Cataloguing Tools and Implements

Access Points

The collection is searchable by:

• Information about manufacture
  • Corporate manufacturer name
  • Designer name
  • Place of manufacture
  • Date of manufacture
  • Model number.
  • Patent number
  • Title, derived from all kinds of secondary literature, especially sales catalogues. It has been the cataloguers' policy to be very generous with the inclusion of alternative titles, whether they be common names, generic names, brand names, or descriptive names taken from trade literature. Complex specific names are broken down and entered under both the entire name and the parts, so that someone looking for pipe wrenches will find them, whether or not he or she know enough to look for the "Donahue," "Guthrie," or "Barwick" pipe wrenches in the collection. The most specific name has been preferred as the main title, and most entries use title as the main entry.
    • Brand name ("Super Grip")
    • Common name ("Crescent wrench")
    • Generic name ("Offset adjustable wrench")
    • Generic name ("Adjustable wrench")
    • Generic name ("Mechanic's wrench")
    • Type of... ("Wrench")
• Kits are similarly given entries at the collective level as well as being given analytical entries devoted to each component.

• Use information. Search by
  • Trade or craft in which the tool is employed. If it is employed in several, put them all in. Enter the tool under each level of the hierarchy. E.g.:
    • Wood-working
      • Coopering
        • Whitecoopering
  • Task which the tool performs, if definable ("amputation" "rabbeting" "ear-piercing")
  • Manner of operation ("boring," "slicing" etc. using controlled vocabulary)
  • Material and objects addressed (when definable)
  • Provenance of item in hand (former owners, etc.)
• When the catalogue is operational, all such "manner," "object," "task," and "trade" fields should serve as hot links, facilitating movement within the catalogue. Finding a single farrier's tool should reveal "farrier" as a value in the craft field; clicking on "farrier" should generate a list of all other tools in the collection that were used by farriers; clicking on "splitting," found under the entry for a wedge, should generate a list that includes mauls and froes. (The same search engine is employed as in an ordinary search, of course, but its operation is in this case invisible to the user.)

• The physical description, title, and subject are not entirely distinguishable in a tool or implement, since form and material determine function ("subject") and specific title; and function determines general title. Some quantifiable or readily controllable aspects of the physical description that might serve as good access points include:
  • Size
  • Material
• The more difficult aspects of physical description to make accessible are those that require visual indexing, and that not merely by photograph but often by drawing: search by shape. For example, to search for a wooden plane with a particularly shaped blade, one either has to know the name of the pattern (in which case the search can be conducted by some level of title), or know the shape of the pattern, in which case one needs to be able to search visually.
  
  Some Plane blades
  
  Another example is drawing knives.
  
  Some Drawing Knives
  Only a visual index will allow someone looking for a mate to his or her tool to identify what it is. As you can see, most of these drawing knives are virtually identical even when shown this way. Often a more detailed examination, and therefore a more detailed visual index, is required to answer the question, "show me a tool like this one." The technical implementation of this feature has proven quite difficult.
  
  Cross-sections of different kinds of drawing knives
  Even when the general category is pretty evident, a visual index can help, e.g. with pipe wrenches, of which there are many many varieties, a few of them illustrated here:
  
  Varieties of Pipe Wrench
  
  From which a link to an actual item or other information is easy:
  Always Ready Wrench
  
  
  Stillson's Wrench
  
  
  Coe's-pattern Wrench