Level property

Jane has raised the question of adding an ‘level’ property which is used to indicate (where known) the archive level of an Archive Unit is specified.
(I suspect it would probably need to be called something other than ‘level’, but I think the question of the usefulness of the property is really the question we need to tackle first)

Jane’s example:

> 
> #An item in an archive (Note the definition of two types (schema:AudioObject, schema:ArchiveProperties).
> <https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/407/thm/407/8/3> a schema:AudioObject, schema:ArchiveProperties ;
>    schema:accessConditions "Please check with the Theatre and Performance enquiry team regarding access arrangements before making an appointment to listen to this item." ;
>    schema:dateCreated "1971-1972"^^schema:Date ;
>    schema:description "Sound recording of the first radio broadcast of Lines from My Grandfather's Forehead by Ronnie Barker and others. Duration: max 90 mins." ;
>    schema:about “Comedy”;
>    schema:duration "PT90M" ;
>    schema:inLanguage "EN" ;
>    schema:isPartOf "https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/407/thm/407/8" ;
>    schema:location "https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/locations/eae30daa-1bf9-33d9-bf1c-7aeb220d2e76" ;
>    schema:name "Sound Recording of Lines from My Grandafther's Forehead (Radio)" ;
>    schema:playerType "Audio Cassette" ;
>    schema:identifier "GB 71 THM/407/8/3” 
>    schema:level “item”

What are the potential values of ‘level’ in this context? From EAD docs I can see:

 • collection
 • fonds
 • class
 • recordgrp
 • series
 • subfonds
 • subgrp
 • subseries
 • file
 • item

and also the use of any other term in the ‘otherlevel’ attribute. Are there other ‘levels’ here

I don’t see a problem in adding a property for level, however, some of these (collection, file, item at least) don’t seem to do more than you could already do with native SDO types - if you know it is a collection, why not say so by making it a schema:Collection?

The other levels from EAD are more specific I think - in particular I know Fond carries with it some additional information about the particular set of items. Possibly the others do too? In this case my instinct would be to unbundle the semantics a bit - if a Fond is really a Collection of Items with shared properties (e.g. Provenance) then I’m inclined to think it is better to say so. Of course - this may take us back to Jane’s other question - what is the point of such modelling here? For the main schema.org use case (discovery) I think (for example) shared provenance is of more interest than ‘level’.

So - my initial reaction is that ‘level’ is not so useful *BUT* it would be straightforward to add to either of the proposals on the wiki at the moment

Owen

Received on Monday, 17 July 2017 10:07:51 UTC