Purpose

From VocabWiki

VocabWiki was designed to combine Folksonomy and Taxonomy systems, resulting in a standardized vocabulary called Collabulary.

Standardized vocabularies are of critical importance to scholars trying to choose and locate research materials, for these descriptors provide the uniform access points by which sources may be identified. Assigning appropriate access points—such as creator, title, date, format, type, and subject entries—is the intellectual task that allows users to meaningfully search, sort, and group the materials of interest to them. While folksonomy often provides too many access points, and taxonomy too few, the combination presents the opportunity to utilize both avenues for further research.

For documentation of performance art events, installations, exhibitions, and digital art, the assignment of subject and form descriptors comprises the most difficult portion of the cataloging task. By its very nature, performance and installation art often deals with matters that do not fit neatly into assigned subject headings. It is conceptual, multimedia, intermedia, or is created on media so new that it is not yet firmly described. It may deal with different topics at different levels, for example using the effort of wearing and moving in a dress with 200-foot train as a metaphor on femininity. At times, it deliberately defies all description. Towards the end of providing scholarly access to such materials, two arts organizations -- Franklin Furnace and Rhizome -- assign subject and format terms to event records in their collections. Through the Forging the Future grant, Franklin Furnace and Rhizome have combined their individual vocabularies together in the VocabWiki. The wiki format allows for other arts organizations to access and contribute terms and definitions to this expanding vocabulary.