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Archives and their collections #1758

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@RichardWallis

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@RichardWallis

The Schema Architypes W3C Community Group have been working on a proposal for enhancements to Schema.org to enable the description of Archives and their collections/contents. Which I describe below for consideration.

It consists of two new types:

  • Archive: Institution with archival holdings. An Archive, or Archives, is an organization which keeps and preserves archival material and potentially makes it accessible to the public.
  • ArchiveComponent: An intangible type to be applied to any archive content, carrying with it a set of properties required to describe archival items and collections.

and three new properties:

plus the broadening of the range of four existing properties (hasPart, isPartOf, itemCondition, location).

A test version of the proposal is operating here: http://archive.sdo-archive.appspot.com/ The example assumes an 'archive' extension, however the proposal will be for an introduction into 'pending' and thence into the core.

Archive is a subtype of LocalBusiness, similar to Library. It has a single new property archiveHeld for linking to relevant archived items.

ArchiveComponent is the main type in the proposal. The model behind this proposal separates out the question of ‘what’ something is, from the fact it is in an archive and therefore has a set of archive specific properties related to it.
Making use of Schema's Multi Type Entity (MTE) capabilities, ArchiveComponent is designed to be used with one or more other types. Thus the 'what' of a thing is left to existing standard SDO types (e.g. Collection, CreativeWork, etc.).

This approach is used both for individual items in a collection, and the collections themselves (combining Collection with ArchiveComponent).

Examples are available on both the Archive & ArchiveComponent pages. For more details (model, background, etc.) see the proposal Wiki page.

A JSON-LD example of a sound recording held in an archive:

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "http://schema.org",
  "@id": "https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/407/thm/407/8/3",
  "@type": ["AudioObject","ArchiveComponent"],
  "identifier": "GB 71 THM/407/8/3",
  "name": "Sound Recording of Lines from My Grandafther's Forehead (Radio)",
  "about": "Comedy",
  "description": "Sound recording of the first radio broadcast of Lines from My Grandfather's Forehead by Ronnie Barker and others. Duration: max 90 mins.",
  "inLanguage": "EN",
  "dateCreated": "1971-1972",
  "duration": "PT90M",
  "playerType": "Audio Cassette",
  "accessConditions": "Please check with the Theatre and Performance enquiry team regarding access arrangements before making an appointment to listen to this item.",
  "location": "https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/locations/eae30daa-1bf9-33d9-bf1c-7aeb220d2e76",
  "isPartOf": "https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/data/gb71-thm/407/thm/407/8"
}
</script>

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