Re: Tweaks to the Archives proposal [via Schema Architypes Community Group]

Thanks Jane for your insight into the issues surrounding this within
Archives Hub.  As effectively an aggregator of archives this provides a
test of the model at one end of the spectrum of use cases we are looking to
satisfy.

As you say, from the information you are provided with you may not know if
something being described is a collection or a single item.  Also it is
unlikely that you would know if a single item is located with the rest of
the collection or not.

Those responsible for other individual archives may well be very clear on
these things for their collections.  Hopefully we are in a position to
satisfy the broad spectrum of use cases with this proposal.

As to your A/B decision, I can only suggest from a non archivist point of
view, but if something has already been identified in someway as an item or
piece, it would be worth reflecting that in the description shared with the
web (using the ArchiveItem type), then defaulting, in your case, to
ArchiveCollection where this is not known.

If there are no further discussion points from the group, I intend in the
next couple of weeks to forward this proposal to the Schema.org group for
consideration.

*A minor syntax point*:  The convention within Schema.org is for the names
of Types to begin with an uppercase letter (Archive, ArchiveCollection,
ArchiveItem)  and properties with a lowercase (ItemLocation,
holdingArchive, accessConditions, etc.).   I know we are only in discussion
mode, but looking back on this documentation it can be confusing for some
if we don’t follow these conventions here as well as in the type
definitions etc.

~Richard.





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

On 12 July 2017 at 09:36, Jane Stevenson <Jane.Stevenson@jisc.ac.uk> wrote:

> Hi Richard,
>
> > It would work to describe a collection of one or more things. However,
> if you have a known physical item (book, article, photograph, etc) or file
> (video, audio, image, web page, etc.) why would you not describe it as such?
>
> This is the nub of the matter….it is because we won’t always know. We can
> definitely decide that if the level is described as “item” we apply the
> archiveItem type. But (1) levels are not always given values - although on
> the Hub we do ask for this, but in general, within EAD, values are not
> mandatory (2) You can have a level that is a sub-series, or a folder or a
> file that is effectively one physical item, but the level value does not
> identify this. Archivists will describe ‘one folder’ but it may have one
> item in it.  Is something described as ‘one folder’ an item? Should ‘one
> box’ always be treated as a collection of items, although it may only have
> one item in it , e.g. an account book is a sub-series in one box.
>
> It is maybe possible for an individual repository to sort out single item
> descriptions  from ‘more than one item’ descriptions, but its not possible
> for us to do that in an automated way across all our data. People aren’t
> consistent enough with cataloguing for that, and to be fair, the standards
> have never emphasised the importance of distinguishing one physical item in
> this way.
>
> > This comes back to describing information about an individual item.
> Potentially the ArchiveCollection the item is part of could be held by an
> organisation (Archive), yet an individual item could be located, on
> extended loan for example, at a different location.
>
>
> OK. I get the logic. It is just quite rare for that to happen, unlike
> museums. And if it was temporarily elsewhere, we wouldn’t know. Something
> on loan would not be flagged as such in the description. But that’s OK - we
> would always just use the repository as the holding institution, so
> itemLocation, if we use it, would always have the same value as
> holdingArchive. If an item was on loan it simply wouldn’t show up in our
> schema.org data.  I don’t think that matters. As you say, its optional
> anyway.
>
> I think we’re ready to go now. I just have to decide on either
>
> A. Always use archiveCollection, including for items, because we can’t
> distinguish all items anyway
> B. use archiveItem where we have a level value of “item” or “piece”, which
> will give us a majority of items (my estimate is that we would get
> something like 70% of single entities this way), but it will be the case
> that a fair number of items won’t be described as items because they don’t
> have that level value, even if they are single physical entities, so they
> will be single physical items but described as type archiveCollection.
>
> cheers,
> Jane.
>
>
> Jane Stevenson
> Archives Hub Service Manager
> jane.stevenson@jisc.ac.uk
> (Work days: Monday to Thursday)
>
> Tel: 0161 413 7555
> Web: archiveshub.jisc ac.uk
> Skype:  janestevenson
> Twitter: @archiveshub, @janestevenson
>
>
>
> > On 11 Jul 2017, at 17:26, Richard Wallis <richard.wallis@dataliberate.
> com> wrote:
> >
> > Hi Jane,
> >
> > Sorry for being slow in responding.
> >
> > Answers inline.
> >
> > ~Richard.
> >
> >
> > On 3 July 2017 at 07:48, Jane Stevenson <Jane.Stevenson@jisc.ac.uk>
> wrote:
> > Hi Richard and everyone,
> >
> > If I decided to only use #archiveCollection for all of the units of
> description, would that work?  We don’t necessarily know if units described
> are single items or more than one item anyway, and it seems to me we can
> effectively describe each unit with the properties now provided, which is
> the main thing. So my question is, why would I need to use #archiveItem?
> >
> > It would work to describe a collection of one or more things. However,
> if you have a known physical item (book, article, photograph, etc) or file
> (video, audio, image, web page, etc.) why would you not describe it as such?
> >
> >
> > Just one more question…. we have properties archiveHeld and
> holdingArchive, and we also have itemLocation. How is itemLocation
> different from holdingArchive? In the example, for Ronnie Barker,
> itemLocation is given as the V&A Theatre & Performance Archive (URL). But
> surely the property of holdingArchive would do just as well.
> >
> > This comes back to describing information about an individual item.
> Potentially the ArchiveCollection the item is part of could be held by an
> organisation (Archive), yet an individual item could be located, on
> extended loan for example, at a different location.
> >
> > All properties within Schema.org are optional, so you probably would
> only provide an itemLocation when an item is located separate from the
> holdingArchive of the ArchiveCollection of which it is part.
> >
> > ~Richard.
> >
> >
> > cheers
> > Jane
> >
> > Jane Stevenson
> > Archives Hub Service Manager
> > jane.stevenson@jisc.ac.uk
> >
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>
>