Posters and their descriptive data

Abstract

The number of electronic archives holding image documentstoo in addition to traditional, textual materials is increasing. Posters belong to this category ofvisual works of art and are present as special documents in various public collections. As it israther difficult to use poster collections, it would be reasonable to digitise as many posters aspossible. For the use of digitised collections adequate descriptive data are indispensable. Themetadata schemes to be applied may become an efficient tool for research. Therefore, whendefining the requirements of a metadata system for describing graphic posters it should beconsidered that posters represent a special type of material, and that they may be describedboth as library materials and as visual materials to be most frequently found in museums. Theessay describes the main characteristics of posters, summarises the difficulties in theirtechnical processing, and lists the potential data elements for their cataloguing.