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Form or Medium

Form or Medium

Oct 09, 2020

Abstract

Repeatable Multilingual

MODS Element name: <physicalDescription><form>

Short definition: A designation of a particular physical presentation of a resource, including the physical form or medium of material for a resource.

Input guidelines: Characterize the form of the digitized or analog original using terms describing the material, support, or technique. Use authority control, e.g. AAT, TGM, LCGFT or locally controlled vocabularies. This field/element set is not used to describe the content of a resource. Use the Genre and/or Type of Resource elements to describe the content of the resource. If you do not use a controlled vocabulary, check the Type facet on the Collections portal to avoid spelling variants for uncontrolled terms.

Definition

A designation of a particular physical presentation of a resource, including the physical form or medium of material for a resource.

DAMS input form fields

Form(s)/Medium(s)

DAMS form field name

form field type

required

MODS element

Collections Portal display

notes

Form/Medium Term

text field

no

physicalDescription/form

Type*

The values entered as Form/Medium terms are merged with metadata values for Genre and Type of Resource for display on the Collections portal.

 

 

If you do not use a controlled vocabulary, check the Type facet on the Collections portal to avoid spelling variants for uncontrolled terms.

 

 

 

(F/M Term) Authority

dropdown selection

  • (empty/none)

  • aat

  • gmgpc

  • lcgft

  • local

no

physicalDescription/form[@authority]

(attribute of form)

N/A

(F/M Term) Authority URI

text field

see note

physicalDescription/form[@authorityURI]

(attribute of form)

N/A

If you selected "aat", "gmgpc" or "lcgft" in the Authority form field, leave the field blank. The DAMS will automatically add URIs for these authority files.

Language of Form/Medium Term

text field

no

physicalDescription/form[@lang]

(attribute of form)

N/A

MODS Element description

Element <physicalDescription>

http://www.loc.gov/standards/mods/userguide/physicaldescription.html

Guidelines for use

<physicalDescription> is a container element that contains all subelements relating to physical description information of the resource. Data is input only within each subelement.

Attributes

Currently no attributes for <physicalDescription> are implemented in the DAMS.

Subelements

The following subelements of name are used in the DAMS:

  • form

  • (extent)

  • (internetMediaType)

Subelement <physicalDescription><form>

Guidelines for use

Characterize the form of the digitized or analog original using terms describing the material, support, or technique. Use authority control AAT, TGM, LCGFT or locally controlled vocabularies. This field/element set is not used to describe the content of a resource. Use the Genre and/or Type of Resource elements to describe the content of the resource. If you do not use a controlled vocabulary, check the Type facet on the Collections portal to avoid spelling variants for uncontrolled terms.

Attributes

Attribute name

Details

XPath syntax examples

authority

values:

  • aat

  • gmgpc

  • lcgft

  • local

physicalDescription/form[@authority="aat"]

authorityURI

values:

physicalDescription/form[@authorityURI="http://id.loc.gov/authorities/genreForms"]

lang

values:

physicalDescription/form[@lang="eng"]

Subelements