The Getty’s CDWA “Categories for the description of works of art” has been in existence for quite a while, as have been the VRA (Visual Resources Association) Core Categories. Though
wide-spread and used by many Anglo-American museums in one way or another (as reference in full or in part) a need has been felt for an integra-tion of the rule sets and for their application in the broader community, as a cooperative product and on a network basis. Therefore, Cataloguing Cultural Objects: A Guide to Describing Cultural Works and their Images (CCO) has been in development since 2001: Part 1 (General Guidelines); Part II (Elements); and Part III (Authorities) (http://vraweb.org/CCOweb/index.html). It is a manual for describing, documenting, and cataloguing cultural works and images of them, their visual surrogates, and consists of 9 chapters. The CCO project team consisted, i.e. of members of the Visual Resources Association (VRA) and the Getty Research Institute, with an Advisory board
of experts from the museum, library, and archives communities. The CCO comprises a subset of elements from the Categories for the Description of Works of Art (CDWA). CCO will be published as
a print publication by the American Library Association end of 2005.
As a subset and a guideline to satisfy minimum requirements, “CCO Lite” has been developed, with 19 elements (8 of them mandatory) for minimum cataloguing of cultural objects. An XML schema to describe core records for works of art and material culture based on CCO is under development. Such records are intended for contribution to union catalogues and other repositories using the Open Archives Initiative (OAI) harvesting protocol. Mapping to some
other electronic cataloguing formats has also been undertaken, others are in progress
