The Textile Museum Announces Publication of The Textile Museum Thesaurus

March 23, 2006, Washington, DC - The Textile Museum is pleased to announce the publication of The Textile Museum Thesaurus, a scholarly compilation of the Museum's textile cataloging terminology. The Thesaurus was produced as part of the Lloyd Cotsen Textile Documentation Project, established at The Textile Museum in 1998 to develop the collections database through documentation, cataloging and photography of the collections as well as standardization of the cataloging terminology. The Thesaurus is used as an electronic data management tool for controlling data entry and facilitating searches in the Museum's extensive collections database. As the first textile-specific vocabulary resource for electronic databases, the Thesaurus is a valuable reference for any institution or private collector involved in cataloging textiles. 

The Textile Museum Thesaurus was developed because no existing cataloging vocabulary met the Museum's need to describe handmade textiles worldwide using the detailed terminology necessary for textile specialists. As a vocabulary resource, The Textile Museum Thesaurus serves as both a reference and a useful model for curators, scholars, collections managers, conservators and catalogers working with textile collections elsewhere. This publication presents The Textile Museum's preferred textile terms and organization without definitions, illustrations or bibliographic references. The Textile Museum staff anticipates that colleagues at other institutions will adapt, expand and draw from the Thesaurus according to their own needs.

Features of the Thesaurus include: 

- Terms used by The Textile Museum in cataloging its collections of primarily handmade textiles from Asia, Africa, the Middle East and the indigenous cultures of the Americas from 3000 B.C.E. to the present. 

- 2,263 preferred terms for the names of textile objects, their constituent materials, their physical structures and the techniques used to create them.

- 685 alternate spellings, synonyms, obsolete and non-preferred terms linked to preferred terms for vocabulary control during data entry and to provide a broad access vocabulary to searchers. 

- Preferred terms organized hierarchically to facilitate searching by mapping generic terms to more specific instances. 

The Textile Museum Thesaurus was compiled by the Lloyd Cotsen Textile Documentation Project and curatorial staff at The Textile Museum, edited by Cecilia Gunzburger and funded by the Cotsen Family Foundation. The Thesaurus is available for $5 from The Textile Museum Shop and Shop Online. To order, visit www.textilemuseumshop.org or call (202) 667-0441, ext. 29.

Esther Méthé
Margaret Wing Dodge Chair in Conservation
Chief Conservator
The Textile Museum
2320 S Street N.W.
Washington, DC 20008
phone: 202.667.0441 ex 18 / fax: 202.483.0994
e-mail: [log in to unmask]