The Revised Nomenclature for Museum Cataloging: A Revised and Expanded Version of Robert G. Chenhall's System for Classifying Man-Made Objects (Americ ... tion for State and Local History Book Series)

Rating:
Summary: History Museums Would Be Lost Without This Book
Review: As a museum cataloger, I've now worked with Chenhall's system in several contexts, and on both 19th and 20th century museum collections. The system is great for the former (especially with its specialized vocabulary for wood, metal, and agricultural tools) but needs an update to be more useful for the latter. I used to work on the Park Service's Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, and we found ourselves inventing new terms frequently (although we were still able to use the item-purpose taxonomy).

Rating:
Summary: Needs an update
Review: As a museum cataloger, I've now worked with Chenhall's system in several contexts, and on both 19th and 20th century museum collections. The system is great for the former (especially with its specialized vocabulary for wood, metal, and agricultural tools) but needs an update to be more useful for the latter. I used to work on the Park Service's Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, and we found ourselves inventing new terms frequently (although we were still able to use the item-purpose taxonomy).

Rating:
Summary: History Museums Would Be Lost Without This Book
Review: When I started in the museum field over seven years ago, I initially found Nomenclature confusing and cumbersome. Now that I have cataloged thousands of objects using the system, I can think of no other way. To catalog for five different institutions using Nomenclature allowed for continuity and opened my mind to new terms and classifications. Science and history, in essence, meet.