Tag Along with Adler

As museums add collections online, the language that describes the objects - known as metadata - affects how people find and search for these objects. Cataloguers and museum staff create metadata based on standards and rules. This means access is often limited to only those who understand the style used.

In order to make objects easier to find by anyone, the Adler invites museum users and guests to help create metadata by creating terms and phrases known as tags. As you add your own tags, you get to see objects that have never been in exhibitions before! The Adler can then take these tags and add them to our online records, adding a vocabulary of our users and hopefully making online searches easier for everyone.

As the Adler Planetarium looks to enrich our collections metadata, we ask you to join us and make your voice heard. When you search the web, your ability to find what you are looking for is based on matching the language used on websites. We need your help to ensure we have as many tags/terms as possible to match more people.

Help the Adler improve access to our collections by tagging images with the words you would use to search for these images. There is no single right answer. You do not need to know what a certain thing is, or who a certain person is. We want to know how you would describe what you are looking at to a friend, or how you would describe an image to find it again later. That’s your language, and we want to include it!

As you “Tag Images”, you will discover new pieces of art from the Adler's rare book, archival photograph, and works on paper collections while adding your language into the Adler’s metadata. “Verify AI Tags” will introduce you to Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning tagging models. These are computer programs trained to tag images based on terms they learn from museum cataloguers. As you learn more, you will be able to examine the positives and negatives of this emerging technology. Join us and take up the power to tag and to find.