Shortly after Nomenclature 4.0 was released, a colleague of mine John Neill, Riley County Historical Museum contacted me through social media asking, “Not sure if I’m surprised or not- or disappointed or not- to not find ‘Koozie’ in Nomenclature 4.”
My first response was to suggest “Holder, Beverage” or “Holder, Insulated Beverage.” As I asked some follow-up questions about the specific item being cataloged, it was included with a free bottle of water. Since it was used to hold a bottle of water, this colleague also considered the option of using the term “Holder, Bottle.”
This comment prompted some research into some of the other terms associated with the term “koozie.” To my surprise there are several terms that can be used for this object. From “bawdle” to “bottle jacket” to “beer huggie,” regional terms abound! Among my personal new found favorite terms for this object includes “coastie” and “coldy-holdy,” yet I refer to this object and spell it as “coozy.”
So, let’s address the looming question of why “Koozie” is not the ideal term for this object?
Nomenclature provides a very practical framework for a museum’s controlled vocabulary. When considering an object term, it is vitally important that specific words pertaining to an object are excluded from the object term field. For example, if an object was a university purple polyester beverage holder with a zipper and designed for use at the beach; the words “polyester,” “zipper,” “purple” and “beach accessory” are all words that can be added to other fields such as description, materials and subjects. This is also holds true for excluding brand names from object terms. Likewise the specific “university” should be added in another field. Additionally, there is a large variation of the words used to identify this type of beverage holder. This is mainly due to regional language differences. (For more information on cataloging objects with regional names, see the following blog post: Regional Terminology ) By choosing terms such as “Holder, Beverage” or “Holder, Insulated Beverage” data retrieval can be more easily facilitated.
Often, this type of beverage holders is used for advertising purposes. So, don’t forget about using the word “Premium.” Some collections software, such as Past Perfect allow users to assign more than one term to an object.
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