Space Time Continuum

One of my favorite metadata elements is called coverage. It splits into two subcategories: spatial and temporal. It's literally space and time. These two subcategories make excellent access points for the public to explore items within the library based on a specific place or a specific time period.

Space

The spatial facet is determined by the place an item was created or perhaps a place mentioned in the content. Since I've only done photographs, the spatial facet has been mostly unknown. However, people tend to leave notes on the back of photographs that have helped me determine a location.

Image 1 - A wonderful person has written on the back of a photograph to signify when and where the photograph was taken. It reads "August 1908 at Jamison, Pa."

Jamison still exists just outside Philadelphia, PA and Trenton, NJ. Because of this notation on the back of the photograph, I know that someone related to the McCoy family had a farm there. They called it "Collum's" although I haven't figured out who's farm it is or how they were related to the McCoy family.

When you search for Jamison in the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names, you get the following output:

North and Central America (continent)

United States (nation)

Pennsylvania (state)

Bucks (county)

Jamison (inhabited place)

And that's exactly how I list it in my metadata for the Omeka instance. That way, everyone knows the exact right place. There is almost no room for confusion.

Time

The temporal facet is determined by when the item was created. There isn't a specific controlled vocabulary for temporal coverage. At the risk of coming off a little arrogant, I created my own local vocabulary to use for the Last McCoy Library. After thorough research on specific time periods, I came up with the following:

Civil War Era, 1860-1865

Reconstruction Era, 1866-1877

Rise of Industrial America, 1878-1899

Progressive Era, 1900-1913

World War I, 1914-1918

New Era and Roaring Twenties, 1919-1929

Great Depression, 1930-1938

World War II, 1939-1945

Postwar Boom, 1946-1953

Civil Rights Era, 1954-1966

Space Race Era, 1967-1975

Postmodern Era, 1976-1999

War on Terrorism, 2000-2006

Great Recession, 2007-2009

American Recovery Era, 2010-2018

COVID-19 Pandemic, 2019-Present

Aiming to force eras into decades of time (1900-1909, 1910-1919, etc) proved too complicated. It would have split the Reconstruction Era, World War II, Civil Rights, and the Space Race into two different decades while ignoring some of the other important eras that have occurred in America. I did choose to focus on American eras as most of the collection was created in and focuses on America, but with a little research another controlled vocabulary could be created for temporal coverage in other countries.

And now the Last McCoy Library collections are situated in space and time. People can easily search for the eras and places listed in the metadata and find them with ease. However, in the future, I will be adding a page to the website as well that allows for links to these groupings as a way for easier exploration.