A Controlled Vocabulary to Support Art Documentation in Brazil

Abstract

This article reports on the result of the joint efforts of the Library and Documentation Center of São Paulo Museum of Art and the School of Communications and Arts at the University of São Paulo to develop a methodology to update, improve, and manage a controlled vocabulary to optimize access to art documentation. The linguistic, terminological, and documentary criteria support the construction of this controlled vocabulary to standardize the representation of specialized information in art libraries in São Paulo, Brazil. The project is supported by a grant from the São Paulo Research Foundation under its public policy program. As a final goal, the authors hope to implement this methodology as the best practices and guidelines for creating and maintaining controlled vocabularies within Brazil and to promote interoperability with other international controlled vocabularies in the future.