the churchyard traveller

Preliminary work

The first step was to search for similar conservation projects on graveyards and their system of cataloging.

Here are some of the resources used:

http://www.gravestonephotos.com/ – from this site I got the table with the codes to specify the relation among those buried in the same gravesite , and other label names to describe a person’s details.

http://www.oldcem.bc.ca/ - this site offers a template for those who wish to record graves. The main information I got from it regards the grave itself, such as the material with which was made, its shape, its direction in relation to the church, etc. You can download the recordsheet (pdf file) from the site.

http://connections.smsd.org/csi/Tombs.htm - tomb types

http://www.tngenweb.org/darkside/typology.html - markers

http://www.heritagememorials.com.au/pg_letstyle.php – lettering styles

http://cjstones.com/inscriptions.htm - font types

While building the coding standards I also had to get to know Flickr a bit better, particularly in regards on how it stores additiona information, such as photo’s s description and tags.

Useful things to know about Flickr

Flickr offers three main ways to insert content in regards to a photo, its title, its description and its tags.

title – capture the essential information.

description – as detailed as possible.

tags – connect to other objects which are similar to the current one by some particular feature, both within the collection and between the Flickr’s community. The tags cannot be more than 75, so which tags to put need to carfully considered.

Flickr also allows to assign the photo to a geographical position.

Flickr allows to create sets. Unfortunately, only the pro account (which has an annual fee) allows for unlimited set, otherwise the user can create a miximum of 3 sets.

Since we want to keep the project at zero cost, we will not make use of this functionality, but decide on an alternative way to organise the photos.

Tags format

label: value

this gets displayed as two separate consecutive tags

i.e.

material:

sandstone

Thus allowing both values to be searchable (Flickr displays the : but discards it when it looks for photos with the same tag), human readable (as by reading the list of tags top-down you get the label followed by its value) and machine readable (it is easy to write code that separates the list into couples according to the : and thus retrieve the different attributes).

However, a discussion of this approach with a friend, highlighted that this way of tagging was still difficult to grasp for those who were not already familiar with the objects described as it is not clear that the label is related to the following value. Plus, sometimes Flickr messes up the order and so you can find a label followed by a different value etc.

Thus, because of the need to keep the label and value together, while at the same time have the possibility to search for photos from other users related to mine, I adopted machine tags (namespace:label=value) for my own descriptions, leaving other users the possibility to Add tags to my photos.

The adopted system

Deciding on content was particularly complex, since it appears to be no standard for the cataloging of gravesites.

There are however guidelines and tips used by different groups, mostly charities, working in the preservation of cemeteries. Thus we thought of integrating them together in one consistent system.
TAGS

Label	Possible Values	Description
plot	single, family (n.people), unrelated (n.people)	the num. of people in the plot and their relationship
marker	roundtop, column, cross, monolith, monument, obelisk, pillar, pyramid, star of David, footstone, headstone, ledger stone, Plinth (a base for a column, tomb, or gravemarker), stone, table stone, tombstone	type of marker
direction	S,SW,SE,E,N,NW,NE	plot direction in relation to the church (the door of the church is the South)
tomb	box, crypt, wall vault, slot and tab, table, step, pltaform	shape of the tomb
characteristic	inscription, marker’s shape	what is the peculiarity of the tomb (why it has been recorded here)
materials	Brick, Concrete, also called “Cement”, Field Stone (fieldstone), Limestone, Marble, Native Stone, Sandstone, Soapstone, Wood	the materials used to make the tomb
inscription-font	Behm Script Old English, Chapel, Optima Medium, Classic Roman, Outlined Nelson Vermarco, Common Gothic, Outlined Roman, Futura Medium, Outlined Vermarco, Garamond Bold, Polished Edge Roman, Goudy Roman Condensed, Goudy Bold, Roman Modified, Government, Roman Modified Script, Greek, Round, Raise, Greek Bold, Round Serif, Script, Helvetica Medium, Shadow Edge Roman, Helvetica Regular, Special Roman, Irish, Splayed Gothic, Korinna, Times Roman, Latin, Triple Cut Roman, Modern Classic Roman, Uncial Gothic, Murray Hill Bold, Universal	Type of font used for the inscription
inscription-style	cut, raised, painted	How the inscription has been made
inscription-case	lower case, upper case	If the lettering is lower or upper case
mason	mason’s name, address	the mason who made the marker
person (rel)	Surname Name (year of birth – year of death)	a person’s details:the relationship with the first person in the monument, surname, name, birth and death dates.

To add a machine tag on Flickr, click (as for the other tags) on the Add a tag link, then follow this format:

namespace:label=value

The namespace is churchyardtraveller. If the value is more than one word, you need to put it in “”. Flickr will recognize automatically that the new tag is a machine tag and add to your tags a link to show the list of machine tags.

Here are some examples to show correct syntax:

churchyardtraveller:tomb=family(2)

churchyardtraveller:tomb=table

churchyardtraveller:materials=wood

churchyardtraveller:inscription-font=”Classic Roman italic”

churchyardtraveller:inscription-style=”cut and black painted”

churchyardtraveller:inscription-case=”lower case”

churchyardtraveller:mason=”Busby&Co., Cumbria”

churchyardtraveller:person(a)=”chuYoung George (1822 – 1878)”

TITLE

for a single person:

Surname Initial. (year birth – year death), Church, Place, REGION CODE, COUNTRY CODE “initial inscription…”

i.e. Young G. (1822 – 1878 ), St Margaret, Rottingdean, SXE, ENG “Since thou couldst…”

for 2 people:

Surname Initial. (year birth – year death)/ Surname Initial. (year birth – year death) [relation] , Church, Place, REGION CODE, COUNTRY CODE “initial inscription…”

i.e. Young G. (1822 – 1878 ) / Young M. (1822 – 1873) [wife], St Margaret, Rottingdean, SXE, ENG “Since thou couldst…”

for more than 2 people:

Surname Initial. (year birth – year death) et. al. , Church, Place, REGION CODE, COUNTRY CODE “initial inscription…”

Young G. (1822 – 1878 ) et. al., St Margaret, Rottingdean, SXE, ENG “Since thou couldst…”

DESCRIPTION

“the inscription or part of it, each line separated by / “

It refers to:
in case there are more people buried, but the inscription does not refer to them all

Other information:

…here you copy and paste the info from the tags and add any additional notes…