Controlled vocabularies for archiving qualitative data

What is it about?

Whether you are archiving qualitative research data or building a digital archive of photos and texts, your files need to be organized. A "controlled vocabulary" lets you record information about a digital file or folder in a standard way, making it easier for others to search and find your materials. This paper suggests existing vocabularies that let us refer to the language, location, culture, researcher, and subject of digital objects in standard ways.

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Why is it important?

You can't find photos and texts from field research unless the digital files are well organized by language, location, culture, research project, and subject. This "metadata" will get messy unless you use a "controlled vocabulary" or "thesaurus" to provide standard terms in each field. This paper suggests some existing vocabularies that could be used to organize anthropological research materials, and will be useful for librarians or researchers who need to put together a data management plan (DMP) in order to get funding for cultural research.