Link to external vocabularies for Occupations in People

[jenniferward]

As mentioned in #1090 we use RISM vocabulary for the professions, but there would be advantages to linking to already-existing vocabularies. Should we explore our options?

Some options:

• Occupation Term Source Codes from LC: https://www.loc.gov/standards/sourcelist/occupation.html
• Some of the 374 professions in the LC authorities seem to use lcdgt (https://id.loc.gov/authorities/demographicTerms.html), which might get us close for a lot of the RISM professions.
• itoamc seems to at least be in the historical direction, but it seems to be an internal LC thing (see https://folgerpedia.folger.edu/Index_terms_for_occupations_in_archival_and_manuscript_collections_(ITOAMC) )
• IFLA does a good job with translations in other languages but I don't see anything relevant for occupations: https://www.iflastandards.info/unimarc
• Wikidata has occupations https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:WikiProject_Occupations_and_professions

Spot-checking some of our RISM terms with the demographic terms (lcdgt):

• Our Clown is Clowns https://id.loc.gov/authorities/demographicTerms/dg2017060234.html
• Our Alpinists is a variant for Mountaineers http://id.loc.gov/authorities/demographicTerms/dg2022060161
• Our Clavichord player is Clavicordists https://id.loc.gov/authorities/demographicTerms/dg2016060519.html
• Some historical occupations/trades seem to be missing. No hatter, limer, Minnesänger. No smith or even blacksmith but there is Metalworkers in an Ethnographic Terms list https://id.loc.gov/vocabulary/ethnographicTerms/afset011462.html

Wikidata:

• Hatter, tanner (if I understand our use of limer), Minnesänger, blacksmith

I note that our field name is "Profession or function" and we've mixed occupations with functions related to the source(s) they are linked to. For example, Gioacchino Abbati is only known as a former owner in one manuscript but the value in 550 is "Possessor".

[alexandermarxen]

Just a few initial comments; I will look into this in more detail next week: The original idea behind the occupations at RISM was (in addition to better identification) to identify which aspects might be of interest to our users. For this reason, musical occupations are more differentiated (Soprano, Alto, etc. instead of Singer, if known).
In other cases, occupations have been combined: Hoforganist and Domorganist have all been categorised as Organist. In some cases, there are linguistic issues; for example, a Kapellmeister is not the same as a Maestro di cappella.

The distinction between occupation and function originates from Kallisto, where there were two different fields for this purpose. Function referred to the function in relation to a source. Therefore, Composer is duplicated in some of the data. The terms ‘Performer’ and especially ‘Other’ could be deleted.

Overall, I would very much welcome an adjustment to our vocabulary, but I would hope that the focus on music would not be lost in the process.

[ahankinson]

there would be advantages to linking to already-existing vocabularies

What are these advantages?

I think @alexandermarxen makes a good point -- I'm not sure "Maestro di capella" is in many of these sources, and many different musical occupations would be lumped into "musician" or "musicians". lcdgt seems to not even have an entry for "musician", and so the closest would be "Conductor (Music)".

Wikidata is probably the most likely source of "controlled" (I use that term loosely) vocabulary, since we can easily add one if one is not there. It does consider "Kapellmeister" and "Maestro di capella" as the same, though: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q215793

And "chapelmaster" Is not really the correct English term -- that seems to be a direct translation of the German. We tend to borrow the term used in the language, or call it "Master of the chapel" or "Master of music".

All that is to say that I'm not entirely convinced that a standard would be useful here, at least not without some form of free-text qualification.

[jenniferward]

Converting this to a discussion because I don't think this will be something we can take action on any time soon.