Issue 295: Digital Libraries as physical objects

Posted by Martin on 4/1/2018

<HW>

Delete:
E84 Information Carrier

Subclass of:        E22 Man-Made Object

Scope note:       This class comprises all instances of E22 Man-Made Object that are explicitly designed to act as persistent physical carriers for instances of E73 Information Object.

An E84 Information Carrier may or may not contain information, e.g., a diskette. Note that any E18 Physical Thing may carry information, such as an E34 Inscription. However, unless it was specifically designed for this purpose, it is not an Information Carrier. Therefore the property P128 carries (is carried by) applies to E18 Physical Thing in general.

Examples:        

§  the Rosetta Stone

§  my paperback copy of Crime & Punishment

§  the computer disk at ICS-FORTH that stores the canonical Definition of the CIDOC CRM

In First Order Logic:

                           E84(x) ⊃ E22(x)

New examples in:

E78 Curated Holding

Subclass of:         E24 Physical Man-Made Thing

Scope note:          This class comprises aggregations of instances of E18 Physical Thing that are assembled and maintained (“curated” and “preserved,” in museological terminology) by one or more instances of E39 Actor over time for a specific purpose and audience, and according to a particular collection development plan.  Typical instances of curated holdings are museum collections, archives, library holdings and digital libraries. A digital library is regarded as an instance of E18 Physical Thing because it requires keeping physical carriers of the electronic content.

Items may be added or removed from an E78 Curated Holding in pursuit of this plan. This class should not be confused with the E39 Actor maintaining the E78 Curated Holding often referred to with the name of the E78 Curated Holding (e.g. “The Wallace Collection decided…”).

Collective objects in the general sense, like a tomb full of gifts, a folder with stamps or a set of chessmen, should be documented as instances of E19 Physical Object, and not as instances of E78 Curated Holding. This is because they form wholes either because they are physically bound together or because they are kept together for their functionality.

Examples:         

§  the John Clayton Herbarium

§  the Wallace Collection

§  Mikael Heggelund Foslie’s coralline red algae Herbarium at Museum of Natural History and Archaeology, Trondheim, Norway

§  The Digital Collections of the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) accessible via https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/ at least in January 2018.

In First Order Logic:

                           E78(x) ⊃ E24(x)

E24 Physical Man-Made Thing

Subclass of:         E18 Physical Thing

                           E71 Man-Made Thing

Superclass of:      E22 Man-Made Object

E25 Man-Made Feature

E78 Collection

Scope Note:        This class comprises all persistent physical items that are purposely created by human activity.

This class comprises man-made objects, such as a swords, and man-made features, such as rock art. No assumptions are made as to the extent of modification required to justify regarding an object as man-made. For example, a “cup and ring” carving on bedrock is regarded as instance of E24 Physical Man-Made Thing.

Examples:         

§  the Forth Railway Bridge (E22)

§  the Channel Tunnel (E25)

§  the Historical Collection of the Museum Benaki in Athens (E78)

§  the Rosetta Stone (E22)

§  my paperback copy of Crime & Punishment (E22)

§  the computer disk at ICS-FORTH that stores the canonical Definition of the CIDOC CRM (E22)

§  my empty DVD disk (E22)

In First Order Logic:

                           E24(x) ⊃ E18(x)

                           E24(x) ⊃ E71(x)

Properties:

P62 depicts (is depicted by): E1 CRM Entity

(P62.1 mode of depiction: E55 Type)

P65 shows visual item (is shown by): E36 Visual Item

Scope Note extension:

E25 Man-Made Feature

Subclass of:         E24 Physical Man-Made Thing

E26 Physical Feature

Scope Note:        This class comprises physical features that are purposely created by human activity, such as scratches, artificial caves, artificial water channels, etc. In particular it includes the information encoding features on mechanical or digital carriers.

No assumptions are made as to the extent of modification required to justify regarding a feature as man-made. For example, rock art or even “cup and ring” carvings on bedrock a regarded as types of E25 Man-Made Feature.

Examples:         

§  the Manchester Ship Canal

§  Michael Jackson’s nose following plastic surgery

§  The laser-readable “pits” engraved June 2014 in my CD-R, copying songs of Edith Piaf’s.

§  The carved letters on the Rosetta Stone

In First Order Logic:

                           E25(x) ⊃ E26(x)

                            E25(x) ⊃ E24(x)

Posted by Steve on 8/1/2018

<COMMENT>

I agree that would be helpful.

posted by Martin on 10/1/2018

<COMMENT>

Dear Thanasi,

On 1/10/2018 1:30 PM, Athanasios Velios wrote:
> Shouldn't this:
>
> §  The Digital Collections of the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) accessible via https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/ at least in January 2018.
>
> be instead:
>
> §  The group of servers (hardware) holding the Digital Collections of the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) accessible via https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/ at least in January 2018.
>
> The term "Digital Collections" will not necessarily mean a physical thing for many readers.
Actually we do not mean the servers as a whole, but only the material signal encoding on the media. This interpretation gives correct answers that the collection can be destroyed, and is a "holding" in the hands of the maintainers, i.e., physically kept, and that it can change like a physical thing loosing its previous form.
The immaterial item would not change, reside on multiple carriers. An update would create a new derivative, i.e., another thing, not affecting other copies around.
The material interpretation is problematic if the content is moved around servers.

Another interpretation is that of a "volatile dataset" we at FORTH used in the PARTHENOS project, which uses the logical condition that there is only one representative version of the data object at any point in time, regardless carrier. It updates like a material object. This may in general create a problem, if the authority identifying the correct representative version not clear. I tried to be neutral to this dilemma by using the URL, which points to the physical "location", under which the representative version will appear, and makes the storage system an internal issue of the maintainer.

Consider a "move" of the database to another storage system and a simultaneous update. Then, formally, neither the carrier nor the content is the same, but it is still the same "digital library".

Note, that if I make a copy of a digital library, I get an immaterial object, which will not be representative after the first change to the original, without me doing anything. Hence, the digital library does not behave like an Information Object in the sense of the CRM. 

posted by Daria Hookk on 10/1/2018

<COMMENT>

QR-code is very phisical (on surface) and absolutely digital, because presents 0 & 1.

posted by Franco on 11/1/2018

All these examples show that the issue exist!

My opinion in short: there is of course a distinction between “hard” and “soft” copies. Hard (i.e. material) copies involve modifying matter; soft (i.e. immaterial) ones don’t. Hard copies are affected by degradation, soft ones don’t. Soft copies may be digital (e.g. music on a cd or on a hard disk) or analog (e.g. same music on vinyl) or ... (same music transcribed on music paper); hard copies are what they are.
Association of soft stuff with the hard copy is rather subjective: BA BA BA BAAAAA may correspond to the beginning of Beethoven’s 5th symphony as well as Herbert von Karajan’s & Berliner Philarmoniker Orchestra digital version now playing on my Mac. There may be a “canonical” association between the soft stuff I receive and perceive, and a (master) hard version, e.g. between the 5th symphony and Beethoven’s original manuscript kept at Staatsbibliotek Berlin. I think most of the above is addressed in FRBR and CRM uses a simplification to deal with immaterial content, as it is considered to be borderline within its scope. But sometimes (this may not be the case) oversimplification turns into confusion.

posted by Franco on 11/1/2018

Thanks Achille.

That sentence about 0s and 1s is there probably because people, and especially humanists like dictionary editors, don’t understand the nature of numbers.

The number “two” is the number two, not two cows, two oranges or two humans. Its definition does not need any physical representation and even abstracts from any conceptual way of representing it, i.e. with a binary system (0s and 1s) or sexagesimal one. Actually in most cases, and in most people’s minds, two is 1 and 2, not 0 and 1, which comes in because the computer representation uses a flip-flop circuit.

This is very clear from Martin’s distinction quoted in some previous email between Maxwells’ equations and the way they are formally represented, and then printed in a book. So there are three levels: the concept, the conceptual representation, and its physical footprint. Of these, two are described by the CRM, the intermediate one being probably considered as irrelevant.
 

posted by Franco on 11/1/2018

Dear Achille

my position is to deprecate the use of the term “digital collection” to precisely designate whatever, as it is ambiguous (agree with Thanis).

If used colloquially, it is an acceptable term to designate the assembly of various digital objects.

In no case it can refer to or exemplify an (instance of) E28 Conceptual Object, which is not digital; nor to an E84 Information Carrier, now subsumed by the mother class E24 Physical Man-Made Thing, because they are (were) "persistent physical carriers for instances of E73 Information Object”, thus they can’t be digital.

The proposed example for E78, subclass of E24

"The Digital Collections of the Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ) accessible via https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/ at least in January 2018.

is not wrong per se, as here the term may designate the hard disk (portion) where such “collections” are stored, but might be misleading and confusing, as it commonly and colloquially refers to the content (E78) of the said hard disk, and not to the physical storage. And if it is a hard disk, it is not digital, it is hard and possibly stores digital information; but may also be a pencil sharpener, as you well know, if you attach abrasive paper on top of it; or an improvised weapon, if you get angry and want to kill your office mates. 

posted by Martin on 11/1/2018

Dear Franco,

I'd like to clarify: The CRM does not intend to constitute a dictionary of what terms mean in an absolute way. Of course the content of the Digital Library at any point in time is immaterial. No objections to your comments. But it is equally obvious, that any accessible form of it must be a physical feature.

The question we are discussing, is rather which of the involved things is the one that provide an identity condition that corresponds to the
notion of "holding" and "my copy". If I am not mistaken, copyright enforcement may require someone to "delete" a digital file from his system.
If this is true, then, clearly, there exists a sense which is socially and legally functional, of a "digital file" as a physical feature.

The next question is, if the concept of "holding" a digital library, pertains to the physical or the immaterial nature. If a library has a book,
we always mean a physical copy, even though the content of the book is not theirs. In that sense, the digital and the traditional information form
makes no difference.

Classes in the CRM are exclusively defined in a way which represents the phenomena of reality in a way so that the relations between them are well defined, or better "confined" to the domain and range.
The relationship of "holding" is one of these relations. Hence the question is, what of the involved phenomena is the relevant one for "holding", the material, or the immaterial, or another one, and not, if "digital" means physical or immaterial out of context.

It appears to me, that the important new quality of "digital" is NOT at all that it is a new information form or that it is "virtual". At the first glance, it is just another materialization of information. What makes the difference, is the ease and speed by which we can move it from one carrier to another. This changes practices of holding. Whereas a library would not produce books, it may quite well now "reproduce" (fotocopy etc) books from their holdings. They may not be allowed to reproduce from other's holdings. Digital libraries will send copies over electronic communication.  The Munich Digital Library explicity refers to analog holdings they have digitized.

Now, for the digital library as a whole, undergoing intended changes, what is the relevant identity condition, and how to model that in an easy way? I tried to point out, that both, a concept of a "volatile information object" and describing the materialization has its pros and cons.

Would that make sense?:-)
 

posted by Franco on 11/1/2018

Dear Martin

I do not want to bore the SIG members any more, but your argument serves my cause, and not yours.

Let me remind that the discussion is about an example of (E78 Curated Holding which is a subclass of)) E24 Physical Man-Made Thing, i.e. the hard disks or whatever is carrying at MDZ the E73 Information Object. Undoubtedly E78 inherits the physicality of the superclass E24.
The new E78 example says: 'The "Digital Collections" of the "Munich DigitiZation Center (MDZ)" accessible via https://www.digitale-sammlungen.de/ at least in January 2018.'

On the same MDZ web page, under the heading “Digital Collections”, MDZ offers services to Search Collections, Explore the Collections or thematic groupings. Do they mean they have developed a way to enable me to walk the hard disks bit by bit (i.e. explore the E24/E78) as the example would imply, or rather the information of which they are carriers (i.e. E73)?

It is probably the second. MDZ and its users is very little interested in hard disks (E78) and more in the content they carry (E73). Then, their use of “Digital Collection” refers to a grouping of E73 instances rather than to hardware. Apparently, Martin does the opposite.

But, I surrender, I do not want to become a hater in the SIG community nor see my messages automatically redirected to the SPAM folder.

Unfortunately I can’t attend the Cologne meeting, where we could have continued this passionate discussion, possibly adding other very interesting themes like "How many angels can dance on the head of a pin”. By the way, what is an angel? An E38 actor, an E90 Symbolic Object, an AAAAARRGH