--- title: Subjects, Concepts, and Authorities description: Describe what an artifact is and what it's about using role-typed concepts linked to controlled vocabularies like the Library of Congress, Getty, and Nomenclature. section: guides order: 5 updated: 2026-06-18 verified: 2026-06-18 related: [guides/working-with-artifacts, guides/ai-analysis, reference/authorities, legal] features: [concepts-and-authorities, artifact-metadata] --- # Subjects, Concepts, and Authorities You'll learn how to say what an artifact *is*, what it's *about*, and what it's *made of* in a way that browsing, search, and other institutions can all rely on. A single topical-tags field can't tell the difference between "this is a **photograph**", "this depicts **logging**", and "this is made of **albumen**". Preservated keeps those apart as **concepts** — each term carries a **role** (what the term is doing) and, when you want it, a link to a published **authority** (which vocabulary the term comes from). ## Roles: every term has a job When you edit an artifact, the descriptive vocabulary is grouped into role sections rather than one flat "subjects" box: - **Object name** — what the thing is, in your cataloging tradition ("photograph", "ledger", "quilt"). One term is the primary name. - **Object type / Classification** — broader groupings above the object name. - **Subjects** — what the artifact is *about* or *of*: themes, activities, depicted topics ("schools", "shipbuilding", "parades"). - **Genre / form** — what it *is* as a format ("postcards", "documentary photographs"). - **Materials / Techniques** — physical make-up and how it was made ("gelatin silver print", "hand-coloring"). - **Culture / Style or period** — cultural origin or stylistic era. - **Event** — a named happening the artifact relates to ("Great Fire of 1889"). - **Function** — the original use. - **Tags** — free local keywords and AI-suggested tags, with no authority control. Each section only appears on the public page when it has terms, so a sparse record stays clean. ## Concept links: a term plus its source A concept can be just a label, or a label backed by an authority. When it's backed, Preservated stores four things together: - the **label** you display, - the **role** it plays, - the **scheme** (which authority — for example LCSH or Getty AAT), and - the **URI** (the term's stable address in that authority). That bundle is a **concept link**. The URI is what lets two institutions agree that they mean the same "Bridges (Structures)" even if they spell it differently, and it's what travels in data exports and IIIF manifests. :::info Storing the scheme and URI with each term — not just the word — is the museum-cataloging standard (CCO). It's what separates a casual keyword from authority control. ::: ## Local terms are first-class You never have to find an authority match. Every role has a **"use as local term"** action: type your word, choose it, and it's saved as a local concept with no URI. Local terms are expected, not a fallback to apologize for — neighborhood names, donor categories, and community-specific object names often have no published heading. Preservated also autocompletes against the local terms your institution has already used, so "pipeline" surfaces a "2001 Pipeline Explosion" you typed last month and your vocabulary stays consistent. ## Linking to an authority In each role section, start typing in the authority box. Preservated searches the vocabularies that fit that role — object names search Nomenclature and Getty AAT; subjects search LCSH, the Thesaurus for Graphic Materials, and others; places search GeoNames and the Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names. Results are grouped by source with a colored badge. Pick one and the label, scheme, and URI are filled in for you. Which vocabularies a role offers, and in what order, follows your institution's cataloging profile (an art museum leads with Getty AAT for object names; a history museum leads with Nomenclature). For what each source is and when to reach for it, see [Authorities and Controlled Vocabularies](/docs/en-US/reference/authorities). ## How AI fills these in [AI analysis](/docs/en-US/guides/ai-analysis) proposes concepts role by role, and it reconciles each suggested label against the right authority **before** it reaches you — so a matched object name, genre, or material arrives already linked to its URI. The model never invents a URI: a label that doesn't resolve to a real heading is kept as a high-confidence local term or dropped, never given a fabricated authority link. As always, AI suggestions are reviewable and only enter the curated record when accepted or auto-applied into an empty slot. See [AI Tools and Provenance](/docs/en-US/guides/ai-tools-and-provenance) for how that review works. ## Crediting the vocabularies you use Some authorities require attribution when you use their terms (Getty and GeoNames, for example); others don't (Library of Congress, Wikidata). These licenses are satisfied by a general acknowledgements page — you don't credit each record individually. Preservated generates the right credit line from the authorities you actually use, so an institution that never uses Getty terms shows no Getty credit. You don't maintain this by hand. For the full list and the wording, see [Licenses and Attributions](/docs/en-US/legal). ## Places and people are separate Locations live in the **Places** list (with map coordinates) and creators/depicted individuals live in **Creators** and **People**, not in concepts — see [Working with Artifacts](/docs/en-US/guides/working-with-artifacts). They draw on some of the same authorities (GeoNames and Getty TGN for places; the Library of Congress Name Authority and Getty ULAN for people), which is why those vocabularies appear in the authority reference too.