Open and Closed vocabularies

In RIMMF, there are two types of vocabularies:

• Open–you may add your own terms to this type of vocabulary
• Closed–you may not add terms to this type of vocabulary

A vocabulary may be defined as open or closed on the main page of the vocabulary editor by checking (or un-checking) the 'Open vocabulary' option:

In the default distribution of RIMMF, therre are very few 'closed' vocabs, and 'Carrier Type' is one of them.

The complete list of vocabularies that are set to 'closed' in RIMMF, based on guidance from LC, are:

• RDA Carrier type
• RDA Content type
• RDA Groups of Instruments
• RDA Instrumental Music for Orchestra, String Orchestra, or Band
• RDA Media type
• RDA Mode of Issuance
• RDA Status of Identification

You may open the vocabulary editor and change a vocabulary from open to closed, or closed to open, as needed.

The implementation of this option occurs when you are editing records.

When an element being editied is linked to a vocabulary, the default action of RIMMF is to display a drop-down arrow on the right-hand side of the Text column–

–and when you click on that arrow, the list of vocabulary terms appears and you may select an appropriate term:

Alternately, if you know the term you want to use, you may ignore the drop-down arrow and simply begin typing it, and the term will be selected in the list automatically as soon as your typing uniquely identifies the term (this feature is referred to as 'incremental search', or sometimes–perhaps incorrectly–as 'typeahead').

For example, typing 'sp' in the text box for Content Type immediately jumps to the term 'spoken word', as this is the only possible match for 'sp'.

In a closed vocabulary, no matter what you type after 'sp', the program will not change its selection of 'spoken word'.

However, in an open vocabulary, if you type letters that do not match anything in the associated list, the program will accept them as valid,

and when you close the list (either by tabbing out of the cell or clicking on another cell), a pop-up editor appears which essentially asks you to confirm whether you want to add the value typed to the list of terms for the associated vocabulary:

If you Cancel this pop-up, then the term is not added to the vocabulary, and it will be highlighted in 'red' by RIMMF as a visual cue that it is not a valid term:

On the other hand, if you accept the entry as a new vocab term by pressing the 'Add' button, you will be greeted with a confirmation message, and the term will be added to RIMMF as a 'user vocabulary term'.

Thus, any time you edit this element in the future, the term that was added in the screenshot above, will now appear in the dropdown list:

In this example, the term is added to the end of the list. However, you can access this term immediately using increment search by typing 'F'.

In addition, if you want these terms to appear in sorted order, you might enter the vocabulary editor, and change the 'Display options' setting from 'Do not modify order or case' to 'Sort terms without normalising':

This page illustrates the implementation of open and closed vocabularies in RIMMF.

If you have used the program a bit, you may be able to see that open vocabularies–when combined with the fact that RIMMF makes it possible for you to:

• create your own vocabularies,
• add your own terms to a vocabulary, and to
• link a vocabulary to any element

–may be the beginning of a very nice feature for the cataloger …