Re: Archive Collection and Archived Item

Hi Jane,

I would stick to the definition of ArchiveCollection, which is "A 
collection and/or archive of physical or digital items." 
(http://archive.sdo-archive.appspot.com/ArchiveCollection).

The Archival Extension doesn't define what an archive is (as a set of 
objects--an archive is either an institution or an organization, 
according to the definition of Archive). However, it is quite clear that 
the definition of ArchiveCollection intends to cover any aggregation of 
items, that is, the term 'archive' in the definition is used in a very 
generic sense. Therefore, a fonds, a series, a subseries, a collection, 
a set of sparsed objects may all be subsumed under ArchiveCollection 
according to the its definition.

Using a single class to identify any type of aggregations (including no 
aggregation at all) is consistent with the most relevant archival 
standards: ISAD uses "Unit of description" and EAD uses "Component". 
Recently, ICA proposed a draft model (RiC) where they identified two 
classes, Record and RecordSet (along with RecordComponent), which is a 
bit different from the other models, yet is based on a single class 
identifying any aggregation--that is, no need for fonds, series, etc.
We can discuss whether we need to distinguish between the single item 
and its aggregations, or it is better to just stick to a simpler model, 
ie "Component" like in EAD. However, going to your questions, I don't 
see any problem in considering both your examples as being instantiated 
under ArchiveCollection. The same for the properties.

I don't understand very well why ArchiveCollection is a sub-class of 
ArchivedItem in the Extension, so I share your doubts.

As I wrote in some earlier message, I have many doubts about this model. 
For this reason, I started investigating it further with some colleagues 
of InterPARES Trust, in order to provide some systematic comments on the 
Archival Extension. My aim is to share the comments in a month.

Regards

Giovanni



Il 11/04/2017 11:16, Jane Stevenson ha scritto:
> Hi there,
> 
> I had a huge email written as I was working this out, but I’ve tried my best to distill it down to one essential question…..
> 
> There is a type ‘ArchiveCollection', which has ’super types’ of CreativeWork’ and ‘ArchivedItem’ with properties we can use to describe our thing(s).
> 
> To take an example, let’s say I wanted to have schema.org markup attached to:
> 
> A collection or ‘top level’ description: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb2607-ec/1-12
> 
> A lower level description: https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb2607-ec/1-12/ec/7
> 
> All I know about these are that one is ‘top level’ so that there are no parent levels above it, but there may be child levels. The other is lower level, so it has at least one parent level.
> 
> Can I just treat the lower level ’thing(s)' as type=ArchiveCollection? So, I can I use the properties from CreativeWork and ArchivedItem for both the top level and lower level group of stuff?
> 
> I don’t want to distinguish between collection and item actually within the archive; I just want to apply schema.org markup using the appropriate types and associated properties.
> 
> Richard defined Collection:
> 
> “ArchiveCollection: The collection/grouping/assemblage of archived items. Descriptive properties reference the collection as a whole.”
> 
> I want to separate this out from what archivist thing of as an archive collection, and treat it simply as a ‘group of things’ or even just one thing if that represents a stand-alone collection. Is this correct?
> 
> The archive.schema.org defines ‘ArchivedItem’ as ‘an item in an archive collection’. But I thought it was a ‘type' that is applied to ArchiveCollection? I didn’t think it actually related to ‘item’ meaning a single thing.
> 
> I think there is some confusion in the documentation between the term ‘ArchivedItem’, which I understand to be a type that can be applied to an ArchiveCollection, with properties of ‘archive-ness’,  and an actual item in a collection (and we don’t usually describe single items anyway). It maybe doesn’t help that the properties within ArchivedItem are ‘item’ - e.g. itemDescription, itemLocation, itemProvenance. Can I see them as archiveunitDescription, archiveunitLocation, archiveunitProvenance.
> 
> NB - that’s why in EAD we use ‘unit’ and not anything like ‘item’  - because we can only know that it is a unit within a whole.
> 
> cheers
> Jane
> 
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Received on Tuesday, 11 April 2017 12:04:42 UTC