Description and classification records for information objects are created in many languages. This website describes a single object in variety of these languages.

Descriptive languages describe an information object without regard to the content within. For instance, a book can be described with author, title, publisher, and size regardless of subject matter. The descriptive languages used on this project include: Encoded Archive Description (EAD), EAD translated to an HTML finding aid, Dublin Core (DC), Anglo-American Cataloguing Rules, 2nd ed. (AACR2), and my own creation, Ackerman Descriptive Language (ADL).

Classification languages describe an information object with subject headings, terms, phrases, or keywords that characterize the contents of the object. The classification records created for this project include follow these standards: Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC), Library of Congress Classification (LCC), Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH), and Art & Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).

The object being described is a publication in thirty parts written by N.P. Willis and illustrated by W.H. Bartlett. It was printed serially from 1837 to 1839 in London. In 1840, at the end of the run, the publisher offered to bind the set of thirty into two volumes for an additional fee. To that end, a frontispiece, two title pages, and two tables of contents were included in Part 30. Most cultural repositories hold the two volume 1840 publication; the work in its unbound state is scarcer.