[DCRM-L] [EXTERNAL] Silk bindings

[James,Kate]

Hi Andrea,

I don't know of a vocabulary that has "silk bindings", but you could use "silk" as a material term and do something like this:

340   $l Cloth bindings [or Publishers' cloth bindings, etc.] $2 rbmscv
340   $3 Binding: $a silk (textile) $2 aat

This does raise a good question about granularity of binding terms and faceting. RBMSCV has the term "Velvet bindings" so there is precedent for establishing binding terms that use a particular type of fabric for a cloth binding. Of course, velvet is a woven fabric that can be made from different fabrics, so velvet can be made from silk, cotton, wool, synthetics, etc. Similarly, the term "Lace bindings" is in RBMSCV and lace can be made from any type of thread. So, there is a difference between those two terms and Silk bindings as they refer to the processing of the textile not the fibers that comprise the textile. I could not find any binding terms in Getty AAT that use the type of fabric.

However, there is a lot of precedent in controlled vocabularies for leather bindings that specify the type of animal skin, e.g., "Kangaroo leather bindings" in RBMSCV. So, that seems to be analogous to binding terms that specify the type of fabric used.

Kate


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From: DCRM-L <dcrm-l-bounces at lib.byu.edu> On Behalf Of Cawelti, Andrea via DCRM-L
Sent: Wednesday, September 2, 2026 7:42 PM
To: DCRM Users' Group <dcrm-l at lib.byu.edu>
Cc: Cawelti, Andrea <cawelti at fas.harvard.edu>
Subject: [EXTERNAL] [DCRM-L] Silk bindings

Fellow catalogers, today I had occasion to catalog several 19th cen. souvenir programs, all of which were in lovely silk bindings. But I was surprised to discover that the genre term "Silk bindings" was not to be found. Is it simply that no one has proposed this, or is there something about this term that I am not aware of, which keeps it out of any thesaurus? Grateful for any commentary/suggestions,
Andrea

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(Ms.) Andrea Cawelti
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