Re: Archive as a collection of things

Hello Richard and all,

Two properties stick out to me that are not covered as far as I can tell in
the generic Collection schema:

1. Holding archives/institution: because archives are unique, it's
important to record the institution that holds the collection.

Related to this point:

2. Custodial history, or the archival history of the collection before and
during its custody in an institution. This is important to record for
making presumptions of authenticity and understanding the limits to what
the collection contains (e.g., half of it was lost in a fire, etc)

Giovanni touched on this in the other thread covering items in collections.

Re: CreativeWork: in addition to the examples that you raise Richard, there
is a lot of content in archival collections which many would argue isn't
"creative" in nature, such as data, governmental documents, etc. I would be
glad to see us expand the hasPart idea beyond the scope of CreativeWork.

Cheers,

Sarah



Sarah Romkey, MAS,MLIS
Systems Archivist
Artefactual Systems <http://artefactual.com>
604-527-2056
@archivematica <http://www.twitter.com/archivematica> / @accesstomemory
<http://www.twitter.com/accesstomemory>



On Wed, Jul 29, 2015 at 11:55 AM, Richard Wallis <
richard.wallis@dataliberate.com> wrote:

> Separate from the recent Proposal for an 'Archive' Type
> <http://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/public-architypes/2015Jul/0002.html>
> thread which discusses describing an organization that has archive(s), I
> think we can now embark on how we describe an archive as in a collection of
> things.  (How we describe those things that are in such a collection can
> then come next)
>
> On the wiki <https://www.w3.org/community/architypes/wiki/Main_Page> I
> raised the question: Is the Collection proposal* for bib.schema.org
> <http://bib.schema.org> sufficient, or do we need a subtype for an
> ArchiveCollection? * The result of the Collection proposal can be viewed
> in a prerelease version on a schema.org test site
> bib.webschemas.org/Collection.  There is a simple example on that page
> showing the how you could describe the Collection and a few things within
> it.
>
> To answer my own question, I feel that there would be merit in proposing a
> subtype of Collection with a name something like ArchiveCollection.  It
> would identify the collection being described as being of an archive nature
> (*whatever that might mean*).  It would also provide somewhere to add
> archive specific properties without polluting the generic Collection Type.
>
> Having said that the properties that Collection, inherits from
> CreativeWork and Thing, provides most of what we will need, such as:
>
>    - Name - name of archive collection
>    - url - of web page/site for archive collection
>    - description
>    - dateCreated, dateModified, datePublished
>    - creator, editor, contributor
>    - about - generically used in Schema to describe subject information
>    from topics to persons, organizations, or events etc.
>    - isPartOf - the collection, of collections, that an archive
>    collection might be part of.
>    - hasPart - something that is in the archive collection.
>
> hasPart currently has a range restricted to CreativeWork.  As archives can
> contain things that are not, in Schema.org's understanding of,
> CreativeWorks (airplanes, fossils, locks of hair, hats, etc.)  we will need
> to propose that the range of the hasPart property be expanded to include
> all things that can be found in an archive.
>
> OK, I've gone on enough.  What are others ideas on this - is this a good
> approach? - is ArchiveCollection a good name? - what other properties
> might need adding to what we get by sub typing Collection?
>
> ~Richard.
>
>
> Richard Wallis
> Founder, Data Liberate
> http://dataliberate.com
> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/richardwallis
> Twitter: @rjw
>