Public release of Records in Contexts - Ontology v0.1 and Records in Contexts – Conceptual Model v0.2 preview

In December 2019, the ICA Experts Group on Archival Description (EGAD) has released version 0.1 of  Records in Contexts Ontology (RIC-O), the second part of Records in Contexts standard.

ICA RiC-O (Records in Contexts Ontology) is an OWL ontology for describing archival record resources. As the second part of Records in Contexts standard, it is a formal representation of Records in Contexts Conceptual Model (RiC-CM).

The released version, v0.1, is the first public release of RiC-O. It is compliant with RiC-CM v0.2 preview, released by EGAD at the same date.

RiC-CM v0.2 preview replaces RiC-CM v0.1, released August, 2016. This preview is not the complete RiC-CM v0.2 document; however, it includes the core sections of RiC-CM: entities, their attributes, and the relations that may exist between them. EGAD will publicly release a complete version of RiC-CM v0.2 by February 2020; it will include finalized definitions, introductory material, examples, and other supporting documentation. The goal of the preview release of RiC-CM v0.2 is to provide context for the classes, properties, and overall logic of RiC-O in support of the ontology’s first public release. While we are not formally requesting comments on RiC-CM until the February 2020 release, reports of issues or general feedback will still be welcomed.

RiC-O provides a generic vocabulary and formal rules for creating RDF datasets (or generating them from existing archival metadata) that describe in a consistent way any kind of archival record resource. It can support publishing RDF datasets as Linked Data, querying them using SPARQL, and making inferences using the logic of the ontology.

The RiC-O URI is: https://www.ica.org/standards/RiC/ontology.

Access the HTML view (documentation) of RiC-O v0.1: https://www.ica.org/standards/RiC/RiC-O_v0-1.html

Access the OWL/RDF ontology file: https://www.ica.org/standards/RiC/RiC-O_v0-1.rdf

 

EGAD calls for comments on RiC-O v0.1. You can for now use egad@ica.org email for sending your questions or comments (preferably attaching a document to your email if you send comments).

The Git source repository for RiC-O development will be soon made public, which will allow forking and pull requests. This repository will include other resources such as slides, diagrams and examples.EGAD will publicly release versions 1.0 of both RiC-CM and RiC-O by November 2020, the date of the ICA Abu Dhabi 2020 Congress. These versions will take into account feedback received on RiC-CM v0.2 and RiC-O v0.1.