city guidebooks  

Content gets structured on the basis of earmarked frameworks in knowledge construction. Database is a result of defining parameters extracted & tabulated from object contents placed or found in an information set. A group of similar objects or items brought together to an identified container is called a collection. As an act the collection is a sporadic exercise and to state a method would be on basis of sources from where objects of the sets are acquired from. A collection may or may not contain objects of similar characteristics but posses a related ideology towards common relational assemblage. In these cases objectives of gathering are conditions of bringing unrelated things to an identified relational state. The goals of this collection have been to assemble a list of information sources popular in organising and disseminating cultural data.

Culture is an elusive term having myriad connotations to its description as such. To layout in part a guideline for an explanation this collection is brought together. The urban guide has been in general the first benchmark to state ideas of a culture of a space. Though of a specific type here culture gets compiled on the foundation of things in the city where one can mostly play or in other terms most parts find entertainment. The purpose of the guide is to introduce and then direct the individual consulting it. A city guide is document containing points of interest positioned either in the city delineation or in close proximity to the same. In displaying these collected situations of interest, the city guide becomes the introduction to the city and its neighbouring contexts. Guides, those commonly available concentrate on aspects of culture in the city. Most cases guides present a definition of the cities cultural geography. With each variant of the guidebook there is a reproduction of the notion of what the city can take form into based on what are viewpoints made available within an identified document narrative. A city guide enables the recreation of the city.

This stance made available by the document makes it a tool to begin investigation of the city. Pursuits of compilation began with the subscription of Timeout Mumbai around and about 2011-’12. Visits to newspaper stalls, thrift shops and bookstores further adds in the process where found are items which claim or considered as city guides. A result of these visits is the collection. The material assembled was/is data towards a study in mapping urban cultural centres. This method of amassing guide books presented a space between interviews and literature studies. Though popular neighbourhoods of city are common and get repetitive, the repetition concentrates and present place details to be brought under consideration. On the collection it could be stated that it locates itself to a contemporary document set thus resulting in knowledge base of a contemporary nature _ A collection of popular city guides. Time of publication on most documents would range from the late 1990’s to the present up until 2011. There has been a persistence to cover most sources available locally. Hence anything beyond local purchase has been overlooked. Independent and private publishing that don’t sell in public access locales too hasn’t been considered.

The limitation of the collection is of its sources of acquisition. Restriction to the identified places of transaction is then the result of the form and the items presented as part of the collection. With any systematic content volumes come patterns of organisation. The categories of sorting the various objects are to be considered as loosely undertaken. In this case formats/ content structure of the available documents have been considered. If dismantled various other possibilities in categorisation be made viable based on parameters allocated. This collection is largely to be considered as closed. That is limited to the time of the collection exercise. To add to this should be the preview to whoever it could be transferred to. Ideally contextualising the collection by looking at guides published earlier to the era or continues the contemporary position by following similar methods of acquisition. As there is no obsession to the volume or the costs of the collection neither of the two has been tabulated.

One could argue that this collection isn’t particularly a classical collection but more of a hybrid list. The reason for that being all objects in the set isn’t necessarily available at hand but readily accessible. Some are static and other evolve or could disappear in time. Particularly is the case of online sources and guided tours where guide as a collectible is definitely brought to question. To make up for the inconsistencies of sorts rather than just the physical documentation here in this document the found structure in each of the list items are also displayed. Contents, indexes, legends and page navigation patterns are given in correspondence with each of items. The given structure then could be compared within the each other giving a criterion towards material available each of the sources instead of just the form of the object which is commonly of preview in any catalog of collection. Most descriptions are sourced from the respective locations otherwise where noted. Foundational data is what this or the compilation can be from which one tries to solve the objectives of research.