Item Types
Finding the Celtic contains information about resources related to Celtic Studies that exist on other websites on the internet. It functions like a sophisticated index, allowing you to browse through items, search for items (by settting constraints), collect items, visualize the geographical location of items, and so on.
Finding the Celtic has classified all entries into several different kinds of items (the types facet in the browser):
- Activity: Processes, activities, tasks, customs, etc
- Architecture: Buildings, forts, roads, other immovable man-made structures
- Artifact: A physical object, usually kept in a museum
- Audio: An audio recording
- Definition: The definition of a word or concept, a narrative type, or a biographical profile
- Event: The definition of an historical event or time period
- Manuscript: Image(s) of manuscript folios
- Map: Image(s) of map(s)
- Site: A location of importance (whether related to an event or archaeological site)
- Text: An individual poem, tale, article, commentary, etc
The other labels in the browser (times, places, stuff and language) refer to other attributes (or "facets") of these objects. By setting a constraint based on facet values, you restrict the items shown in the browser to those that match the constraint condition.
Considerations for Textual Narrative
Items that relate to narrative texts are somewhat more complex than other item types. This is because a single narrative archetype (such as the Táin Bó Cualgne) can produce a series of different versions over a long time span; editors in the modern period can create their own editions of any of the texts written in old manuscripts; translators can produce their own interpretations of texts based on any combinations of previous editions.
FtC accounts for the complexities of the textual history of narrative by recognizing each of these as individual items and recommending the following usages:
- If an entry exists for the original manuscript, it should have its own Manuscript item, which allows the user to view the scanned images of the manuscript and determine the date range of its creation, etc.
- The tale "archetype" has its own Definition item, which can define when and where the original form of the tale was created.
- Each individual edition of the tale should have its own Text entry with facet values reflecting the editor of the edition, the date of its publication, etc.
- Each translation of the tale should have its own Text entry with facet values reflecting the editor of the edition, the date of its publication, etc.
There are several items related to the history of the Táin Bó Cualgne in the FtC database which illustrate this usage.
For more details on facet definitions and values, see the Metadata Schema or Contributor Guidelines webpages.
For information about the FtC user interface, see the How to Use webpage.