Riecks's Controlled Vocab

[Stephen]

Also using that product here.

Anybody with experience? I wish to know about any limitations in adding my own keywords to the Riecks structure (which might make more sense) rather than adding keywords to PSu's existing people / events / objects / styles / misc categories?

The exception would be PSu's places category which I use extensively.

[Mike Buckley]

I've happily used it for about 8 years since I first began cataloging my images. There are no limitations about changing it in any way.

It seems that almost every term has synonyms included, often many synonyms for each term. So, if you enable Supreme's Write setting to write synonyms, you're going to have a LOT more keywords written to the image files. Decide whether to enable that setting.

If you are using delimited keywords (I highly recommend that you not do so), be sure that you do NOT use the forward slash as the delimiter. That's because the Reicks vocabulary has categories that include that character. If it's really important to you to use that delimiter, change the Reicks categories so they no longer include it.

[Stephen]

Thanks, but what happens to my additions (hours of work) to Riecks when they update it to a later version?

[Mike Buckley]

Once you see the entire vocabulary, I don't think you'll ever be concerned about needing an update; it's very comprehensive. I've never received notification of an update in the 8 years I've been using the product and have never wanted one. You could contact David and ask when he last updated the product to get a better idea about that if that's important to you.

Another recommendation: Even though I seem to remember that his website explained (and perhaps still does) that the best practice is to use only the singular form of a noun, many of the nouns included in his vocabulary are provided in both the singular and plural forms. I could never remember which form I had assigned to previous images and over time realized that I had assigned both forms, which then required me to include both forms in my searches. So, I reassigned all of the plural forms to the singular form and then deleted the plural form from the vocabulary. Now when I assign a term for the first time, I simply delete the plural form and assign the singular form. I recommend that you do that from the outset so you avoid the hassle I had to go through of reassigning from plural to singular forms.

[PhilBurton]

Once you see the entire vocabulary, I don't think you'll ever be concerned about needing an update; it's very comprehensive. I've never received notification of an update in the 8 years I've been using the product and have never wanted one. You could contact David and ask when he last updated the product to get a better idea about that if that's important to you.

Mike,

I'm considering using this Controlled Vocabulary, but I know that I will need to do lots of additions to support a hobby interest. But I will also want to use the Controlled Vocabulary in Lightroom. So if I follow your recommendations and I do my additions, is there any way to export/import, or do I need to do this work twice?

Phil

[Mike Buckley]

Phil,

If I remember correctly, once you license the product for use with a particular program, the license provides free access to the product for all of the other programs. Check into that, as that might be your solution for using it with both Supreme and Lightroom.

Whatever the export/import capabilities are, they have nothing to do with the controlled vocabulary; those capabilities are all about the program(s) you are using such as Supreme and Lightroom. I only know Supreme's capabilities, which allows both exporting and importing.

I always advocate using only one program for changing metadata embedded in an image file. So, I don't have anything else to add for using the controlled vocabulary with two programs.

[Stephen]

I've never received notification of an update in the 8 years I've been using the product and have never wanted one.

That concerns me, but I can add my own terms, i.e. cell phones were around 8 years ago, but iPads and tablets were rare...

... the best practice is to use only the singular form of a noun... I could never remember which form I had assigned to previous images and over time realized that I had assigned both forms, which then required me to include both forms in my searches. So, I reassigned all of the plural forms to the singular form and then deleted the plural form from the vocabulary. Now when I assign a term for the first time, I simply delete the plural form and assign the singular form. I recommend that you do that from the outset so you avoid the hassle I had to go through of reassigning from plural to singular forms.

I would have thought it better to use the plural form If your keyword is oranges then a search for orange or oranges would surely find it. However, if your keyword is orange, then the search for oranges probably would not find it.

By search, one would probably need to define whether the search is made within PSu or a browser or the OS.

[fbungarz]

FYI - there are quite a few more controlled vocabularies out there that may be of interest, a good overview is presented here:
http://www.photo-keywords.com/keywording-resources.php

[Stephen]

Thanks. Have you tried any of them?

[Mike Buckley]

I would have thought it better to use the plural form If your keyword is oranges then a search for orange or oranges would surely find it. However, if your keyword is orange, then the search for oranges probably would not find it.

I don't think it matters whether you use the plural or singular form so long as you understand why you're using it. As an example, I'm the only person conducting searches of my photos and I use only Supreme to conduct them. So, I know I'll always conduct a search of orange, knowing that the singular and plural forms will be returned if either or both exist.

[fbungarz]

Thanks. Have you tried any of them?

Not any of those, no.
But what I did a long time ago to set up my IDI Catalog is to import the Library of Congress's Thesaurus for Graphic Materials (https://www.loc.gov/rr/print/tgm1/). Someone on the IDI forum adjusted the format of tgm1 and tgm2 to have it imported directly into IDI. I cannot find that post and therefore attach them again here:

[Mike Buckley]

The person who made that happen is SarahKM. Notice that TGM1 is a lot larger than TGM2. My notes from years ago indicate that it took me only ten minutes to import the small file but that it took an hour to import just one half of the large file. You might want to review the small file first before deciding that you want to move on to the large file. TGM1 is mostly a vocabulary of subject terms and TGM2 is mostly made up of terms of genre and physical characteristics. Both vocabularies have numerous synonyms assigned to the keywords.

[fbungarz]

I attach another one with geographic place names. I am not quite sure anymore, where I got that one from, most likely what's available as a free download from the Getty's thesaurus. The original is an Excel spreadsheet and I had to do a bit of tweaking to convert it to the format necessary for an IDI (or PSu) import.
Like Mike said: Not sure how useful it is to load all that into your catalog. It can add a bit of clutter. For example, if you never visited Africa and have no images from that continent, it might be a good idea not to import that section of the attached keyword hierarchy.
Still, perhaps some people find this useful. So, in any case, here it is:


[Perhaps these should be deposited in the resource repository...]

[Mike Buckley]

Like Mike said: Not sure how useful it is to load all that into your catalog. It can add a bit of clutter. For example, if you never visited Africa and have no images from that continent, it might be a good idea not to import that section of the attached keyword hierarchy.

I apparently didn't make my intent clear. The only reason I suggested trying the small file first is because it takes so much less time to import. If you then decide that you don't like the approach, you save the time of importing the really large file.

There is no such thing as clutter in my mind when it comes to a controlled vocabulary. Using Frank's example of Africa, the Reicks Controlled Vocabulary has all of the continents and seemingly all of the countries included, as well as many cities. I like having that hierarchy pre-established in my catalog so that when I do go somewhere new, I don't have to create an entire hierarchy. At the most, I only have to add a city, town or village to the existing hierarchy.

[Hert]

Please include permission statements from the original authors before redistributing possible copyrighted work from others. The attachments are deleted due to possible copyright conflicts.

BTW; the TGM is included in PSU (Data->Import formatted vocabulary file)