How to describe things in an archive collection?

In other threads we have been discussing how to describe an Archive as an
Organization/LocalBusiness
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-architypes/2015Jul/0002.html>
when appropriate, and how to describe an ArchiveCollection
<http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-architypes/2015Jul/0008.html>.
Now I think it is time to add one more area to our attention - how to
describe the physical/digital things that we find within an archive
collection.

In archives we find all types of things from creative works such as books,
letters, artworks, videos, web pages etc., to furniture, personal items,
vehicles, fossils, rocks and of course the favourite box of things yet to
be identified.  From what I understand there are certain common categories
of things such as physical creative works, digital creative works, physical
containers of things identified or not, but it would be far too limiting to
build our recommendations around these.  The result is that we need to be
able to describe anything that could be found in an archive which means
*anything!*.

Fortunately in our world all these things have one aspect in common - they
are in an archive.

If we can establish a set of descriptive properties that would be of use in
describing an item's place and role in an archive, we can then look to
some, schema.org, techniques to apply them alongside other properties that
are already available in the Schema vocabulary.

Properties that come to mind include:

isPartOf - a reference to the collection a thing is in
condition - state of preservation of an item
containedIn - the box or digital file containing the item
curatedBy
curationDate
CurationEvent - possibly a better way to describe a curation event -
linking where when and by who
location - of item, not necessarily the collection location


We could look to already existent standards, CIDOC-CRM for example, as a
source of inspiration.

So, over to you for suggestions.  Once we have assemble a few by email
discussion, we can create a page in the Wiki to capture them and become the
basis for the core of our proposals.

~Richard.


Richard Wallis
Founder, Data Liberate
http://dataliberate.com
Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
Twitter: @rjw