I’m a U.S. immigrant – legal I might add. Currently I’m a permanent resident and if my wife has her way I’ll be a citizen in the not-too-distant future. My mum has a different opinion, something about “over her dead body”. Although there is a distinct twang to it, I think I still have a British accent, but most people think I’m Australian. For the record I’m British, raised on Beer and Chips (the French Fries kind). Its not clear whether people think I’m Australian because of my hybrid accent, or because they’re confusing me with our Australian Director – well, that shouldn’t happen anymore . Our acting director is British and he decidedly has no twang. We’re both trying to promote a rigorous application of the Queen’s English.

I lost the accent battle with my two girls long ago: I say “tomarto”, you say “tomaydo”, etc, etc. They also say “like” way too “offen” and they say “way” way too “offen”. Totally. I live too close to The Valley to fight that battle. My attempts to sustain the Queen’s English in the Honeysett household fail miserably, although they both do an exceptional impression of Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins – “Gor blimey ‘guv, you’re a toff and make no mistake”. As digital natives, they have no digital accent but they’re no longer as cute as this digital native: Abbey. They were fascinated to learn where the word “dial” comes from, as in “dial this number” – the acid test for a digital native and I’m pleased to report that they are fluent in vinyl and turntables.

Despite my youthful looks, I don’t qualify for digital native status. I like to think I have no digital accent, although keeping up with my girls is increasingly a challenge. They’re constantly txting, yes they have phone, and with my mum which is astounding if you knew my mum – she is most assuredly a digital immigrant, to the extent of being a digital tourist (thanks Titus – love this phrase). On the txting front, I need help translating.

As the modern-day equivalent of the jive xnsl8r there’s an app for that (http://www.lingo2word.com/translate.php) which takes your compressed txt msgs and xpndz thm to smtng u cn undstnd.

It occurred to me that we have something similar for our website search. Its an assisted search that uses a controlled vocabulary of artist names’ to help you find what you’re looking for, if you happen to be searching by artist name. We refer to the process as a query expansion. This name is a classic example of the technology influencing the name, because really its performing a query refinement, in that its helping you refine your search. But the background process involves polling the vocabulary app and returning with a larger data set, thus the search query has been “expanded”.

Brueghel is a standing example that we use. Did you mean…? I need txt expansion on my Crackberry, so that I can actually read what my grlz are txting me but more importantly understanding those endless txts that each of them get from their bff’s. r they boyz?

You might be aware that the Getty is in the business of controlled vocabularies and so when it comes to people, places or things in the art world, there’s an app for that. Respectively: ULAN (Union List of Artist Names), TGN (Thesaurus of Geographic Names) and AAT (Art and Architecture Thesaurus).

There is a new kid coming to the vocabulary block, CONA (Cultural Objects Name Authority) currently under development and hopefully debuting next year. (If you search for CONA with our vocabulary-assisted search it matches Coene, Jacques – Cona is a legitimate variant name). When it debuts, CONA will:

…include authority records for cultural works, including architecture and movable works such as paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, manuscripts, photographs, ceramics, textiles, furniture, and other visual media such as frescoes and architectural sculpture, performance art, archaeological artifacts, and various functional objects that are from the realm of material culture and of the type collected by museums.

If you’re really interested, there are plenty of training materials and resources on the Research Institute’s website in the use of standards, metadata, and controlled vocabularies. With a brand spanking-new publication on controlled vocabularies coming out shortly.

As we move towards a semantic and location-sensitive web, its resources like these vocabularies that will assist in contextualising information, albeit in the world of art history.