CDASH Place Items

This page discusses the notion of CDASH Place Items as catalog records describing various types of places within the digital collection management environment provided by Omeka-S.

For more information on the concept of an Omeka Item and the role of CDASH place Items, see CDASH Schema.

Topic Index

CDASH Place Items: Metadata Properties Dictionary

Required Place Properties

Name	Description
Resource Template Pull-Down	All CDASH Places use the CDASH Place template.
Class Pull-Down	All Place Items use Dublin Core: Location
Place Marker Use Mapping Tab	Use the Mapping Tab to set the position of the marker See screen-Shot
CDASH Folder Use Item-Set Tab	CDASH Folders are implemented as Omeka Item-Sets. To choose an folder, use the Item Sets tab at the top of the edit page. Every place should be associated with at lest one or possibly more folders.
Place Type Use pick-list.	Each place Item is assigned a type. Choose one from the pick-list provided.
Neighborhood Text	Each cdash Place Item is assigned to a CHC neighborhoods. A Place can be in more than one neighborhood if it is on the boundary. To enter a neighborhood manually, use the button provided to pick from the list of CHC neighborhoods. The neighborhood name is disambiguated by the addition of Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA to make CDASH records compliant with cataloging standards.
Research District Pick from List	Each cdash document item is assigned to a CHC Research District. A Place can be in more than one district if it is on the boundary. Pick from the list of CHC neighborhoods.
House Number Text	Can be a single number, or a hyphenated range (e.g. 451-455) and may include 1/2 (e.g. 451 1/2) or letters (e.g. 451r)
Street Name Text	The street name portion of the address may be useful for filtering/faceting results.
Place Name Text	In the case of named places, this property carries the base-name of the place - without the pre-pended address.

Required Derived Place Properties

Several place properties are derived by assembling values of other place properties. This work is accomplished by the GeoSync function. If you are creating place items by hand, you should keep in mind that these derived properties must be initialized (even with dummy values) or the GeoSync function will not be able to assign new values to them.

Name	Description
Place Item Text *	Automatically Concatenated from the House Number and the Place Name (if it exists). The value of this propwerty serves as the title for the Place Item, and is also the name that appears as name of the parent place for each associated Document Item.
Street Sort Key Text	Automatically calculated from House Number and Streetname, concatenated with the right number of leading zeroes.
Street Address Text	Addresses are automatically concatenated from the House Number and Street Name.

* Note that the value for the CDASH: PlaceItem property, when it is associated with a Place Item, is a plain text string, that serves as the title for the Place Item. The reason this property is re-used in this way is to simplify the search of items related to a place whether they should be places or documents.

Optional Place Properties

These properties are not populated by the batch accession tool, but they have vbeen carefully sdesigned in xcollaboration with the survey manager to be used to add useful information to place items as needed.

Name	Description
Description Text	A description of the place which might appear as a caption.
Place Use/s Text	A place may have a use. For example, a buildng may serve as a bank. If possible, choose a value from the CDASH List of Uses or choose from Library of Congress Subject Headings or the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus.
Building Style/s Controlled Vocabulary	Designed places such as buildings or monuments may ba categorrized according to their stylistic influences. Choose a value form the CDASH list of styles or use the the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus.
Architect, Developer, Builder Text	The name of the individual(s) or firm(s) that deserve credit for the design or construction of the thing. You may use Annotations to describe the role played by each. Hopefully you can find validated spellings for architect names at the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus.
Appear Date Date	The date when the existence of the thing is first recorded. It may be the year built, or it may be the date of the first map that records the existence of the thing. A plain four-digit year is sufficient. Use annotations to clarify the sources or events associated with this date.
Date Renovated Date	When the dates of renovations are known these may be entered here. Use annotations to describe the rennovations associated with each date.
Disappear Date Date	For places and objects that no longer exist, use this field to record the date that reflects the first evidence of the disappearance of the object. Use annotations to refer to the related event or source.
Special District or Designation/s Text, URL	Enter the name of any onservation or historic district or historical designation that applies to this property. Feel free to use the URI type entries to add hyperlinks to the official descriptive pages.
Alternate Name Text	This property is available for occasions when a place may be known by more than one name.
Collection text	Refers to a local collection and bibliographic citation. Defaults to: Cambridge Historical Commission, Digital Architectural Survey and History

Legacy Place Properties

The batch accession process creates a couple of properties that turn out not to be updated or used by Omeka. It happens that they can be used to trace the lineage of place items in the event of accidents.

Name	Description
CDASH Place Identifier text	The place Identifier property is used during the bulk import process. Values consist of "CDP_" concatenated by the original value for House Number, Street Name, and potentially, the original Place Name that were assigned during the accession process. Although the Place Identifier is not used and not updated, it can be useful for tracing the lineage of an item
CDASH Folder Text	These folder references were used during the bulk import process to generate Omeka item sets. After the initia accession of items the link between an item with its "CDASH Folders" (really, Omeka Item-Sets) is managed through the Item Sets tab on the item edit page. Although the values for an item's CDASH Folder property are not updated, they may be useful for tracing the lineage of an item in case something happens to the omeka item-set or its links.

Name

Description

CDASH Place Identifier
text

The place Identifier property is used during the bulk import process. Values consist of "CDP_" concatenated by the original value for House Number, Street Name, and potentially, the original Place Name that were assigned during the accession process. Although the Place Identifier is not used and not updated, it can be useful for tracing the lineage of an item

CDASH Folder
Text

These folder references were used during the bulk import process to generate Omeka item sets. After the initia accession of items the link between an item with its "CDASH Folders" (really, Omeka Item-Sets) is managed through the Item Sets tab on the item edit page. Although the values for an item's CDASH Folder property are not updated, they may be useful for tracing the lineage of an item in case something happens to the omeka item-set or its links.

Deprecated Place Properties

These properties were part of the origianl schema design. They were never populated and are slated for removal from the schema.

Name	Description
MACRIS Inventory Number Text, URL	When a document or a place is connected with a specific referent of the Massachusetts Cultural Resource Information System, Use the URI button to set the Label field to be the MACRIS ID, and the URI field to the landing page for the related MACRIS Resource. Search MACRIS here. After saving, check that the result performs as a clickable link. This field is not recommended since the MACRIS map layer is easier for users and much easier to manage.
Assessing Map Lot URL	This field deprecated since the Assessing map layer is easier for users and much easier to manage.
Street Address Text	This property has been replaced by the individual properties: House Number and Street Name.

Controlled Vocabularies for Places

The following lists are used as pick-lists to normalize the assignment of key-words to CDASH Place Items. These lists are implemented and managed with the Omeka-S Custom Vocab module.

Place Types

Each CDASH Place is assigned to one place type. At the bulk cataloging stage these are all plain street addresses. Later in the data enrichment phase. Historical Commission staff may create new place items or correct or enhance existing items to better reflect the subject matter of the related documents. For this effort, it is necessary to try to cover at least 95% of the possible place -types with controlled vocabulary pick-lists.

Address:
Building:
Streets and Squares: These places refer to stretches of streets and squares. Their spots are located in rights-of-way. When a neighborhood or survey district boundary is nearby, try to put the spot in the most appropriate district.
Bridge:
Object: This category will include but is not limited to:
- monuments
- benches
- flagpoles
- fences
- signs
- public art
- water fountains
Open Space: broad category with future option to parse into subgroups (see below). Examples: Charles River Reservation, Fresh Pond, Fresh Pond Golf Course, and the Harvard Science Center Plaza. This category will include but is not limited to some of the items below. As we handle the survey files, it will be useful for us all to observe and think about items that may fall into this category and keep in mind possible subcategories, which will include:
- bodies of water (term still TBD)
- cemeteries
- parks

CDD Neighborhoods

This list comes from the Community Development Department Neighborhoods layer.

East Cambridge
MIT
Wellington-Harrington
The Port
Cambridgeport
Mid-Cambridge
Riverside
Baldwin (Agassiz)
Neighborhood Nine
West Cambridge
North Cambridge
Cambridge Highlands
Strawberry Hill

CHC Survey Areas

East Cambridge
Mid Cambridge
Cambridgeport
Old Cambridge
Northwest Cambridge

Terms TBD for Enrichment Phase

After the semi-automated creation of CDASH Place Items, staff will be able create new place items or to enrich the automatically created ones. In this enrichment phase, it will save time and promote consistency to have frequently used terminology available in drop-down lists.

These lists should be prepared and approved by a subject-matter expert.

Users will be offered the opportunity to choose terms from one of the following.

Editors will have the ability to choose from these authorities or they can enter free-text.

It is not necessary to have these lists ready right away.

Building Use

Single-Family Residential
Two-Family Residential
Three-Family Residential
Apartment Building/Multi-Family Residential
Commercial
Mixed-use
Hospital/Medical Building
Religious Building
Industrial
Institutional
Education
Garage
Stable/Carriage house
Shed/Out-Building
Gas Station/Service Station
Recreational
Utilities
Other

Building Style

First Period/Post-Medieval English
Georgian
Federal
Greek Revival
Gothic Revival
Italianate
Second Empire
Stick/Eastlake
Queen Anne
Shingle Style
Richardsonian Romanesque
Romanesque Revival
Vernacular
Colonial Revival
Classical Revival
Tudor
Arts and Crafts
Spanish Revival/Mission
Commercial
Beaux Arts
Art Deco/Moderne
International
Mid-Century Modern
Minimal Traditional
Ranch/Split-level
Contemporary
Brutalism
Shed
Post-Modern
Neo-Traditional
Georgian Revival
Other

Buildng Material(s)

Wood (clapboard)
Wood (shingle)
Vinyl
Cement-board
Asphalt
Asbestos
Brick
Stucco
Stone
Limestone
Concrete
Glass
Metal
Other