The ICA’s Expert Group on Archival Description (EGAD) is pleased to announce the version 1.0 release of the first three parts of the Records in Contexts archival description standard: Records in Contexts–Foundations of Archival Description (RiC-FAD), Records in Contexts–Conceptual Model (RiC-CM), and Records in Contexts–Ontology (RiC-O). Work has begun on a fourth and final part, Records in Contexts–Application Guidelines (RiC-AG).
The version 1.0 release of RiC-FAD, RiC-CM, and RiC-O marks the first stable and complete version of the first three parts of RiC, and thus a major milestone in the development of the standard. RiC extends and replaces the four ICA standards General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD(G)); International Standard Archival Authority Records–Corporate Bodies, Persons, and Families (ISAAR(CPF)); International Standard Description of Functions (ISDF); and International Standard Description of Institutions with Archival Holdings (ISDIAH). These four earlier standards will remain available.
The version 1.0 release brings some changes in comparison to the 0.2 versions. The changes are based on extensive feedback (165 comments) from the professional community as well as new reflections on the part of the ICA/EGAD. The comments contributed by the archival community with accompanying decisions of EGAD will be published on the ICA-EGAD GitHub repository in early 2024 (https://github.com/ICA-EGAD).
The Foundations of Archival Description was renamed from Introduction to Archival Description and the content was slightly revised.
There was one major change to entities in the Conceptual Model: the four date entities have been reduced to a single date entity. The attributes of date were revised: some removed, some added. Several relations were added, particularly in relation to the date entity. In response to many requests for clarification of concepts and text, definitions and scope notes of entities and attributes were revised. Additionally, some names, domains, and repeatability of attributes were revised. Many examples for entities, attributes, and relations were added along with annotations to help in interpreting them.
The Ontology aligns with the conceptual model: It defines the following:
- 105 classes (one fewer than in version 0.2), due to the changes in RiC-CM version 1.0.
- 61 datatype properties (one fewer than in version 0.2), several of which were renamed or reorganized.
- 400 object properties (compared to 423 in version 0.2). New object properties have been added in order to address needs expressed by some users. Transitive properties have been created to represent direct or indirect present relations between some entities. The formal specification of the Relation classes has been modified, and this enabled removing 166 object properties.
These changes result in RiC-O version 1.0 being more compact than version 0.2, though at the same time functionally enhanced through the addition of a significant number of new components (object properties, that is, relations between entities).
RiC-FAD 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 in the following page: https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O/tree/master/ontology/current-version. The information website about RiC-O, which has been updated, is available here: https://ica-egad.github.io/RiC-O/. You also can download, in addition to RiC-O 1.0, examples and complementary resources, from here: https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O/releases/tag/v1.0 (download the zip file and unzip it); the release notes provide a list of the changes made from RiC-O 0.2.
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.
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/
