The International Council on Archives Expert Group on Archival Description (EGAD) was formed in late 2012 and charged with developing a successor standard to the four existing ICA descriptive standards. The EGAD began developing the standard, named Records in Contexts (RiC) in 2013.
RiC addresses the activity of describing records in four complementary parts:
- Records in Contexts-Foundations of Archival Description (RiC-FAD). RiC-FAD is a brief description of the foundational principles and purposes of archival description
- Records in Contexts-Conceptual Model (RiC-CM). RiC-CM is a high-level conceptual model that focuses on intellectually identifying and describing records, the people that created and use(d) them, and the activities pursued by the people that the records both facilitate and document
- Records in Contexts-Ontology (RiC-O). RiC-O is a specific implementation of RiC-CM formally expressed in the World Wide Web Consortium standard Web Ontology Language (OWL). RiC-O provides the archival community with the ability to make archival description available using the techniques of Linked Open Data (LOD) employing a conceptual vocabulary and structure that is specific to archival description. As a specific implementation, it conforms to the high-level RiC-CM, though includes the greater detail required for implementation as an ontology
- Records in Contexts-Application Guidelines (RiC-AG). RiC-AG, when completed, will provide practitioners and software developers with concrete guidance and examples to assist them in implementing RiC-CM and RiC-O in records and archival management systems
Version 1.0 of the first three parts was released in late 2023. Work on the fourth part began in early 2024.
RiC-FAD version 1.0 can be downloaded from https://www.ica.org/en/records-in-contexts-foundations-of-archival-description or accessed directly using the urls https://www.ica.org/app/uploads/2023/12/RiC-FAD-1.0.pdf or https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-FAD/blob/main/current-version/RiC-FAD-1.0.pdf
RiC-CM version 1.0 can be downloaded from https://www.ica.org/en/records-in-contexts-conceptual-model or accessed directly using the urls https://www.ica.org/app/uploads/2023/12/RiC-CM-1.0.pdf or https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-CM/blob/master/current-version/RiC-CM-1.0.pdf
RiC-O version 1.0 is available from https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O/tree/master/ontology/current-version; you can also download the file and accompanying material here: https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O/releases/tag/v1.0. Please note that the RiC-O IRI (https://www.ica.org/standards/RiC/ontology) is temporarily unavailable while the ICA website is moving to a new website. Once the IRI is reestablished, it will enable human readers access to a HTML representation of RiC-O and enable machine access to the RDF/OWL source file.
RiC Discussion Group
Anyone interested in learning more about or discussing RiC with others is encouraged to join the RiC user group. Both description of the scope and purpose of the group and instructions for joining will be found here: https://groups.google.com/g/Records_in_Contexts_users/