Photo Mechanic Plus > Feature Requests

Structure of the Intellectual Genre filed in the IPTC Template

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Bob Hendricks:
It is highly desirable that the Intellectual Genre field of the IPTC Template be a structured vocabulary in exactly the same manner as the Subject/Keywords data entry field.

Kirk Baker:
Bob,


--- Quote from: Bob Hendricks on February 20, 2020, 12:59:55 PM ---It is highly desirable that the Intellectual Genre field of the IPTC Template be a structured vocabulary in exactly the same manner as the Subject/Keywords data entry field.

--- End quote ---

Do you mean that you want the Structured Keywords panel to be allowed to add items/paths to that field?

-Kirk

Bob Hendricks:
Yes.  Right now if I want to use a controlled vocabulary for the image genre, the only place it can be entered is in Keywords which allows either individual keywords or a controlled voice structure. It would be really handy if one could use a controlled/structured vocabulary in the Genre filed in exactly the same way.

Bob Hendricks:
Here are a couple of examples of my thinking.

The first is an example of a structured vocabulary of world regions. The vocabulary comes from Dave Riecks CVKC web site.  The prewritten structured vocabulary is loaded into the PM vocabulary in the standard way--select structured vocabularies at the Keyword entry point in the IPTC template, press load on the popup screen, follow the path to the desired endpoint, click on the add path button to enter the data into the collection, press apply and the data are moved, with separators, into the Keywords entry field in the template.  It works like a charm with one exception (that is not a deal breaker, but probably should be fixed). That is that the implementation only allows three levels in the structure.  This should be increased to four or five (max).

The second screenshot shows exactly the same structure, other than that I have used a vocabulary for photographic genres. Although one can indeed enter the information into keywords, and (I expect that) PM 6 Plus will catalog this information correctly, there is an IPTC entry for this information (Intellectual Genre). It is true that one could enter these data into the keywords and then cut and past from keywords to genre.  But it would be so much nicer if the Intellectual Genre entry behaved exactly like the Keywords entry.  Have two entries--one where we enter data exactly as it is now, and one where we can enter data from a structured vocabulary, just like in Keywords.

As an aside, the Library of Congress (LOC) has developed a new classification and cataloging system called FAST.  Here is the reference:

Chan, Lois Mae and O'Niell, Edward T., FAST: Faceted Application of Subject Terminology, Santa Barbara: Libraries Unlimited (2010).

In FAST one has seven facets by which metadata can be classified. The IPTC Keywords field matches the facet Topical Headings; IPTC Intellectual Genres matches the FAST facet Form and Genre. The first image above, although entered into IPTC Keywords, really fits the FAST Geographical facet.

Implementing a structured vocabulary entry for Intellectual Genre would make our IPTC Template consistent with one of the seven facets.  This would be a great start. But, as the first image shows, the location information in a structured vocabulary does not play nice with the current way of entering the data into the template in that there is a separate entry field for each level in the location.  It would be a lot of work, I expect, to change that entry and so is best left alone for now.

I would be most interested in a discussion of the interest in/need for more capabilities in structured vocabulary in the IPTC template.

carlseibert:
Hi Bob,

Whoa. There is already a controlled vocabulary for Intellectual Genre. True, the standard allows for the use of the field with CVs other than the IPTC's own. But this is meant to be a machine-readable field and the machines that read it (such as they are) are expecting IPTC values in the field, so that pretty much means the IPTC CV is the CV for this field. It's always risky to put data where it might not be expected, in a form that might not be expected, or to stray from the standard in general. I would be more comfortable not having my data in a place where it might be stomped on - or ignored - by some unfeeling machine down the road.

A bit of background - the Subject Code and Intellectual Genre fields were introduced some twenty years ago, meant to replace the Category and Supp Cat fields. But nobody noticed. Everybody kept on using Cat and Supp Cat. ("Everybody" in this case meaning news services and publishers. That's everybody, right?) While I'm sure that some folks have adopted these fields by now, basically they are places that most folks don't go.

There are other metadata standards apart from IPTC. But IPTC is really what we've got for embedded descriptive metadata for photos. The IPTC standard started out designed for the news industry. (And news services still pay the freight for its development and upkeep.) So there are some fields and features that are industry-specific. We just have to work around some of that furniture.

As an exercise, I did make a CV for Photo Mechanic's Structured Keywords dialog to generate Subject Codes. There is a Subject Code generator online, but I reasoned that photographers who might actually need such a thing might be not able to connect to the net when they needed it. So I built this little tool. (Screenshot below)  Just drill down and copy the resulting code and paste it where ever you want it -in a template, presumably. Works like a charm. You could do the same with Intellectual Genres. (This was just an excerise. Exactly nobody has asked me for the Sub Code CV. Real world, if there's anybody out there who uses this field, they have the relevant codes on a sticky label attached to their laptop.)

Here's the standard for Intellectual Genre:    https://www.iptc.org/std/photometadata/specification/IPTC-PhotoMetadata#intellectual-genre

And here's the CV:  http://cv.iptc.org/newscodes/genre/

I tend to think that you can accomplish what you want in the Keywords field. Remember that hierarchical structure is only a tool for markup. When we go to retrieve the data, regardless of the field, we just use Booleans, which don't care about hierarchies. They (re-)build them on the fly.
-Carl

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