. Experimental is in the keywords.

 

11. Michael Reynolds, House in the Greater World Earthship Community, near Taos, New Mexico, US, 1971-2012. Photograph by Leah Theis, 2012. Experimental shows up in the keywords.