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Non-automatically generated text sections of CIDOC-CRM version: 7.1.1

Cover Page

Volume A:

Definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model

Produced by the CIDOC CRM

Special Interest Group

Version 7.1.1

April 2021

Editors: Chryssoula Bekiari, George Bruseker, Martin Doerr,

Christian-Emil Ore, Stephen Stead, Athanasios Velios

CC BY 4.0 2021 Individual Contributors to CIDOC CRM 7.1.1

https://doi.org/10.26225/FDZH-X261

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1 Introduction
Einführung
Εισαγωγή
Introduction
Introdução
Вступление
介绍

This document is the formal definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (“CIDOC CRM”), a formal ontology intended to facilitate the integration, mediation and interchange of heterogeneous cultural heritage information and similar information from other domains, as further detailed below. The CRM is the culmination of more than two decades of standards development work by the International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) of the International Council of Museums (ICOM). Work on the CRM itself began in 1996 under the auspices of the ICOM-CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group. Since 2000, development of the CRM has been officially delegated by ICOM-CIDOC to the CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group (SIG). The SIG, in turn, collaborates with the ISO working group ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 to bring the CRM to the form and status of an International Standard. This set of collaborations has resulted in the production of ISO21127:2004 and ISO21127:2014, the ISO standard editions of the CIDOC CRM. This collaboration will be continued in order to support the next update of the ISO standard edition. The present document belongs to the series of evolving versions of the formal definition of the CRM, which serve the ISO working group as community draft for the standard. Eventual minor differences, in semantics and notation, of the ISO standard text from the present, community CIDOC CRM version, which the ISO working group requires and implements, will be harmonized in the subsequent versions of the present, community CIDOC CRM formal definition document.

Dieses Dokument ist die formale Definition des CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model („CIDOC CRM“), einer formalen Ontologie, die die Integration, Vermittlung und den Austausch von heterogenen Informationen zum Kulturerbe und ähnlichen Informationen aus anderen Bereichen erleichtern soll, wie unten näher beschrieben. Das CRM ist das Ergebnis von mehr als zwei Jahrzehnten Entwicklungsarbeit des International Committee for Documentation (CIDOC) des International Council of Museums (ICOM). Die Arbeit am CRM selbst begann 1996 unter der Schirmherrschaft der ICOM-CIDOC Documentation Standards Working Group. Seit 2000 ist die Entwicklung des CRM offiziell von ICOM-CIDOC an die CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group (SIG) delegiert. Der SIG wiederum arbeitet mit der ISO-Arbeitsgruppe ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 zusammen, um das CRM auf die Form und den Status eines Internationalen Standards zu bringen. Diese Reihe von Kooperationen hat zur Produktion von ISO21127:2004 und ISO21127:2014 geführt, den ISO-Standardausgaben des CIDOC CRM. Diese Zusammenarbeit wird fortgesetzt, um die nächste Aktualisierung der ISO-Standardausgabe zu unterstützen. Das vorliegende Dokument gehört zu der Reihe der sich entwickelnden Versionen der formalen Definition des CRM, die der ISO-Arbeitsgruppe als Gemeinschaftsentwurf für den Standard dienen. Eventuelle geringfügige Unterschiede in Semantik und Notation des ISO-Standardtextes von der aktuellen Community-CIDOC CRM-Version, die die ISO-Arbeitsgruppe fordert und implementiert, werden in den nachfolgenden Versionen des vorliegenden, Community-CIDOC CRM-Formulardefinitionsdokuments harmonisiert.

Αυτό το έγγραφο είναι ο επίσημος ορισμός του εννοιολογικού μοντέλου αναφοράς CIDOC («CIDOC CRM»), μια επίσημη οντολογία που αποσκοπεί στη διευκόλυνση της ενσωμάτωσης, της διαμεσολάβησης και της ανταλλαγής ετερογενών πληροφοριών πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς και παρόμοιων πληροφοριών από άλλους τομείς, όπως αναλυτικά παρακάτω. Το CRM είναι το αποκορύφωμα περισσότερων από δύο δεκαετιών εργασιών ανάπτυξης προτύπων από τη Διεθνή Επιτροπή Τεκμηρίωσης (CIDOC) του Διεθνούς Συμβουλίου Μουσείων (ICOM). Οι εργασίες για το ίδιο το CRM ξεκίνησαν το 1996 υπό την αιγίδα της Ομάδας Εργασίας Προτύπων Τεκμηρίωσης ICOM-CIDOC. Από το 2000, η ​​ανάπτυξη του CRM έχει ανατεθεί επίσημα από την ICOM-CIDOC στην Ομάδα Ειδικού Ενδιαφέροντος CIDOC CRM (SIG). Το SIG, με τη σειρά του, συνεργάζεται με την ομάδα εργασίας ISO ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 για να φέρει το CRM στη μορφή και την κατάσταση ενός Διεθνούς Προτύπου. Αυτό το σύνολο συνεργασιών είχε ως αποτέλεσμα την παραγωγή των ISO21127: 2004 και ISO21127: 2014, των τυποποιημένων εκδόσεων ISO του CIDOC CRM. Αυτή η συνεργασία θα συνεχιστεί προκειμένου να υποστηριχθεί η επόμενη ενημέρωση της τυποποιημένης έκδοσης ISO. Το παρόν έγγραφο ανήκει στη σειρά εξελισσόμενων εκδόσεων του τυπικού ορισμού του CRM, οι οποίες χρησιμεύουν στην ομάδα εργασίας ISO ως κοινότητα για το πρότυπο. Τελικές μικρές διαφορές, σε σημασιολογία και σημειογραφία, του τυποποιημένου κειμένου ISO από το παρόν, κοινοτική έκδοση CIDOC CRM, την οποία απαιτεί και εφαρμόζει η ομάδα εργασίας ISO, θα εναρμονιστούν στις επόμενες εκδόσεις του παρόντος, κοινοτικού επίσημου εγγράφου ορισμού CIDOC CRM.

Ce document est la définition formelle du CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model (« CIDOC CRM »), une ontologie formelle destinée à faciliter l'intégration, la médiation et l'échange d'informations hétérogènes sur le patrimoine culturel et d'informations similaires provenant d'autres domaines, comme détaillé ci-dessous. Le CRM est l'aboutissement de plus de deux décennies de travail d'élaboration de normes par le Comité international de documentation (CIDOC) du Conseil international des musées (ICOM). Les travaux sur le CRM lui-même ont commencé en 1996 sous les auspices du Groupe de travail sur les normes de documentation ICOM-CIDOC. Depuis 2000, le développement du CRM a été officiellement délégué par l'ICOM-CIDOC au Groupement d'Intérêt Spécial (SIG) du CRM du CIDOC. Le SIG, à son tour, collabore avec le groupe de travail ISO ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 pour amener le CRM à la forme et au statut d'une norme internationale. Cet ensemble de collaborations a abouti à la production d'ISO21127:2004 et ISO21127:2014, les éditions standard ISO du CIDOC CRM. Cette collaboration sera poursuivie afin de soutenir la prochaine mise à jour de l'édition de la norme ISO. Le présent document appartient à la série des versions évolutives de la définition formelle du CRM, qui servent au groupe de travail ISO de projet communautaire pour la norme. D'éventuelles différences mineures, dans la sémantique et la notation, du texte de la norme ISO par rapport à la version communautaire actuelle du CIDOC CRM, que le groupe de travail ISO exige et met en œuvre, seront harmonisées dans les versions ultérieures du présent document de définition formelle communautaire du CIDOC CRM.

Este documento é a definição formal do Modelo de Referência Conceitual CIDOC (“CIDOC CRM”), uma ontologia formal destinada a facilitar a integração, mediação e intercâmbio de informações heterogêneas de patrimônio cultural e informações semelhantes de outros domínios, conforme detalhado abaixo. O CRM é o resultado de mais de duas décadas de trabalho de desenvolvimento de padrões pelo Comitê Internacional de Documentação (CIDOC) do Conselho Internacional de Museus (ICOM). O trabalho no próprio CRM começou em 1996 sob os auspícios do Grupo de Trabalho para Padrões de Documentação do ICOM-CIDOC. Desde 2000, o desenvolvimento do CRM foi oficialmente delegado pelo ICOM-CIDOC ao CIDOC CRM Special Interest Group (SIG). O SIG, por sua vez, colabora com o grupo de trabalho da ISO ISO / TC46 / SC4 / WG9 para trazer o CRM à forma e ao status de uma Norma Internacional. Esse conjunto de colaborações resultou na produção de ISO21127: 2004 e ISO21127: 2014, as edições padrão ISO do CIDOC CRM. Esta colaboração continuará a fim de apoiar a próxima atualização da edição do padrão ISO. O presente documento pertence à série de versões em evolução da definição formal do CRM, que servem ao grupo de trabalho da ISO como um esboço da comunidade para o padrão. Eventuais pequenas diferenças, em semântica e notação, do texto padrão ISO da versão CIDOC CRM atual da comunidade, que o grupo de trabalho ISO requer e implementa, serão harmonizadas nas versões subsequentes do presente documento de definição formal CIDOC CRM da comunidade.

Этот документ является формальным определением концептуальной эталонной модели CIDOC («CIDOC CRM»), формальной онтологии, предназначенной для облегчения интеграции, посредничества и обмена разнородной информацией о культурном наследии и аналогичной информацией из других областей, как более подробно описано ниже. CRM является кульминацией более чем двух десятилетий работы Международного комитета по документации (CIDOC) Международного совета музеев (ICOM) по разработке стандартов. Работа над самой CRM началась в 1996 году под эгидой Рабочей группы ICOM-CIDOC по стандартам документации. С 2000 года разработка CRM была официально делегирована ICOM-CIDOC Специальной группе по интересам CIDOC CRM (SIG). SIG, в свою очередь, сотрудничает с рабочей группой ISO / TC46 / SC4 / WG9, чтобы привести CRM в форму и статус международного стандарта. Результатом такого сотрудничества стало создание ISO21127: 2004 и ISO21127: 2014, стандартных редакций ISO для CIDOC CRM. Это сотрудничество будет продолжено для поддержки следующего обновления редакции стандарта ISO. Настоящий документ принадлежит к серии развивающихся версий формального определения CRM, которые служат рабочей группе ISO в качестве проекта стандарта для сообщества. Возможные незначительные отличия в семантике и обозначении текста стандарта ISO от текущей версии CIDOC CRM сообщества, которую требует и реализует рабочая группа ISO, будут согласованы в последующих версиях настоящего документа официального определения CIDOC CRM сообщества.

本文档是 CIDOC 概念参考模型(“CIDOC CRM”)的正式定义,这是一个正式的本体,旨在促进异质文化遗产信息和来自其他领域的类似信息的集成、调解和交换,如下文进一步详述。 CRM 是国际博物馆理事会 (ICOM) 的国际文献委员会 (CIDOC) 二十多年标准开发工作的结晶。 CRM 本身的工作于 1996 年在 ICOM-CIDOC 文档标准工作组的主持下开始。自 2000 年以来,ICOM-CIDOC 正式将 CRM 的开发委托给 CIDOC CRM 特别兴趣小组 (SIG)。 SIG 又与 ISO 工作组 ISO/TC46/SC4/WG9 合作,使 CRM 达到国际标准的形式和状态。通过这一系列的合作,产生了 ISO21127:2004 和 ISO21127:2014,即 CIDOC CRM 的 ISO 标准版本。这种合作将继续进行,以支持 ISO 标准版本的下一次更新。本文件属于 CRM 正式定义的一系列演进版本,作为标准的社区草案为 ISO 工作组服务。 ISO 工作组要求和实施的 ISO 标准文本与当前社区 CIDOC CRM 版本在语义和符号方面的最终细微差异将在当前社区 CIDOC CRM 正式定义文档的后续版本中进行协调。

1.1 Objectives of the CIDOC CRM

The primary role of the CIDOC CRM is to enable the exchange and integration of information from heterogeneous sources for the reconstruction and interpretation of the past at a human scale, based on all kinds of material evidence, including texts, audio-visual material and oral tradition. It starts from, but is not limited to, the needs of museum documentation and research based on museum holdings. It aims at providing the semantic definitions and clarifications needed to transform disparate, localised information sources into a coherent global resource, be it within a larger institution, in intranets or on the Internet, and to make it available for scholarly interpretation and scientific evaluation. These goals determine the constructs and level of detail of the CIDOC CRM.

More specifically, it defines, in terms of a formal ontology, the underlying semantics of database schemata and structured documents used in the documentation of cultural heritage and scientific activities. In particular it defines the semantics related to the study of the past and current state of our world, as it is characteristic for museums, but also or other cultural heritage institutions and disciplines. It does not define any of the terminology appearing typically as data in the respective data structures; it foresees, however, the characteristic relationships for its use. It does not aim at proposing what cultural heritage institutions should document. Rather, it explains the logic of what they actually currently document, and thereby enables semantic interoperability.

The CIDOC CRM intends, moreover, to provide a model of the intellectual structure of the respective kinds of mentioned documentation in logical terms. As such, it has not been optimised for implementation specific storage and processing factors. Actual system implementations may lead to solutions where elements and links between relevant elements of our conceptualizations are no longer explicit in a database or other structured storage system. For instance, the birth event that connects elements such as father, mother, birth date, birth place may not appear in the database, in order to save storage space or response time of the system. The CIDOC CRM provides a conceptual and technical means to explain how such apparently disparate entities are semantically and logically interconnected, and how the ability of the database to answer certain intellectual questions is affected by the omission of such elements and links.

The CIDOC CRM aims to support the following specific functionalities:

Inform developers of information systems as a guide to good practice in conceptual modelling, in order to effectively structure and relate information assets of cultural documentation.

  • Serve as a common language for domain experts and IT developers to formulate requirements and to agree on system functionalities with respect to the correct handling of cultural contents.
  • To serve as a formal language for the identification of common information contents in different data formats; in particular, to support the implementation of automatic data transformation algorithms from local to global data structures without loss of meaning. The latter being useful for data exchange, data migration from legacy systems, data information integration and mediation of heterogeneous sources.
  • To support associative queries against integrated resources by providing a global model of the basic classes and their associations to formulate such queries.
  • It is further believed that advanced natural language algorithms and case-specific heuristics can take significant advantage of the CIDOC CRM to resolve free text information into a formal logical form, if that is regarded beneficial. The CIDOC CRM is not thought, however, to be a means to replace scholarly text, rich in meaning, by logical forms, but only a means to identify related data.

Users of the CIDOC CRM should be aware that the definition of data entry systems requires support of community-specific terminology, guidance to what should be documented and in which sequence, and application-specific consistency controls. The CIDOC CRM does not provide such notions.

By its very structure and formalism, the CIDOC CRM is extensible and users are encouraged to create extensions for the needs of more specialized communities and applications.

1.2 Scope of the CIDOC CRM
Umfang des CIDOC CRM
Πεδίο εφαρμογής του CIDOC CRM
Portée du CIDOC CRM
Âmbito do CIDOC CRM
Объем CIDOC CRM
CIDOC CRM 的范围

The overall scope of the CIDOC CRM can be summarised in simple terms as the curated, factual knowledge about the past at a human scale.

However, a more detailed and useful definition can be articulated by defining both the Intended Scope, a broad and maximally-inclusive definition of general application principles, and the Practical Scope, which is expressed by the overall scope of a growing reference set of specific, identifiable documentation standards and practices that the CIDOC CRM aims to semantically describe, restricted, always, in its details to the limitations of the Intended Scope.

The reasons for this distinctions between Intended and Practical Scope are twofold. Firstly, the CIDOC CRM is developed in a “bottom-up” manner, starting from well-understood, actually and widely used concepts of domain experts, which are disambiguated and gradually generalized as more forms of encoding are encountered. This aims to avoid the misadaptations and vagueness that can sometimes be found in introspection-driven attempts to find overarching concepts for such a wide scope, and provides stability to the generalizations found. Secondly, it is a means to identify and keep a focus on the concepts most needed by the communities working in the scope of the CIDOC CRM and to maintain a well-defined agenda for its evolution.

The Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM may, therefore, be defined as all information required for the exchange and integration of heterogeneous scientific and scholarly documentation about the past at a human scale and the available documented and empirical evidence for this. This definition requires further elaboration:

  • The term “scientific and scholarly documentation” is intended to convey the requirement that the depth and quality of descriptive information that can be handled by the CIDOC CRM should be sufficient for serious academic research. This does not mean that information intended for presentation to members of the general public is excluded, but rather that the CRM is intended to provide the level of detail and precision expected and required by museum professionals and researchers in the field.
  • As “available documented and material evidence” are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other collections, in-situ objects, sites, monuments and intangible heritage relating to fields such as social history, ethnography, archaeology, fine and applied arts, natural history, history of sciences and technology.
  • The concept “documentation” includes the detailed description of individual items, in situ or within collections, groups of items and collections as a whole, as well as practices of intangible heritage. It pertains to their current state as well as to information about their past. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and theoretical background that gives cultural heritage collections much of their cultural significance and value.
  • The documentation of collections includes the detailed description of individual items within collections, groups of items and collections as a whole. The CIDOC CRM is specifically intended to cover contextual information: the historical, geographical and theoretical background that gives museum collections much of their cultural significance and value.
  • The exchange of relevant information with libraries and archives, and the harmonisation of the CIDOC CRM with their models, falls within the Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM.
  • Information required solely for the administration and management of cultural institutions, such as information relating to personnel, accounting, and visitor statistics, falls outside the Intended Scope of the CIDOC CRM.

The Practical Scope[2] of the CIDOC CRM is expressed in terms of the set of reference standards and de facto standards for documenting factual knowledge that have been used to guide and validate the CIDOC CRM’s development and its further evolution. The CRM covers the same domain of discourse as the union of these reference standards; this means that for data correctly encoded according to these documentation formats there can be a CIDOC CRM-compatible expression that conveys the same meaning.

As part of the on-going work of keep the standard up-to-date, discussions on the types of bias present in the CIDOC CRM are in progress within the CIDOC CRM community.

Der Gesamtumfang des CIDOC CRM lässt sich in einfachen Worten als kuratiertes, sachliches Wissen über die Vergangenheit im menschlichen Maßstab zusammenfassen.

Ein detaillierteres und Eine sinnvolle Definition kann formuliert werden, indem sowohl der Beabsichtigte Anwendungsbereich, eine breite und maximal umfassende Definition der allgemeinen Anwendungsprinzipien, als auch der Praktische Anwendungsbereich definiert werden, der durch den Gesamtbereich ausgedrückt wird eines wachsenden Referenzsatzes spezifischer, identifizierbarer Dokumentationsstandards und -praktiken, die das CIDOC CRM semantisch beschreiben soll, immer im Detail auf die Grenzen des beabsichtigten Anwendungsbereichs beschränkt.

Die Gründe für diese Unterscheidung zwischen Der beabsichtigte und der praktische Umfang sind zweigeteilt. Erstens wird das CIDOC CRM „von unten nach oben“ entwickelt, ausgehend von gut verstandenen, tatsächlich und weit verbreiteten Konzepten von Domänenexperten, die disambiguiert und allmählich verallgemeinert werden, wenn mehr Formen der Codierung gefunden werden. Dies zielt darauf ab, Fehlanpassungen und Unklarheiten zu vermeiden, die manchmal bei introspektiongetriebenen Versuchen zu finden sind, übergreifende Konzepte für einen so breiten Anwendungsbereich zu finden, und gibt den gefundenen Verallgemeinerungen Stabilität. Zweitens ist es ein Mittel, um die Konzepte zu identifizieren und zu konzentrieren, die von den Gemeinschaften, die im Rahmen des CIDOC CRM arbeiten, am dringendsten benötigt werden, und eine klar definierte Agenda für seine Weiterentwicklung aufrechtzuerhalten.

Der beabsichtigte Umfang des CIDOC CRM können daher als alle Informationen definiert werden, die für den Austausch und die Integration heterogener wissenschaftlicher Vergangenheitsdokumentation im menschlichen Maßstab und der hierfür verfügbaren dokumentierten und empirischen Evidenz erforderlich sind. Diese Definition bedarf weiterer Ausarbeitung:

  • Der Begriff „wissenschaftliche Dokumentation“ soll die Forderung vermitteln, dass die Tiefe und Qualität der beschreibenden Informationen, die durch das CIDOC CRM verarbeitet werden können, ausreichend sein soll für seriöse wissenschaftliche Forschung. Dies bedeutet nicht, dass Informationen, die der Öffentlichkeit zugänglich gemacht werden sollen, ausgeschlossen sind, sondern dass das CRM den Detaillierungsgrad und die Genauigkeit bieten soll, die von Museumsfachleuten und Forschern auf diesem Gebiet erwartet und benötigt werden.
  • Als „verfügbare dokumentierte und materielle Beweise“ gelten alle Arten von Materialien, die von Museen und verwandten Institutionen gesammelt und ausgestellt werden, wie von ICOM definiert[1] und andere Sammlungen, In-situ-Objekte, Stätten, Denkmäler und immaterielles Erbe aus Bereichen wie Sozialgeschichte, Ethnographie, Archäologie, bildende und angewandte Kunst, Naturgeschichte, Geschichte von Naturwissenschaften und Technik.
  • Der Begriff „Dokumentation“ umfasst die detaillierte Beschreibung einzelner Objekte vor Ort oder innerhalb von Sammlungen, Objektgruppen und Sammlungen insgesamt sowie Praktiken des immateriellen Erbes. Es bezieht sich sowohl auf ihren aktuellen Zustand als auch auf Informationen über ihre Vergangenheit. Das CIDOC CRM soll insbesondere kontextbezogene Informationen abdecken: den historischen, geografischen und theoretischen Hintergrund, der den Sammlungen des Kulturerbes viel von ihrer kulturellen Bedeutung und ihrem Wert verleiht.
  • Die Dokumentation der Sammlungen umfasst die detaillierte Beschreibung der einzelnen Elemente innerhalb Sammlungen, Objektgruppen und Sammlungen als Ganzes. Das CIDOC CRM soll insbesondere kontextbezogene Informationen abdecken: den historischen, geografischen und theoretischen Hintergrund, der Museumssammlungen einen Großteil ihrer kulturellen Bedeutung und ihres Wertes verleiht.
  • Der Austausch relevanter Informationen mit Bibliotheken und Archiven und die Harmonisierung des CIDOC CRM mit ihren Modellen fällt in den vorgesehenen Anwendungsbereich des CIDOC CRM.
  • Informationen, die ausschließlich für die Verwaltung und Verwaltung von Kultureinrichtungen benötigt werden, wie Personal-, Buchhaltungs- und Besucherstatistiken, fallen nicht in den vorgesehenen Anwendungsbereich des CIDOC CRM.

Der praktische Anwendungsbereich[2] des CIDOC CRM wird in Form der Reihe von Referenzstandards und De-facto-Standards für die Dokumentation von Faktenwissen, die verwendet wurden, um die Entwicklung und Weiterentwicklung des CIDOC CRM zu leiten und zu validieren. Das CRM deckt denselben Diskursbereich ab wie die Vereinigung dieser Referenzstandards; das bedeutet, dass es für Daten, die nach diesen Dokumentationsformaten korrekt kodiert sind, einen CIDOC CRM-kompatiblen Ausdruck geben kann, der dieselbe Bedeutung vermittelt.

Im Rahmen der laufenden Arbeit, den Standard auf dem neuesten Stand zu halten, werden innerhalb der CIDOC CRM-Community Diskussionen über die Arten von Voreingenommenheit im CIDOC CRM geführt.

Το συνολικό εύρος του CIDOC CRM μπορεί να συνοψιστεί με απλά λόγια ως επιμελημένη, πραγματική γνώση για το παρελθόν σε ανθρώπινη κλίμακα.

Ωστόσο, μια πιο λεπτομερής και ο χρήσιμος ορισμός μπορεί να διατυπωθεί καθορίζοντας τόσο το Προοριζόμενο πεδίο , έναν ευρύ και μέγιστο περιεχόμενο ορισμό των γενικών αρχών εφαρμογής, όσο και το Πρακτικό πεδίο εφαρμογής , το οποίο εκφράζεται από το συνολικό πεδίο εφαρμογής ενός αυξανόμενου συνόλου αναφοράς συγκεκριμένων, ταυτοποιήσιμων προτύπων και πρακτικών τεκμηρίωσης που το CIDOC CRM στοχεύει να περιγράψει σημασιολογικά, περιορίζοντας, πάντοτε, στις λεπτομέρειες του στους περιορισμούς του Προβλεπόμενου Πεδίου.

Οι λόγοι για αυτές τις διαφορές μεταξύ Το Προβλεπόμενο και Πρακτικό πεδίο εφαρμογής είναι διπλό. Πρώτον, το CIDOC CRM αναπτύσσεται με τρόπο "από κάτω προς τα πάνω", ξεκινώντας από καλά κατανοητές, πραγματικά και ευρέως χρησιμοποιούμενες έννοιες εμπειρογνωμόνων τομέα, οι οποίες αποσαφηνίζονται και σταδιακά γενικεύονται καθώς συναντώνται περισσότερες μορφές κωδικοποίησης. Αυτό αποσκοπεί στην αποφυγή των λανθασμένων προσαρμογών και της ασάφειας που μπορεί μερικές φορές να εντοπιστούν σε προσπάθειες ενδοσκόπησης να βρεθούν γενικές έννοιες για ένα τόσο ευρύ πεδίο και παρέχει σταθερότητα στις γενικεύσεις που βρέθηκαν. Δεύτερον, είναι ένα μέσο για τον εντοπισμό και τη διατήρηση της εστίασης στις έννοιες που χρειάζονται περισσότερο οι κοινότητες που εργάζονται στο πλαίσιο του CIDOC CRM και τη διατήρηση μιας καλά καθορισμένης ατζέντας για την εξέλιξή του.

Το Προοριζόμενο πεδίο εφαρμογής του CIDOC CRM, ως εκ τούτου, μπορεί να οριστεί ως όλες οι πληροφορίες που απαιτούνται για την ανταλλαγή και ενσωμάτωση ετερογενών επιστημονικών και επιστημονικών τεκμηρίων για το παρελθόν σε ανθρώπινη κλίμακα και τα διαθέσιμα τεκμηριωμένα και εμπειρικά στοιχεία για αυτό. Αυτός ο ορισμός απαιτεί περαιτέρω επεξεργασία:

  • Ο όρος «επιστημονική και επιστημονική τεκμηρίωση» προορίζεται να μεταφέρει την απαίτηση ότι το βάθος και η ποιότητα των περιγραφικών πληροφοριών που μπορεί να χειριστεί το CIDOC CRM πρέπει να είναι επαρκείς για σοβαρή ακαδημαϊκή έρευνα. Αυτό δεν σημαίνει ότι αποκλείονται οι πληροφορίες που προορίζονται για παρουσίαση στα μέλη του ευρύτερου κοινού, αλλά μάλλον ότι το CRM προορίζεται να παρέχει το επίπεδο λεπτομέρειας και ακρίβειας που αναμένεται και απαιτείται από τους επαγγελματίες και τους ερευνητές του μουσείου.
  • Ως «διαθέσιμα τεκμηριωμένα και υλικά αποδεικτικά στοιχεία» θεωρούνται όλα τα είδη υλικού που συλλέγονται και εκτίθενται από μουσεία και συναφή ιδρύματα, όπως ορίζεται από το ICOM [1] και άλλες συλλογές, αντικείμενα επί τόπου, τοποθεσίες, μνημεία και άυλη κληρονομιά που σχετίζονται με τομείς όπως η κοινωνική ιστορία, η εθνογραφία, αρχαιολογία, καλές και εφαρμοσμένες τέχνες, φυσική ιστορία, ιστορία των επιστημών και της τεχνολογίας.
  • Η έννοια «τεκμηρίωση» περιλαμβάνει τη λεπτομερή περιγραφή μεμονωμένων αντικειμένων, επί τόπου ή εντός συλλογών, ομάδων αντικειμένων και συλλογών στο σύνολό τους, καθώς και πρακτικές άυλης κληρονομιάς. Αφορά την τρέχουσα κατάστασή τους καθώς και πληροφορίες για το παρελθόν τους. Το CIDOC CRM προορίζεται ειδικά για να καλύψει πληροφορίες σχετικά με τα συμφραζόμενα: το ιστορικό, γεωγραφικό και θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο που δίνει στις συλλογές πολιτιστικής κληρονομιάς μεγάλο μέρος της πολιτιστικής τους σημασίας και αξίας.
  • Η τεκμηρίωση των συλλογών περιλαμβάνει τη λεπτομερή περιγραφή μεμονωμένων αντικειμένων εντός συλλογές, ομάδες αντικειμένων και συλλογές στο σύνολό τους. Το CIDOC CRM προορίζεται ειδικά για να καλύψει πληροφορίες σχετικά με τα συμφραζόμενα: το ιστορικό, γεωγραφικό και θεωρητικό υπόβαθρο που δίνει στις μουσικές συλλογές μεγάλο μέρος της πολιτιστικής τους σημασίας και αξίας.
  • Η ανταλλαγή σχετικών πληροφοριών με βιβλιοθήκες και αρχεία και η εναρμόνιση του CIDOC CRM με τα μοντέλα τους, εμπίπτει στο Προοριζόμενο πεδίο εφαρμογής του CIDOC CRM.
  • Οι πληροφορίες που απαιτούνται αποκλειστικά για τη διαχείριση και τη διαχείριση πολιτιστικών ιδρυμάτων, όπως πληροφορίες που αφορούν στατιστικά προσωπικού, λογιστικής και επισκεπτών, δεν εμπίπτουν στο Προοριζόμενο πεδίο εφαρμογής του CRM CIDOC.

Το Πρακτικό πεδίο εφαρμογής [2] του CRID του CIDOC εκφράζεται ως σύνολο προτύπων αναφοράς και de facto πρότυπα για την τεκμηρίωση της πραγματικής γνώσης που έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί για να καθοδηγήσουν και να επικυρώσουν την ανάπτυξη του CIDOC CRM και την περαιτέρω εξέλιξή του. Το CRM καλύπτει τον ίδιο τομέα λόγου με την ένωση αυτών των προτύπων αναφοράς. Αυτό σημαίνει ότι για δεδομένα που έχουν κωδικοποιηθεί σωστά σύμφωνα με αυτές τις μορφές τεκμηρίωσης μπορεί να υπάρχει μια έκφραση συμβατή με το CIDOC CRM που μεταφέρει το ίδιο νόημα.

Στο πλαίσιο των συνεχιζόμενων εργασιών για την ενημέρωση του προτύπου, συζητήσεις σχετικά με τους τύπους προκατάληψης που υπάρχουν στο CIDOC CRM βρίσκονται σε εξέλιξη στην κοινότητα του CIDOC CRM.

La portée globale du CIDOC CRM peut être résumée en termes simples comme la connaissance factuelle organisée sur le passé à l'échelle humaine.

Cependant, une analyse plus détaillée et une définition utile peut être formulée en définissant à la fois le champ d'application prévu, une définition large et exhaustive des principes généraux d'application, et le champ d'application, qui est exprimé par le champ d'application global d'un ensemble de référence croissant de normes et de pratiques de documentation spécifiques et identifiables que le CIDOC CRM vise à décrire sémantiquement, restreint, toujours, dans ses détails aux limites de la portée prévue.

Les raisons de cette distinction entre La portée prévue et la portée pratique sont doubles. Premièrement, le CIDOC CRM est développé de manière « bottom-up », à partir de concepts d'experts du domaine bien compris, réellement et largement utilisés, qui sont désambiguïsés et progressivement généralisés à mesure que de plus en plus de formes d'encodage sont rencontrées. Cela vise à éviter les erreurs d'adaptation et le flou qui peuvent parfois être trouvés dans les tentatives introspectives de trouver des concepts généraux pour une portée aussi large, et fournit une stabilité aux généralisations trouvées. Deuxièmement, c'est un moyen d'identifier et de rester concentré sur les concepts les plus nécessaires aux communautés travaillant dans le cadre du CIDOC CRM et de maintenir un agenda bien défini pour son évolution.

La portée prévue du CIDOC CRM peut donc être défini comme l'ensemble des informations nécessaires à l'échange et à l'intégration d'une documentation scientifique et savante hétérogène sur le passé à l'échelle humaine et les preuves documentées et empiriques disponibles pour cela. Cette définition nécessite une élaboration plus poussée :

  • Le terme « documentation scientifique et savante » est destiné à exprimer l'exigence que la profondeur et la qualité des informations descriptives qui peuvent être traitées par le CIDOC CRM devraient être suffisantes pour recherche universitaire sérieuse. Cela ne signifie pas que les informations destinées à être présentées au grand public sont exclues, mais plutôt que le CRM est destiné à fournir le niveau de détail et de précision attendu et requis par les professionnels des musées et les chercheurs dans le domaine.
  • En tant que « preuves documentées et matérielles disponibles » sont considérés comme tous les types de documents collectés et exposés par les musées et les institutions associées, tels que définis par l'ICOM[1], et autres collections, objets in situ, sites, monuments et patrimoine immatériel relatifs à des domaines tels que l'histoire sociale, l'ethnographie, l'archéologie, les beaux-arts et les arts appliqués, l'histoire naturelle, l'histoire des sciences et de la technologie.
  • Le concept de « documentation » comprend la description détaillée d'éléments individuels, in situ ou au sein de collections, de groupes d'éléments et de collections dans leur ensemble, ainsi que des pratiques du patrimoine immatériel. Cela concerne leur état actuel ainsi que des informations sur leur passé. Le CIDOC CRM est spécifiquement destiné à couvrir les informations contextuelles : le contexte historique, géographique et théorique qui donne aux collections du patrimoine culturel une grande partie de leur importance et de leur valeur culturelles.
  • La documentation des collections comprend la description détaillée des éléments individuels au sein de collections, groupes d'objets et collections dans leur ensemble. Le CIDOC CRM est spécifiquement destiné à couvrir les informations contextuelles : le contexte historique, géographique et théorique qui donne aux collections des musées une grande partie de leur signification et de leur valeur culturelles.
  • L'échange d'informations pertinentes avec les bibliothèques et les archives, et l'harmonisation du CIDOC CRM avec leurs modèles, entre dans le champ d'application prévu du CIDOC CRM.
  • Les informations requises uniquement pour l'administration et la gestion des institutions culturelles, telles que les informations relatives au personnel, à la comptabilité et aux statistiques sur les visiteurs, ne relèvent pas du champ d'application prévu du CIDOC CRM.

La portée pratique[2] du CIDOC CRM est exprimée en termes de ensemble de normes de référence et de normes de fait pour documenter les connaissances factuelles qui ont été utilisées pour guider et valider le développement du CIDOC CRM et son évolution future. Le CRM recouvre le même domaine de discours que l'union de ces référentiels ; cela signifie que pour les données correctement encodées selon ces formats de documentation, il peut y avoir une expression compatible CIDOC CRM qui véhicule le même sens.

Dans le cadre du travail continu de mise à jour de la norme, des discussions sur les types de biais présents dans le CIDOC CRM sont en cours au sein de la communauté CIDOC CRM.

O escopo geral do CIDOC CRM pode ser resumido em termos simples como o conhecimento factual com curadoria sobre o passado em uma escala humana.

No entanto, uma abordagem mais detalhada e uma definição útil pode ser articulada definindo tanto o Escopo pretendido , uma definição ampla e inclusiva ao máximo dos princípios gerais de aplicação, quanto o Escopo Prático , que é expresso pelo escopo geral de um conjunto de referência crescente de padrões e práticas de documentação específicos e identificáveis ​​que o CIDOC CRM visa descrever semanticamente, restringindo, sempre, em seus detalhes às limitações do Escopo Pretendido.

As razões para essas distinções entre O escopo pretendido e o prático são duplos. Em primeiro lugar, o CIDOC CRM é desenvolvido de uma maneira “ascendente”, partindo de conceitos bem entendidos, reais e amplamente usados ​​de especialistas de domínio, que são eliminados de ambiguidade e gradualmente generalizados à medida que mais formas de codificação são encontradas. Isso visa evitar as adaptações errôneas e vagas que às vezes podem ser encontradas em tentativas orientadas para a introspecção de encontrar conceitos abrangentes para um escopo tão amplo e fornece estabilidade para as generalizações encontradas. Em segundo lugar, é um meio de identificar e manter o foco nos conceitos mais necessários às comunidades que atuam no âmbito do CRM CIDOC e de manter uma agenda bem definida para sua evolução.

O Escopo Pretendido do CIDOC CRM pode, portanto, ser definido como todas as informações necessárias para o intercâmbio e integração de documentação científica e acadêmica heterogênea sobre o passado em uma escala humana e as evidências documentadas e empíricas disponíveis para isso. Esta definição requer mais elaboração:

  • O termo "documentação científica e acadêmica" pretende transmitir o requisito de que a profundidade e a qualidade da informação descritiva que pode ser tratada pelo CIDOC CRM deve ser suficiente para pesquisa acadêmica séria. Isso não significa que as informações destinadas à apresentação ao público em geral sejam excluídas, mas sim que o CRM se destina a fornecer o nível de detalhe e precisão esperados e exigidos por profissionais de museus e pesquisadores da área.
  • Como “evidências documentais e materiais disponíveis” são considerados todos os tipos de materiais coletados e exibidos por museus e instituições relacionadas, conforme definido pelo ICOM [1] , e outras coleções, objetos in-situ, sítios, monumentos e patrimônio imaterial relacionados a campos como história social, etnografia, arqueologia, belas artes e artes aplicadas, história natural, história das ciências e tecnologia.
  • O conceito de “documentação” inclui a descrição detalhada de itens individuais, in situ ou dentro de coleções, grupos de itens e coleções como um todo, bem como práticas de patrimônio imaterial. Diz respeito ao seu estado atual, bem como às informações sobre seu passado. O CIDOC CRM destina-se especificamente a cobrir informações contextuais: o contexto histórico, geográfico e teórico que dá às coleções de patrimônio cultural muito de sua importância e valor cultural.
  • A documentação das coleções inclui a descrição detalhada de itens individuais dentro coleções, grupos de itens e coleções como um todo. O CIDOC CRM destina-se especificamente a cobrir informações contextuais: o contexto histórico, geográfico e teórico que dá às coleções de museus muito do seu significado e valor cultural.
  • A troca de informações relevantes com bibliotecas e arquivos, e a harmonização do CIDOC CRM com seus modelos, enquadra-se no escopo pretendido do CIDOC CRM.
  • As informações exigidas exclusivamente para a administração e gestão de instituições culturais, tais como informações relativas a pessoal, contabilidade e estatísticas de visitantes, não se enquadram no âmbito pretendido do CIDOC CRM.

O escopo prático [2] do CIDOC CRM é expresso em termos do conjunto de padrões de referência e padrões de fato para documentar o conhecimento factual que foram usados ​​para orientar e validar o desenvolvimento do CIDOC CRM e sua evolução posterior. O CRM cobre o mesmo domínio do discurso que a união desses padrões de referência; isso significa que, para dados codificados corretamente de acordo com esses formatos de documentação, pode haver uma expressão compatível com CIDOC CRM que transmita o mesmo significado.

Como parte do trabalho contínuo de manter o padrão atualizado, discussões sobre os tipos de preconceito presentes no CIDOC CRM estão em andamento na comunidade CIDOC CRM.

Общий объем CIDOC CRM можно описать простыми словами, как тщательно отобранные, фактические знания о прошлом в человеческом масштабе.

Однако более подробные и полезное определение можно сформулировать, определив как Предполагаемый объем , широкое и максимально всеобъемлющее определение общих принципов применения, так и Практический объем , который выражается общим объемом растущего набора ссылок конкретных идентифицируемых стандартов и практик документации, которые CIDOC CRM стремится семантически описывать, всегда ограничивая в деталях ограничениями Предполагаемого объема.

Причины этого различия между Предполагаемая и практическая сфера применения двояка. Во-первых, CIDOC CRM разрабатывается «снизу вверх», исходя из хорошо понятных, фактически и широко используемых концепций экспертов в предметной области, которые устраняются и постепенно обобщаются по мере появления большего количества форм кодирования. Это направлено на то, чтобы избежать неправильной адаптации и расплывчатости, которые иногда можно найти в попытках самоанализа найти всеобъемлющие концепции для такого широкого диапазона, и обеспечивает стабильность найденным обобщениям. Во-вторых, это средство для определения и сохранения в центре внимания концепций, наиболее необходимых сообществам, работающим в области CIDOC CRM, и для поддержания четко определенной программы его развития.

Предполагаемый объем CRM CIDOC, таким образом, можно определить как всю информацию, необходимую для обмена и интеграции разнородной научной и научной документации о прошлом в человеческом масштабе, а также имеющихся документальных и эмпирических свидетельств для этого. Это определение требует доработки:

  • Термин «научная и научная документация» предназначен для передачи требования о том, что глубина и качество описательной информации, которую может обрабатывать CIDOC CRM, должны быть достаточными для серьезное академическое исследование. Это не означает, что информация, предназначенная для представления широкой публике, исключается, а скорее, что CRM предназначена для обеспечения уровня детализации и точности, ожидаемого и требуемого музейными профессионалами и исследователями в этой области.
  • Под «доступными документальными и вещественными доказательствами» понимаются все типы материалов, собранные и выставленные в музеях и связанных с ними учреждениях, в соответствии с определением ICOM [1] и другие коллекции, объекты на местах, места, памятники и нематериальное наследие, относящиеся к таким областям, как социальная история, этнография, археология, изобразительное и прикладное искусство, естествознание, история. наук и технологий.
  • Понятие «документация» включает подробное описание отдельных предметов на месте или внутри коллекций, групп предметов и коллекций в целом, а также практики нематериального наследия. Это касается их текущего состояния, а также информации об их прошлом. CIDOC CRM специально предназначена для охвата контекстной информации: исторической, географической и теоретической основы, которая придает коллекциям культурного наследия большую часть их культурной значимости и ценности.
  • Документация коллекций включает подробное описание отдельных предметов внутри коллекции, группы предметов и коллекции в целом. CIDOC CRM специально предназначена для охвата контекстной информации: исторической, географической и теоретической основы, которая придает музейным коллекциям большую часть их культурной значимости и ценности.
  • Обмен соответствующей информацией с библиотеками и архивами, а также согласование CIDOC CRM с их моделями входит в предполагаемую область применения CIDOC CRM.
  • Информация, необходимая исключительно для администрирования и управления учреждениями культуры, такая как информация, касающаяся персонала, бухгалтерского учета и статистики посетителей, выходит за рамки предполагаемой области применения CIDOC CRM.

Практический объем [2] CIDOC CRM выражается в набор эталонных стандартов и стандартов де-факто для документирования фактических знаний, которые использовались для руководства и проверки разработки CIDOC CRM и ее дальнейшего развития. CRM охватывает ту же область дискурса, что и объединение этих эталонных стандартов; это означает, что для данных, правильно закодированных в соответствии с этими форматами документации, может существовать выражение, совместимое с CIDOC CRM, которое передает то же значение.

В рамках постоянной работы по поддержанию стандарта в актуальном состоянии, в сообществе CIDOC CRM ведутся обсуждения типов предвзятости, присутствующей в CIDOC CRM.

CIDOC CRM 的整体范围可以简单地概括为以人类为尺度对过去进行策划的事实知识

然而,更详细和可以通过定义预期范围(一般应用原则的广泛和最大包容性定义)和实际范围(由整体范围表示)来阐明有用的定义CIDOC CRM 旨在语义描述、限制、始终在其细节中限制预期范围的不断增加的特定、可识别的文档标准和实践的参考集。

造成这种区别的原因预期范围和实际范围是双重的。首先,CIDOC CRM 以“自下而上”的方式开发,从领域专家已经很好理解、实际和广泛使用的概念开始,随着遇到更多形式的编码,这些概念被消除歧义并逐渐泛化。这旨在避免在自省驱动的尝试中发现如此广泛的总体概念时有时会发现的错误适应和模糊性,并为发现的概括提供稳定性。其次,它是一种方法,可以确定并关注在 CIDOC CRM 范围内工作的社区最需要的概念,并为其发展保持明确定义的议程。

预期范围因此,CIDOC CRM 的信息可能被定义为在人类尺度上交换和整合关于过去的异类科学和学术文件以及可用的文件和经验证据所需的所有信息。该定义需要进一步阐述:

  • 术语“科学和学术文献”旨在传达这样的要求,即 CIDOC CRM 可以处理的描述性信息的深度和质量应该足以满足以下要求:严肃的学术研究。这并不意味着旨在向公众展示的信息被排除在外,而是 CRM 旨在提供博物馆专业人士和该领域研究人员所期望和要求的详细程度和精确度。
  • ICOM 定义的博物馆和相关机构收集和展示的所有类型的材料都被视为“可用的文件和物证”[1],以及与社会历史、民族志、考古学、美术和应用艺术、自然历史、历史等领域相关的其他收藏品、原地物品、遗址、纪念碑和非物质遗产科学和技术。
  • “文献”这一概念包括对单个项目的详细描述,包括原地或收藏品、项目组和整个收藏品,以及非物质遗产的实践。它与他们当前的状态以及有关他们过去的信息有关。 CIDOC CRM 专门用于涵盖背景信息:历史、地理和理论背景,这些背景赋予了文化遗产收藏品许多文化意义和价值。
  • 收藏品文档包括对其中各个项目的详细描述集合、项目组和集合作为一个整体。 CIDOC CRM 专门用于涵盖上下文信息:赋予博物馆藏品许多文化意义和价值的历史、地理和理论背景。
  • 与图书馆和档案馆的相关信息交换以及 CIDOC CRM 与其模型的协调都属于 CIDOC CRM 的预期范围。
  • 文化机构的行政管理所需的信息,例如与人事、会计和访客统计有关的信息,不属于 CIDOC CRM 的预期范围。

CIDOC CRM 的实践范围[2]一套参考标准和事实标准,用于记录事实知识,用于指导和验证 CIDOC CRM 的发展及其进一步发展。 CRM 涵盖与这些参考标准的联合相同的讨论领域;这意味着对于根据这些文档格式正确编码的数据,可以有一个 CIDOC CRM 兼容的表达方式来传达相同的含义。

作为使标准保持最新的持续工作的一部分,CIDOC CRM 社区内正在讨论 CIDOC CRM 中存在的偏见类型。

References:

[1]

The ICOM Statutes provide a definition of the term “museum” at http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

[2]

The Practical Scope of the CIDOC CRM, including a list of the relevant museum documentation standards, is discussed in more detail on the CIDOC CRM website at http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html

[1]

Die ICOM-Statuten enthalten eine Definition des Begriffs „Museum“ unter http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

[2]

Der praktische Anwendungsbereich des CIDOC CRM, einschließlich einer Liste der relevanten Museumsdokumentationsstandards, wird auf der CIDOC CRM-Website unter http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html ausführlicher erörtert

[1]

Το καταστατικό της ICOM παρέχει έναν ορισμό του όρου «μουσείο» στη διεύθυνση http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

[2]

Το Πρακτικό πεδίο εφαρμογής του CIDOC CRM, συμπεριλαμβανομένης μιας λίστας των σχετικών προτύπων τεκμηρίωσης του μουσείου, συζητείται λεπτομερέστερα στον ιστότοπο του CIDOC CRM στη διεύθυνση http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html

[1]

Les statuts de l'ICOM donnent une définition du terme « musée » sur http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

[2]

La portée pratique du CIDOC CRM, y compris une liste des normes de documentation muséales pertinentes, est discutée plus en détail sur le site Web du CIDOC CRM à l'adresse http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html

[1]

Os Estatutos do ICOM fornecem uma definição do termo “museu” em http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

[2]

O escopo prático do CIDOC CRM, incluindo uma lista dos padrões relevantes de documentação do museu, é discutido em mais detalhes no site do CIDOC CRM em http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html

[1]

В Уставе ИКОМ дается определение термина «музей» по адресу http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2

[2]

Практическая область применения CIDOC CRM, включая список соответствующих стандартов музейной документации, более подробно обсуждается на веб-сайте CIDOC CRM по адресу http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html

[1]

ICOM 章程在 http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2 上提供了术语“博物馆”的定义

[2]

CIDOC CRM 的实际范围,包括相关博物馆文件标准的列表,在 CIDOC CRM 网站上有更详细的讨论,网址为 http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/scope.html

1.3 Compatibility with the CIDOC CRM

Users intending to take advantage of the semantic interoperability offered by the CIDOC CRM should ensure conformance with the relevant data structures. Conformance pertains either to data to be made accessible in an integrated environment or intended for transport to other environments. Any encoding of data in a formal language that preserves the relations of the classes, properties, and inheritance rules defined by this International Standard, is regarded as conformant.

Conformance with the CIDOC CRM does not require complete matching of all local documentation structures, nor that all concepts and structures present in this International Standard be implemented. This International Standard is intended to allow room both for extensions, needed to capture the full richness of cultural documentation, and for simplification, in the interests of economy. A system will be deemed partially conformant if it supports a subset of subclasses and sub properties defined by this International Standard. Designers of the system should publish details of the constructs that are supported.

The focus of the CIDOC CRM is the exchange and mediation of structured information. It does not require the interpretation of unstructured (free text) information into a structured, logical form. Unstructured information is supported, but falls outside the scope of conformance considerations.

Any documentation system will be deemed conformant with this International Standard, regardless of the internal data structures it uses; if a deterministic logical algorithm can be constructed, that transforms data contained in the system into a directly compatible form without loss of meaning.

No assumptions are made as to the nature of this algorithm. "Without loss of meaning" signifies that designers and users of the system are satisfied that the data representation corresponds to the semantic definitions provided by this International Standard.

1.4 Terminology

The following definitions of key terminology used in this document are provided both as an aid to readers unfamiliar with object-oriented modelling terminology, and to specify the precise usage of terms that are sometimes applied inconsistently across the object-oriented modelling community for the purpose of this document. Where applicable, the editors have tried to consistently use terminology that is compatible with that of the Resource Description Framework (RDF),[3] a recommendation of the World Wide Web Consortium. The editors have tried to find a language, which is comprehensible to the non-computer expert and precise enough for the computer expert so that both understand the intended meaning.

class

A class is a category of items that share one or more common traits serving as criteria to identify the items belonging to the class. These properties need not be explicitly formulated in logical terms, but may be described in a text (here called a scope note) that refers to a common conceptualisation of domain experts. The sum of these traits is called the intension of the class. A class may be the domain or range of none, one or more properties formally defined in a model. The formally defined properties need not be part of the intension of their domains or ranges: such properties are optional. An item that belongs to a class is called an instance of this class. A class is associated with an open set of real-life instances, known as the extension of the class. Here “open” is used in the sense that it is generally beyond our capabilities to know all instances of a class in the world and indeed that the future may bring new instances about at any time (Open World). Therefore, a class cannot be defined by enumerating its instances. A class plays a role analogous to a grammatical noun, and can be completely defined without reference to any other construct (unlike properties, which must have an unambiguously defined domain and range). In some contexts, the terms individual class, entity or node are used synonymously with class.

For example:

Person is a class. To be a Person may actually be determined by DNA characteristics, but we all know what a Person is. A Person may have the property of being a member of a Group, but it is not necessary to be member of a Group in order to be a Person. We shall never know all Persons of the past. There will be more Persons in the future.

subclass

A subclass is a class that is a specialization of another class (its superclass). Specialization or the IsA relationship means that:

  1. all instances of the subclass are also instances of its superclass,
  2. the intension of the subclass extends the intension of its superclass, i.e., its traits are more restrictive than that of its superclass and
  3. the subclass inherits the definition of all of the properties declared for its superclass without exceptions (strict inheritance), in addition to having none, one or more properties of its own.

A subclass can have more than one immediate superclass and consequently inherits the properties of all of its superclasses (multiple inheritance). The IsA relationship or specialization between two or more classes gives rise to a structure known as a class hierarchy. The IsA relationship is transitive and may not be cyclic. In some contexts (e.g., the programming language C++) the term derived class is used synonymously with subclass.

For example:

Every Person IsA Biological Object, or Person is a subclass of Biological Object.

Also, every Person IsA Actor. A Person may die. However, other kinds of Actors, such as companies, don’t die (c.f. 2).

Every Biological Object IsA Physical Object. A Physical Object can be moved. Hence, a Person can be moved also (c.f. 3).

superclass

A superclass is a class that is a generalization of one or more other classes (its subclasses), which means that it subsumes all instances of its subclasses, and that it can also have additional instances that do not belong to any of its subclasses. The intension of the superclass is less restrictive than any of its subclasses. This subsumption relationship or generalization is the inverse of the IsA relationship or specialization.

For example:

“Biological Object subsumes Person” is synonymous with “Biological Object is a superclass of Person”. It needs fewer traits to identify an item as a Biological Object than to identify it as a Person.

intension

The intension of a class or property is its intended meaning. It consists of one or more common traits shared by all instances of the class or property. These traits need not be explicitly formulated in logical terms, but may just be described in a text (here called a scope note) that refers to a conceptualisation common to domain experts. In particular, the so-called primitive concepts, which make up most of the CIDOC CRM, cannot be further reduced to other concepts by logical terms.

extension

The extension of a class is the set of all real-life instances belonging to the class that fulfil the criteria of its intension. This set is “open” in the sense that it is generally beyond our capabilities to know all instances of a class in the world and indeed that the future may bring new instances about at any time (Open World). An information system may at any point in time refer to some instances of a class, which form a subset of its extension.

scope note

A scope note is a textual description of the intension of a class or property.

Scope notes are not formal modelling constructs, but are provided to help explain the intended meaning and application of the CIDOC CRM’s classes and properties. Basically, they refer to a conceptualisation common to domain experts and disambiguate between different possible interpretations. Illustrative example instances of classes and properties are also regularly provided in the scope notes for explanatory purposes.

instance

An instance of a class is a real-world item that fulfils the criteria of the intension of the class. Note, that the number of instances declared for a class in an information system is typically less than the total in the real world. For example, you are an instance of Person, but you are not mentioned in all information systems describing Persons.

For example:

The painting known as the “The Mona Lisa” is an instance of the class Human Made Object.

An instance of a property is a factual relation between an instance of the domain and an instance of the range of the property that matches the criteria of the intension of the property.

For example:

The Mona Lisa has former or current owner. The Louvre is an instance of the property P51 has former or current owner (is former or current owner of).

property

A property serves to define a relationship of a specific kind between two classes. The property is characterized by an intension, which is conveyed by a scope note. A property plays a role analogous to a grammatical verb, in that it must be defined with reference to both its domain and range, which are analogous to the subject and object in grammar (unlike classes, which can be defined independently). It is arbitrary, which class is selected as the domain, just as the choice between active and passive voice in grammar is arbitrary. In other words, a property can be interpreted in both directions, with two distinct, but related interpretations. Properties may themselves have properties that relate to other classes (This feature is used in this model only in order to describe dynamic subtyping of properties). Properties can also be specialized in the same manner as classes, resulting in IsA relationships between subproperties and their superproperties.

In some contexts, the terms attribute, reference, link, role or slot are used synonymously with property.

For example:

“Physical Human-Made Thing depicts CRM Entity” is equivalent to “CRM Entity is depicted by Physical Human-Made Thing”.

inverse of

The inverse of a property is the reinterpretation of a property from range to domain without more general or more specific meaning, similar to the choice between active and passive voice in some languages. In contrast to some knowledge representation languages, such as RDF and OWL, we regard that the inverse of a property is not a property in its own right that needs an explicit declaration of being inverse of another, but an interpretation implicitly existing for any property. The inverse of the inverse of a property is identical to the property itself, i.e., its primary sense of direction.

For example:

“CRM Entity is depicted by Physical Human-Made Thing” is the inverse of “Physical Human-Made Thing depicts CRM Entity”

subproperty

A subproperty is a property that is a specialization of another property (its superproperty). Specialization or IsA relationship means that:

  1. all instances of the subproperty are also instances of its superproperty,
  2. the intension of the subproperty extends the intension of the superproperty, i.e., its traits are more restrictive than that of its superproperty,
  3. the domain of the subproperty is the same as the domain of its superproperty or a subclass of that domain,
  4. the range of the subproperty is the same as the range of its superproperty or a subclass of that range,
  5. the subproperty inherits the definition of all of the properties declared for its superproperty without exceptions (strict inheritance), in addition to having none, one or more properties of its own.

A subproperty can have more than one immediate superproperty and consequently inherits the properties of all of its superproperties (multiple inheritance). The IsA relationship or specialization between two or more properties gives rise to the structure we call a property hierarchy. The IsA relationship is transitive and may not be cyclic.

Some object-oriented programming languages, such as C++, do not contain constructs that allow for the expression of the specialization of properties as sub-properties.

Alternatively, a property may be subproperty of the inverse of another property, i.e., reading the property from range to domain. In that case:

  1. all instances of the subproperty are also instances of the inverse of the other property,
  2. the intension of the subproperty extends the intension of the inverse of the other property, i.e., its traits are more restrictive than that of the inverse of the other property,
  3. the domain of the subproperty is the same as the range of the other property or a subclass of that range,
  4. the range of the subproperty is the same as the domain of the other property or a subclass of that domain,
  5. the subproperty inherits the definition of all of the properties declared for the other property without exceptions (strict inheritance), in addition to having none, one or more properties of its own. The definitions of inherited properties have to be interpreted in the inverse sense of direction of the subproperty, i.e., from range to domain.

superproperty

A superproperty is a property that is a generalization of one or more other properties (its subproperties), which means that it subsumes all instances of its subproperties, and that it can also have additional instances that do not belong to any of its subproperties. The intension of the superproperty is less restrictive than any of its subproperties. The subsumption relationship or generalization is the inverse of the IsA relationship or specialization. A superproperty may be a generalization of the inverse of another property.

domain

The domain is the class for which a property is formally defined. This means that instances of the property are applicable to instances of its domain class. A property must have exactly one domain, although the domain class may always contain instances for which the property is not instantiated. The domain class is analogous to the grammatical subject of the phrase for which the property is analogous to the verb. It is arbitrary which class is selected as the domain and which as the range, just as the choice between active and passive voice in grammar is arbitrary. Property names in the CIDOC CRM are designed to be semantically meaningful and grammatically correct when read from domain to range. In addition, the inverse property name, normally given in parentheses, is also designed to be semantically meaningful and grammatically correct when read from range to domain.

range

The range is the class that comprises all potential values of a property. That means that instances of the property can link only to instances of its range class. A property must have exactly one range, although the range class may always contain instances that are not the value of the property. The range class is analogous to the grammatical object of a phrase for which the property is analogous to the verb. It is arbitrary which class is selected as domain and which as range, just as the choice between active and passive voice in grammar is arbitrary. Property names in the CIDOC CRM are designed to be semantically meaningful and grammatically correct when read from domain to range. In addition, the inverse property name, normally given in parentheses, is also designed to be semantically meaningful and grammatically correct when read from range to domain.

inheritance

Inheritance of properties from superclasses to subclasses means that if an item x is an instance of a class A, then:

  1. all properties that must hold for the instances of any of the superclasses of A must also hold for item x, and
  2. all optional properties that may hold for the instances of any of the superclasses of A may also hold for item x.

strict

inheritance

Strict inheritance means that there are no exceptions to the inheritance of properties from superclasses to subclasses. For instance, some systems may declare that elephants are grey, and regard a white elephant as an exception. Under strict inheritance it would hold that: if all elephants were grey, then a white elephant could not be an elephant. Obviously not all elephants are grey. To be grey is not part of the intension of the concept elephant but an optional property. The CIDOC CRM applies strict inheritance as a normalization principle.

multiple

inheritance

Multiple inheritance means that a class A may have more than one immediate superclass. The extension of a class with multiple immediate superclasses is a subset of the intersection of all extensions of its superclasses. The intension of a class with multiple immediate superclasses extends the intensions of all its superclasses, i.e., its traits are more restrictive than any of its superclasses. If multiple inheritance is used, the resulting “class hierarchy” is a directed graph and not a tree structure. If it is represented as an indented list, there are necessarily repetitions of the same class at different positions in the list.

For example:

Person is both, an Actor and a Biological Object.

multiple Instantiation

Multiple Instantiation is the term that describes the case that an instance of class A is also regarded as an instance of one or more other classes B1...n at the same time. When multiple instantiation is used, it has the effect that the properties of all these classes become available to describe this instance. For instance, some particular cases of destruction may also be activities (e.g., Herostratos’ deed), but not all destructions are activities (e.g., destruction of Herculaneum). In comparison, multiple inheritance describes the case that all instances of a class A are implicitly instances of all superclasses of A, by virtue of the definition of the class A, whereas the combination of classes used for multiple instantiation is a characteristic of particular instances only. It is important to note that multiple instantiation is not allowed using combinations of disjoint classes.

endurant, perdurant

“The difference between enduring and perduring entities (which we shall also call endurants and perdurants) is related to their behaviour in time. Endurants are wholly present (i.e., all their proper parts are present) at any time they are present. Perdurants, on the other hand, just extend in time by accumulating different temporal parts, so that, at any time they are present, they are only partially present, in the sense that some of their proper temporal parts (e.g., their previous or future phases) may be not present. E.g., the piece of paper you are reading now is wholly present, while some temporal parts of your reading are not present any more. Philosophers say that endurants are entities that are in time, while lacking however temporal parts (so to speak, all their parts flow with them in time). Perdurants, on the other hand, are entities that happen in time, and can have temporal parts (all their parts are fixed in time).” (Gangemi et al. 2002, pp. 166-181).

shortcut

A shortcut is a formally defined single property that represents a deduction or join of a data path in the CIDOC CRM. The scope notes of all properties characterized as shortcuts describe in words the equivalent deduction. Shortcuts are introduced for the cases where common documentation practice refers only to the deduction rather than to the fully developed path. For example, museums often only record the dimension of an object without documenting the Measurement that observed it. The CIDOC CRM declares shortcuts explicitly as single properties in order to allow the user to describe cases in which he has less detailed knowledge than the full data path would need to be described. For each shortcut, the CIDOC CRM contains in its schema the properties of the full data path explaining the shortcut.

monotonic

reasoning

Monotonic reasoning is a term from knowledge representation. A reasoning form is monotonic if an addition to the set of propositions making up the knowledge base never determines a decrement in the set of conclusions that may be derived from the knowledge base via inference rules. In practical terms, if experts enter subsequently correct statements to an information system, the system should not regard any results from those statements as invalid, when a new one is entered. The CIDOC CRM is designed for monotonic reasoning and so enables conflict-free merging of huge stores of knowledge.

disjoint

Classes are disjoint if the intersection of their extensions is an empty set. In other words, they have no common instances in any possible world.

primitive

The term primitive as used in knowledge representation characterizes a concept that is declared and its meaning is agreed upon, but that is not defined by a logical deduction from other concepts. For example, mother may be described as a female human with child. Then mother is not a primitive concept. Event however is a primitive concept.

Most of the CIDOC CRM is made up of primitive concepts.

Open World

The “Open World Assumption” is a term from knowledge base systems. It characterizes knowledge base systems that assume the information stored is incomplete relative to the universe of discourse they intend to describe. This incompleteness may be due to the inability of the maintainer to provide sufficient information or due to more fundamental problems of cognition in the system’s domain. Such problems are characteristic of cultural information systems. Our records about the past are necessarily incomplete. In addition, there may be items that cannot be clearly assigned to a given class.

In particular, absence of a certain property for an item described in the system does not mean that this item does not have this property. For example, if one item is described as Biological Object and another as Physical Object, this does not imply that the latter may not be a Biological Object as well. Therefore, complements of a class with respect to a superclass cannot be concluded in general from an information system using the Open World Assumption. For example, one cannot list “all Physical Objects known to the system that are not Biological Objects in the real world”, but one may of course list “all items known to the system as Physical Objects but that are not known to the system as Biological Objects”.

complement

The complement of a class A with respect to one of its superclasses B is the set of all instances of B that are not instances of A. Formally, it is the set-theoretic difference of the extension of B minus the extension of A. Compatible extensions of the CIDOC CRM should not declare any class with the intension of them being the complement of one or more other classes. To do so will normally violate the desire to describe an Open World. For example, for all possible cases of human gender, male should not be declared as the complement of female or vice versa. What if someone is both or even of another kind?

query containment

Query containment is a problem from database theory: A query X contains another query Y, if for each possible population of a database the answer set to query X contains also the answer set to query Y. If query X and Y were classes, then X would be superclass of Y.

interoperability

Interoperability means the capability of different information systems to communicate some of their contents. In particular, it may mean that

  1. two systems can exchange information, and/or
  2. multiple systems can be accessed with a single method.

Generally, syntactic interoperability is distinguished from semantic interoperability. Syntactic interoperability means that the information encoding of the involved systems and the access protocols are compatible, so that information can be processed as described above without error. However, this does not mean that each system processes the data in a manner consistent with the intended meaning. For example, one system may use a table called “Actor” and another one called “Agent”. With syntactic interoperability, data from both tables may only be retrieved as distinct, even though they may have exactly the same meaning. To overcome this situation, semantic interoperability has to be added. The CIDOC CRM relies on existing syntactic interoperability and is concerned only with adding semantic interoperability.

semantic interoperability

Semantic interoperability means the capability of different information systems to communicate information consistent with the intended meaning. In more detail, the intended meaning encompasses

  1. the data structure elements involved,
  2. the terminology appearing as data and
  3. the identifiers used in the data for factual items such as places, people, objects etc.

Obviously, communication about data structure must be resolved first. In this case consistent communication means that data can be transferred between data structure elements with the same intended meaning or that data from elements with the same intended meaning can be merged. In practice, the different levels of generalization in different systems do not allow the achievement of this ideal. Therefore, semantic interoperability is regarded as achieved if elements can be found that provide a reasonably close generalization for the transfer or merge. This problem is being studied theoretically as the query containment problem. The CIDOC CRM is only concerned with semantic interoperability on the level of data structure elements.

property quantifiers

We use the term "property quantifiers" for the declaration of the allowed number of instances of a certain property that can refer to a particular instance of the range class or the domain class of that property. These declarations are ontological, i.e., they refer to the nature of the real world described and not to our current knowledge. For example, each person has exactly one father, but collected knowledge may refer to none, one or many.

universal

The fundamental ontological distinction between universals and particulars can be informally understood by considering their relationship with instantiation: particulars are entities that have no instances in any possible world; universals are entities that do have instances. Classes and properties (corresponding to predicates in a logical language) are usually considered to be universals. (after Gangemi et al. 2002, pp. 166-181).

knowledge creation process

All knowledge contained in an information system must have been introduced into that system by some human agent, either directly or indirectly. Despite this fact, many, if not most, statements within such a system will lack specific attribution of authority. That being said, in the domain of cultural heritage, it is common practice that, for the processes of collection documentation and management, there are clearly and explicitly elaborated systems of responsibility outlining by whom and how knowledge can be added and or modified in the system. Ideally these systems are specified in institutional policy and protocol documents. Thus, it is reasonable to hold that all such statements that lack explicit authority attribution within the information system can, in fact, be read as the official view of the administrating institution of that system.

Such a position does not mean to imply that an information system represents at any particular moment a completed phase of knowledge that the institution promotes. Rather, it means to underline that, in a CH context, a managed set of data, at any state of elaboration, will in fact embody an adherence to some explicit code of standards which guarantees the validity of that data within the scope of said standards and all practical limitations. So long as the information is under active management it remains continuously open to revision and improvement as further research reveals further understanding surrounding the objects of concern.

A distinct exception to this rule is represented by information in the data set that carries with it an explicit statement of responsibility.

In CIDOC CRM such statements of responsibility are expressed though knowledge creation events such as E13 Attribute Assignment and its relevant subclasses. Any information in a CIDOC CRM model that is based on an explicit creation event for that piece of information, where the creator’s identity has been given, is attributed to the authority and assigned to the responsibility of the actor identified as causal in that event. For any information in the system connected to knowledge creation events that do not explicitly reference their creator, as well as any information not connected to creation events, the responsibility falls back to the institution responsible for the database/knowledge graph. That means that for information only expressed through shortcuts such as P2 has type, where no knowledge creation event has been explicitly specified, the originating creation event cannot be deduced and the responsibility for the information can never be any other body than the institution responsible for the whole information system.

In the case of an institution taking over stewardship of a database transferred into their custody, two relations of responsibility for the knowledge therein can be envisioned. If the institution accepts the dataset and undertakes to maintain and update it, then they take on responsibility for that information and become the default authority behind its statements as described above. If, on the other hand, the institution accepts the data set and stores it without change as a closed resource, then it can be considered that the default authority remains the original steward.

transitivity

Transitivity is defined in the standard way found in mathematics or logic: A property P is transitive if the domain and range is the same class and for all instances x, y, z of this class the following is the case: If x is related by P to y and y is related by P to z, then x is related by P to z. The intention of a property as described in the scope note will decide whether a property is transitive or not. For example, the property P121 overlaps with between instances of E53 Place is not transitive, while the property P89 falls within (contains) between instances of E53 Place and the property P46 is composed of (forms part of) between instances of E18 Physical Thing are both transitive. Transitivity is especially useful when CIDOC CRM is implemented in a system with deduction.

symmetry

Symmetry is defined in the standard way found in mathematics or logic: A property P is symmetric if the domain and range are the same class and for all instances x, y of this class the following is the case: If x is related by P to y, then y is related by P to x. The intention of a property as described in the scope note will decide whether a property is symmetric or not. An example of a symmetric property is E53 Place. P122 borders with: E53 Place. The names of symmetric properties have no parenthetical form, because reading in the range-to-domain direction is the same as the domain-to-range reading.

reflexivity

Reflexivity is defined in the standard way found in mathematics or logic: A property P is reflexive if the domain and range are the same class and for all instances x, of this class the following is the case: x is related by P to itself. The intention of a property as described in the scope note will decide whether a property is reflexive or not. An example of a reflexive property is E53 Place. P89 falls within (contains): E53 Place.

References:

[3]

Information about the Resource Description Framework (RDF) can be found at http://www.w3.org/RDF/

[3]

[3]

[3]

[3]

[3]

[3]

1.5 Applied Form

The CIDOC CRM is an ontology in the sense used in computer science. It has been expressed as an object-oriented semantic model, in the hope that this formulation will be comprehensible to both documentation experts and information scientists alike, while at the same time being readily converted to machine-readable formats such as RDF Schema or OWL. It can be implemented in Relational or Object-Oriented schema. CIDOC CRM instances can also be encoded in RDF, JSON LD, XML, OWL among and others

Although the definition of the CIDOC CRM provided here is complete, it is an intentionally compact and concise presentation of the CIDOC CRM’s 81 classes and 160 unique properties. It does not attempt to articulate the inheritance of properties by subclasses throughout the class hierarchy (this would require the declaration of several thousand properties, as opposed to 160). However, this definition does contain all of the information necessary to infer and automatically generate a full declaration of all properties, including inherited properties.

1.5.1 Naming Conventions

The following naming conventions have been applied throughout the CIDOC CRM:

  • Classes are identified by numbers preceded by the letter “E” (historically classes were sometimes referred to as “Entities”), and are named using noun phrases (nominal groups) using title case (initial capitals). For example, E63 Beginning of Existence.
  • Properties are identified by numbers preceded by the letter “P,” and are named in both directions using verbal phrases in lower case. Properties with the character of states are named in the present tense, such as “has type”, whereas properties related to events are named in past tense, such as “carried out.” For example, P126 employed (was employed in).
  • Property names should be read in their non-parenthetical form for the domain-to-range direction, and in parenthetical form for the range-to-domain direction. Reading a property in range-to-domain direction is equivalent to the inverse of that property. Following a current notational practice in OWL knowledge representation language, we represent inverse properties in this text by adding a letter “i” following the identification number and the parenthetical form of the full property name, such as P59i is located on or within, which is the inverse of P59 has section (is located on or within).
  • Properties with a range that is a subclass of E59 Primitive Value (such as E1 CRM Entity. P3 has note: E62 String, for example) have no parenthetical name form, because reading the property name in the range-to-domain direction is not regarded as meaningful.
  • Properties that have identical domain and range are either symmetric or transitive. Instantiating a symmetric property implies that the same relation holds for both the domain-to-range and the range-to-domain directions. An example of this is E53 Place. P122 borders with: E53 Place. The names of symmetric properties have no parenthetical form, because reading in the range-to-domain direction is the same as the domain-to-range reading. Transitive asymmetric properties, such as E4 Period. P9 consist of (forms part of): E4 Period, have a parenthetical form that relates to the meaning of the inverse direction.
  • The choice of the domain of properties, and hence the order of their names, are established in accordance with the following priority list:
    • Temporal Entity and its subclasses
    • Thing and its subclasses
    • Actor and its subclasses
    • Other
1.5.2 Inheritance and Transitivity

CIDOC CRM is formulated as a class system with inheritance. A property P with domain A and range B will also be a property between any possible subclasses of A and of B. In many cases there will be a common subclass C of both A and B. In these cases, when the property is restricted to C, that is, with C as domain and range, the restricted property could be transitive. For instance, an E73 Information Object can be incorporated into an E90 Symbolic Object and thus an information object can be incorporated in another information object.

In the definition of CIDOC CRM the transitive properties are explicitly marked as such in the scope notes. All unmarked properties should be considered as not transitive.

1.5.3 Shortcuts

Some properties are declared as shortcuts of longer, more comprehensively articulated paths that connect the same domain and range classes as the shortcut property via one or more intermediate classes. For example, the property E18 Physical Thing. P52 has current owner (is current owner of): E39 Actor, is a shortcut for a fully articulated path from E18 Physical Thing through E8 Acquisition to E39 Actor. An instance of the fully-articulated path always implies an instance of the shortcut property. However, the inverse may not be true; an instance of the fully-articulated path cannot always be inferred from an instance of the shortcut property inside the frame of the actual KB

The class E13 Attribute Assignment allows for the documentation of how the assignment of any property came about, and whose opinion it was, even in cases of properties not explicitly characterized as “shortcuts”.

1.5.4 About the logical expressions used in the CIDOC CRM

The present CIDOC CRM specifications are annotated with logical axioms, providing an additional formal expression of the CIDOC CRM ontology. This section briefly introduces the assumptions that are at the basis of the logical expression of the CIDOC CRM (for a fully detailed account of the logical expression of semantic data modelling, see (Reiter,1984)).

The CIDOC CRM is expressed in terms of the primitives of semantic data modelling. As such, it consists of:

  • classes, which represent general notions in the domain of discourse, such as the CIDOC CRM class E21 Person which represents the notion of person;
  • properties, which represent the binary relations that link the individuals in the domain of discourse, such as the CIDOC CRM property P152 has parent linking a person to one of the person’s parent.

Classes and properties are used to express ontological knowledge by means of various kinds of constraints, such as sub-class/sub-property links, e.g., E21 Person is a sub-class of E20 Biological Object, or domain/range constraints, e.g., the domain of P152 has parent is class E21 Person.

In contrast, first-order logic-based knowledge representation relies on a language for formally encoding an ontology. This language can be directly put in correspondence with semantic data modelling in a straightforward way:

  • classes are named by unary predicate symbols; conventionally, we use E21 as the unary predicate symbol corresponding to class E21 Person;
  • properties are named by binary predicate symbols; conventionally, we use P152 as the binary predicate symbol corresponding to property P152 has parent.
  • properties of properties, “.1 properties” are named by ternary predicate symbols; conventionally, we use P14.1 as the ternary predicate symbol corresponding to property P14.1 in the role of.

Ontology is expressed in logic by means of logical axioms, which correspond to the constraints of semantic modelling. In the definition of classes and properties of the CIDOC CRM the axioms are placed under the heading ‘In first order logic’. There are several options for writing statements in first order logic. In this document we use a standard compact notation widely used in text books and scientific papers. The definition is given in the table below.

Table 1: Symbolic Operators in First Order Logic Representation

Symbol

Name

reads

Truth value

Operators

conjunction

and

(φ ∧ ψ) is true

if and only if both φ and ψ are true

disjunction

or

(φ ∨ ψ) is true

if and only if at least one of either φ or ψ is true

¬

negation

not

¬φ is true if and only if φ is false

implication

implies,

if … then ...

 (φ ⇒ ψ) is true

if and only if it is not the case that φ is true and ψ is false

equivalence

is equivalent to,

if … and only if …

φ ⇔ ψ is true

if and only if both φ and ψ are true or both φ and ψ are false

Quantifiers

existential quantifier

exists,

there exists at least one

Universal quantifier

forall,

for all

For instance, the above sub-class link between E21 Person and E20 Biological Object can be formulated in first order logic as the axiom:

(∀x) [E21(x) ⇒E20(x)]

(reading: for all individuals x, if x is a E21 then x is an E20).

In the definitions of classes and properties in this document the universal quantifier(s) are omitted for simplicity, so the above axiom is simply written:

E21(x) ⇒E20(x)

Likewise, the above domain constraint on property P152 has parent can be formulated in first order logic as the axiom:

P152(x,y) ⇒E21(x)

(reading: for all individuals x and y, if x is a P152 of y, then x is an E21).

These basic considerations should be used by the reader to understand the logical axioms that are used into the definition of the classes and properties. Further information about the first order formulation of CIDOC CRM can be found in (Meghini & Doerr, 2018)

1.5.5 Property Quantifiers

Quantifiers for properties are provided for the purpose of semantic clarification only, and should not be treated as implementation recommendations. The CIDOC CRM has been designed to accommodate alternative opinions and incomplete information, and therefore all properties should be implemented as optional and repeatable for their domain and range (“many to many (0,n:0,n)”). Therefore, the term “cardinality constraints” is avoided here, as it typically pertains to implementations.

The following table lists all possible property quantifiers occurring in this document by their notation, together with an explanation in plain words. In order to provide optimal clarity, two widely accepted notations are used redundantly in this document, a verbal and a numeric one. The verbal notation uses phrases such as “one to many”, and the numeric one, expressions such as “(0,n:0,1)”. While the terms “one”, “many” and “necessary” are quite intuitive, the term “dependent” denotes a situation where a range instance cannot exist without an instance of the respective property. In other words, the property is “necessary” for its range. (Meghini, C. & Doerr, M., 2018)

many to many (0,n:0,n)

Unconstrained: An individual domain instance and range instance of this property can have zero, one or more instances of this property. In other words, this property is optional and repeatable for its domain and range.

one to many

(0,n:0,1)

An individual domain instance of this property can have zero, one or more instances of this property, but an individual range instance cannot be referenced by more than one instance of this property. In other words, this property is optional for its domain and range, but repeatable for its domain only. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-out”.

many to one

(0,1:0,n)

An individual domain instance of this property can have zero or one instance of this property, but an individual range instance can be referenced by zero, one or more instances of this property. In other words, this property is optional for its domain and range, but repeatable for its range only. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-in”.

many to many, necessary (1,n:0,n)

An individual domain instance of this property can have one or more instances of this property, but an individual range instance can have zero, one or more instances of this property. In other words, this property is necessary and repeatable for its domain, and optional and repeatable for its range.

one to many, necessary

(1,n:0,1)

An individual domain instance of this property can have one or more instances of this property, but an individual range instance cannot be referenced by more than one instance of this property. In other words, this property is necessary and repeatable for its domain, and optional but not repeatable for its range. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-out”.

many to one, necessary

(1,1:0,n)

An individual domain instance of this property must have exactly one instance of this property, but an individual range instance can be referenced by zero, one or more instances of this property. In other words, this property is necessary and not repeatable for its domain, and optional and repeatable for its range. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-in”.

one to many, dependent

(0,n:1,1)

An individual domain instance of this property can have zero, one or more instances of this property, but an individual range instance must be referenced by exactly one instance of this property. In other words, this property is optional and repeatable for its domain, but necessary and not repeatable for its range. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-out”.

one to many, necessary, dependent

(1,n:1,1)

An individual domain instance of this property can have one or more instances of this property, but an individual range instance must be referenced by exactly one instance of this property. In other words, this property is necessary and repeatable for its domain, and necessary but not repeatable for its range. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-out”.

many to one, necessary, dependent

(1,1:1,n)

An individual domain instance of this property must have exactly one instance of this property, but an individual range instance can be referenced by one or more instances of this property. In other words, this property is necessary and not repeatable for its domain, and necessary and repeatable for its range. In some contexts, this situation is called a “fan-in”.

one to one

(1,1:1,1)

An individual domain instance and range instance of this property must have exactly one instance of this property. In other words, this property is necessary and not repeatable for its domain and for its range.

The CIDOC CRM defines some dependencies between properties and the classes that are their domains or ranges. These can be one or both of the following:

the property is necessary for the domain

the property is necessary for the range, or, in other words, the range is dependent on the property.

The possible kinds of dependencies are defined in the table above. Note that if a dependent property is not specified for an instance of the respective domain or range, it means that the property exists, but the value on one side of the property is unknown. In the case of optional properties, the methodology proposed by the CIDOC CRM does not distinguish between a value being unknown or the property not being applicable at all. For example, one may know that an object has an owner, but the owner is unknown. In a CIDOC CRM instance this case cannot be distinguished from the fact that the object has no owner at all. Of course, such details can always be specified by a textual note.

2 Modelling principles

The following modelling principles have guided and informed the development of the CIDOC CRM.

2.1 Reality, Knowledge Bases and CIDOC CRM

The CIDOC CRM is a formal ontology in the sense introduced by (Guarino, 1998).[4] The present document is intended to embrace an audience not specialized in computer science and logic; therefore, it focuses on the informal semantics and on the pragmatics of the CIDOC CRM concepts, offering a detailed discussion of the main traits of the conceptualization underlying the CIDOC CRM through basic usage patterns.[5] The CIDOC CRM aims to assist sharing, connecting and integrating information from research about the past. In order to understand the function of a formal ontology of this kind, one needs to make the following distinctions:

  • The material reality. For the purpose of the CIDOC CRM, material reality is regarded as whatever has substance that can be perceived with senses or instruments. Examples are people, a forest or a settlement environment, sea, atmosphere, distant celestial or cellular micro structures, including what we assume could be potentially or theoretically perceived if we could be there, such as the center of Earth or the sun, and all that is past. It is constrained to space and time. What goes on in our minds or is produced by our minds is also regarded as part of the material reality, as it becomes materially evident to other people at least by our utterances, behavior and products.
  • The units of description or particulars, i.e., the things and relations which we refer to in order to distinguish parts of reality. Examples are Mount Ida, the Taj Mahal, the formation of China by emperor Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) in 221BC, Tut-Ankh Amun and his embalming, Prince Shotoku of Japan sending a mission to China in 607AD, the participation of Socrates in the Battle of Potidaea or the radiocarbon dating of the Iceman Ötzi (Kutschera, 2002).

A formal ontology, such as the CIDOC CRM, constitutes a controlled language for talking about particulars. I.e., it provides classes and properties for categorizing particulars as so-called “instances” in a way that their individuation, unity and relevant properties are as unambiguous as possible. For instance, Tut-Ankh Amun as instance of E21 Person is the real pharaoh from his birth to death, and not extending to his mummy, as follows from the specification of the class E21 Person and its properties in the CIDOC CRM.

For clarification, the CIDOC CRM does not take a position against or in favour of the existence of spiritual substance nor of substance not accessible by either senses or instruments, nor does it suggest a materialistic philosophy. However, for practical reasons, it relies on the priority of integrating information based on material evidence available for whatever human experience. The CIDOC CRM only commits to a unique material reality independent from the observer.

When we provide descriptions of particulars, we need to refer to them by unique names, titles or constructed identifiers, all of which are instances of E41 Appellation in the CIDOC CRM, in order the reference to be independent of the context. (In contrast, reference to particulars by pronouns or enumerations of characteristic properties, such as name and birth date, are context dependent). The appellation, and the relation between the appellation and the referred item or relationship, must not be confused with the referred item and its identity. For example, Tut-Ankh Amun the name (instance of E41 Appellation) is different from Tut-Ankh Amun the person (instance of E21 Person) and also different from the relationship between name and person (P1 is identified by). Instances of CIDOC CRM classes are the real particulars, not their names, but in descriptions, names must be used as surrogates for the real things meant. Particulars are approximate individuations, like sections, of parts of reality. In other words, the uniqueness of reality does not depend on where one draws the line between the mountain and the valley.

A CIDOC CRM-compatible knowledge base (KB) (Meghini & Doerr 2018) is an instance of E73 Information Object in the CIDOC CRM. It contains (data structures that encode) formal statements representing propositions believed to be true in a reality by an observer. These statements use appellations (e.g., http://id.loc.gov/authorities/names/n79066005[6]) of ontological particulars and of CRM concepts (e.g., P100i died in). Thereby users, in their capacity of having real-world knowledge and cognition, may be able to relate these statements to the propositions they are meant to characterize, and be able to reason and research about their validity. In other words, the formal instances in a knowledge base are the identifiers, not the real things or phenomena. A special case is digital content: a KB in a computer system may contain statements about instances of E90 Symbolic Object and the real thing may be text residing within the same KB. The instance of E90 Symbolic Object and its textual representation are separate entities and they can be connected with the property P190 has symbolic content.

Therefore, a knowledge base does not contain knowledge, but statements that represent knowledge, as long as there exist people that can resolve the identifiers used to their referents. (Appellations described in a knowledge base, and not used as primary substitutes of other items, are of course explicitly declared as instances of E41 Appellation in the knowledge base.)

References:

[4]

Nicola Guarino defines a formal ontology as a specification of a set of named concepts used to describe and approximate a part of reality, plus a first-order logical theory narrowing down the intended meaning of the named concepts.

[5]

For the readers interested in computer science and logic, the syntax and formal semantics employed by the CIDOC CRM are given in (Meghini & Doerr 2018), where the computational aspects are also discussed.

[6]

The URI (instance of E41 Appellation) of the Library of Congress for Tut-Ankh-Amun, the pharaoh.

[4]

[5]

[6]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[4]

[5]

[6]

2.2 Authorship of Knowledge Base Contents

This section describes a recommended good practice how to relate authority to knowledge base contents.

Statements in a KB must have been inserted by some human agent, either directly or indirectly. However, these statements often make no reference to that agent, lacking attribution of authority. An example of such statements in the CIDOC CRM is information expressed through shortcuts such as P2 has type. In the domain of cultural heritage, it is common practice that the responsibility for maintaining knowledge in the KB is elaborated in institutional policy or protocol documents. Thus, it is reasonable to hold that statements which lack explicit authority attribution can be read as the official view of the administrating institution of that system, i.e., the maintainers of the KB. This does not imply that the knowledge described in the KB is complete. So long as the information is under active management, it remains continuously open to revision and improvement as further research reveals further understandings.[7] A KB does not represent a slice of reality, but the justified beliefs of its maintainers about that reality. For simplicity, we speak about a KB as representing some reality.

Statements in a KB may also carry explicit references to agents that produced them, i.e., further statements of responsibility. In CIDOC CRM such statements of responsibility are expressed though knowledge creation events such as E13 Attribute Assignment and its relevant subclasses. Any knowledge that is about an explicit knowledge creation event, where the creator’s identity has been given, is implicitly attributed to be correctly referred to in the KB by the maintaining authority, whereas the responsibility for the content created by that event is assigned to the agent identified as causal to that event.

In the special case of an institution taking over stewardship of a database transferred into their custody, two relations of responsibility for the knowledge therein can be envisioned. If the institution accepts the dataset and undertakes to maintain and update it, then they take on responsibility for that information and become the default authority behind its statements as described above. If, on the other hand, the institution accepts the data set and stores it without change as a closed resource, then it can be considered that the default authority remains the original steward like for any other scholarly document kept by the institution.

References:

[7]

Statements in a KB may be in contradiction to the ontologically defined quantification of properties without the KB being broken or invalid in any sense, either because necessary properties are unknown or there exist good reasons to assume alternative values for properties with limited cardinality, be it by the same or by different maintainers.

[7]

[7]

[7]

[7]

[7]

[7]

2.3 Extensions of CIDOC CRM

Since the intended scope of the CIDOC CRM is a subset of the “real” world and is therefore potentially infinite, the model has been designed to be extensible through the linkage of compatible external type hierarchies.

Of necessity, some concepts covered by the CIDOC CRM are defined in less details than others: E39 Actor and E30 Right, for example. This is a natural consequence of staying within the model’s clearly articulated practical scope in an intrinsically unlimited domain of discourse. These ‘underdeveloped’ concepts can be considered as candidate superclasses for compatible extensions, in particular for disciplines with a respective focus. Additions to the model are known as extensions while the main model is known as CRMbase.

Compatibility of extensions with the CRM means that data structured according to an extension must also remain valid as instances of CIDOC CRM base classes. In practical terms, this implies query containment: any queries based on CIDOC CRM concepts to a KB should retrieve a result set that is correct according to the model’s semantics, regardless of whether the KR is structured according to the CIDOC CRM’s semantics alone, or according to the CIDOC CRM plus compatible extensions. For example, a query such as “list all events” should recall 100% of the instances deemed to be events by the CIDOC CRM, regardless of how they are classified by the extension.

A sufficient condition for the compatibility of an extension with the CIDOC CRM is that its classes, other than E1 CRM Entity, subsume all classes of the extension, and all properties of the extension are either subsumed by CRM properties, or are part of a path for which a CIDOC CRM property is a shortcut, and that classes and properties of the extension can be well distinguished from those in the CIDOC CRM. For instance, a class “tangible object” may be in conflict with existing classes of the CIDOC CRM. Obviously, such a condition can only be tested intellectually.

The CRM provides a number of mechanisms to ensure that coverage of the intended scope can be increased on demand without loosing compatibility:

  1. Existing classes can be extended, either structurally as subclasses or dynamically using the type hierarchy (see section About Types below).
  2. Existing properties can be extended, either structurally as subproperties, or in some cases, dynamically, using properties of properties which allow subtyping (see section About Types below).
  3. Additional information that falls outside the semantics formally defined by the CIDOC CRM can be recorded as unstructured data using E1 CRM Entity. P3 has note: E62 String.
  4. Extending the CIDOC CRM by superclasses and properties that pertain to a wider scope. They are called conservative extensions, if they preserve backwards compatibility with instances described with the CIDOC CRM.

Following strategies 1, 2 and 3 will have the result that the CIDOC CRM concepts subsume and thereby cover the extensions. This means that querying an extended knowledge base only with concepts of the CIDOC CRM will nevertheless retrieve all facts described via the extensions.

In mechanism 3, the information in the notes is accessible in the respective knowledge base by retrieving the instances of E1 CRM Entity that are domain of P3 has note. Keyword search will also work for the content of the note. Rules should be applied to attach a note to the item most specific for the content. For instance, details about the role of an actor in an activity should be associated with the instance of E7 Activity, and not with the instance of E39 Actor. This approach is preferable when queries relating elements from the content of such notes across the knowledge base are not expected.

In general, only concepts to be used for selecting multiple instances from the knowledge base by formal querying need to be explicitly modelled. This criterion depends on the expected scope and use of the particular knowledge base. The CIDOC CRM prioritizes modelling the kinds of facts one would like to retrieve and relate from heterogeneous content sources, potentially from different institutions. It does not, by way of contrast, focus on the modelling of facts with a more local scope such as the administrative practices internal to an institution.

Mechanism 4, conservative extension, is more complex:

With increasing use of the CIDOC CRM, there is also a need for extensions that model phenomena from a scope wider than the original one of the CIDOC CRM, but which are also applicable to the concepts that do fall within the CIDOC CRM’s scope. When this occurs, properties of the CIDOC CRM may be found to be applicable more generally to superclasses of the extension than to those of their current domain or range in the CIDOC CRM. This is a consequence of the key principle of the CIDOC CRM to model “bottom up”, i.e., selecting the domains and ranges for properties to be as narrow as they would apply in a well understood fashion in the current scope, thus avoiding making poorly understood generalizations at risk of requiring non-monotonic correction.

The fourth mechanism for extending the CIDOC CRM by conservation extension can be seen to be split into two cases:

  1. A new class or property is added to an extension of the CIDOC CRM, which is not covered by superclasses other than E1 CRM Entity or a superproperty in the CIDOC CRM respectively. In this case, all facts described only by such concepts are not accessible by queries with CIDOC CRM concepts. Therefore, the extension should publish in a compatibility statement the additional relevant high-level classes and properties needed to retrieve all facts documented with the extended model. This case is a monotonic extension.
  2. The domain or range of an existing property in the CIDOC CRM is changed to a superclass of the one or the other or both, because the property is understood to be applicable beyond its originally anticipated scope. In this case, all facts described by the extension are still accessible by querying with the concepts of the CIDOC CRM, but the extension can describe additional facts that the CIDOC CRM could not. This case is a monotonic extension and generally recommended, because it enables bottom-up evolution of the model. If this change is part of a new release of the CIDOC CRM itself, it is simply backwards compatible, and this has been done frequently in the evolution of this model.

If case (2) should be documented and implemented in an extension module separate from the CIDOC CRM, it may come in conflict with the current way knowledge representation languages, such as RDF/OWL, treat it, because in formal logic changing the range or domain of a property is regarded as changing the ontological meaning completely; there is no distinction between the meaning of the property independent of domain and range and the specification of the domain and range. It is, however, similar to what in logic is called a conservative extension of a theory, and necessary for an effective modular management of ontologies.

Therefore, for the interested reader, we describe here a definition of this case in terms of first order logic, which shows how modularity can formally be achieved:

Let us assume a property P defined with domain class A and range class C also holds for a domain class B, superclass of A, and a range class D, superclass of C, in the sense of its ontological meaning in the real world. We describe this situation by introducing an auxiliary formal property P’, defined with domain class B and range class D, and apply the following logic:

A(x) ⇒ B(x)

C(x) ⇒ D(x)

P(x,y) ⇒ A(x)

P(x,y) ⇒ C(y)

P’(x,y) ⇒ B(x)

P’(x,y) ⇒ D(y)

Then, P’ is a conservative extension of P if: A(x) ∧ C(y) ∧ P’(x,y) ⇔ P(x,y)

In other words, a separate extension module may re-declare the respective property with another identifier, preferably using the same label, and implement the above rule.

2.4 Minimality

Although the scope of the CIDOC CRM is very broad, the model itself is constructed as economically as possible:

  • CIDOC CRM classes and properties are either primitive, or they are key concepts in the practical scope.
  • Complements of CIDOC CRM classes are not declared, because, considering the Open World principle, there are no properties for complements of a class (see Terminology and first consequence of Monotonicity).

A CIDOC CRM class is declared when:

  • It is required as the domain or range of a property not appropriate to its superclass.
  • It serves as a merging point of two CIDOC CRM class branches via multiple IsA (e.g., E25 Human-Made Feature). When the branch superclasses are used for multiple instantiation of an item, this item is in the intersection of the scopes. The class resulting from multiple IsA should be narrower in scope than the intersection of the scopes of the branch superclasses.
  • It is useful as a leaf class (i.e., at the end of a CIDOC CRM branch) to domain communities building CIDOC CRM extensions or matching key domain classes from other models to the CIDOC CRM (e.g., E34 Inscription).
2.5 Monotonicity

The CIDOC CRM’s primary function is to support the meaningful integration of information in an Open World. The adoption of the Open World principle means that the CIDOC CRM itself must remain fundamentally open and knowledge bases implemented using it should be flexible enough to receive new insights. At the model level, new classes and properties within the CIDOC CRM’s scope may be found in the course of integrating more documentation records or when new kinds of relevant facts come to the attention of its maintainers. At the level of the KBs, the need to add or revise information may arise due to numerous external factors. Research may open new questions; documentation may be directed to new or different phenomena; natural or social evolution may reveal new objects of study.

It is the aim of the maintainers of the CIDOC CRM to respect the Open World principle and to follow the principle of monotonicity. Monotonicity requires that adding new classes and properties to the model or adding new statements to a knowledge base does not invalidate already modelled structures and existing statements.

A first consequence of this commitment, at the level of the model, is that the CIDOC CRM aims to be monotonic in the sense of Domain Theory. That is to say, the existing CIDOC CRM constructs and the deductions made from them should remain valid and well-formed, even as new constructs are added by extensions to the CIDOC CRM. Any extensions should be, under this method, backwards compatible with previous models. The only exception to this rule arises when a previous construct is considered objectively incorrect by the domain experts and thus subjected to corrective revision. Adopting the principle of monotonicity has active consequences for the basic manner in which classes and properties are designed and declared in the CIDOC CRM. In particular, it forbids the declaration of complement classes, i.e., classes solely defined by excluding instances of some other classes.

For example:

FRBRoo (Bekiari et al (eds). 2015) extends the CIDOC CRM. In version 2.4 of FRBRoo, F51 Name Use Activity was declared as a subclass to the CIDOC CRM class E7 Activity. This class was added in order to describe a phenomenon specific to library practice and not considered within CRM base. F51 Name Use Activity describes the practice of an instance of E74 Group adopting and deploying a name within a context for a time-span. The creation of this extension is monotonic because no existing IsA relationship or inheritance of properties in CRM base are compromised and no future extension is ruled out. By way of contrast, if, to handle this situation, a subclass “Other Activity” had been declared, a non-monotonic change would have been introduced. This would be the case because the scope note of a complement class like “Other Activities” would forbid any future declaration of specializations of E7 Activity such as ‘Name Use Activity’. In the case the need arose to declare a particular specialized subclass, a non-monotonic revision would have to be made, since there would be no principled way to decide which instances of ‘Other Activity’ were instances of the new, specialized class and which were not. Such non-monotonic changes are extremely costly to end users, compromising backwards compatibility and long-term integration.

As a second consequence, maintaining monotonicity is also required during revising or augmenting data within a CIDOC CRM compatible system. That is, existing CIDOC CRM instances, their properties and the deductions made from them, should always remain valid and well-formed, even as new instances, regarded as consistent by the domain expert, are added to the system.

For example:

If someone describes correctly that an item is an instance of E19 Physical Object, and later it is correctly characterized as an instance of E20 Biological Object, the system should not stop treating it as an instance of E19 Physical Object. This is achieved by declaring E20 Biological Object as subclass of E19 Physical Object.

This example further demonstrates that the IsA hierarchy of classes and properties can represent characteristic stages of increasing knowledge about some item during the processes of investigation and collection of evidence. Higher level classes can be used to safely classify objects whose precise characteristics are not known in the first instance. An ambiguous biological object may, for example, be classified as only a physical object. Subsequent investigation can reveal its nature as a biological object. A knowledge base constructed with CIDOC CRM classes designed to support monotonic revision allows for seeking physical objects that were not yet recognized as biological ones. This ability to integrate information with different specificity of description in a well-defined way is particularly important for large-scale information integration. Such a system supports scholars being able to integrate all information about potentially relevant phenomena into the information system without forcing an over or under commitment to knowledge about the object. Since large scale information integration always deals with different levels of knowledge of its relevant objects, this feature enables a consistent approach to data integration.

A third consequence, applied at the level of the knowledge base, is that in order to formally preserve monotonicity, when it is required to record and store alternative opinions regarding phenomena all formally defined properties should be implemented as unconstrained (many: many) so that conflicting instances of properties are merely accumulated. Thus, integrated knowledge can serve as a research tool for accumulating relevant alternative opinions around well-defined entities, whereas conclusions about the truth are the task of open-ended scientific or scholarly hypothesis building.

For example:

King Arthur’s basic life events are highly contested. Once entered in a knowledge base, he should be defined as an instance of E21 Person and treated as having existed as such within the sense of our historical discourse. The instance of E21 Person is used as the collection point for describing possible properties and existence of this individual. Alternative opinions about properties, such as the birthplace and his living places, should be accumulated without validity decisions being made during data compilation. King Arthur may be entered as a different instance, of E28 Conceptual Object, for describing him as mythological character and accumulating possibly mythological facts.

The fourth consequence of monotonicity relates to the use of time dependent properties in a knowledge base. Certain properties declared in the CIDOC CRM, such as having a part, an owner or a location, may change many times for a single item during the course of its existence. Asserting that such a property holds for some item means that that property held for some particular, undetermined time-span within the course of its existence. Consequently, one item may be the subject of multiple statements asserting the instantiation of that property without conflict or need for revision. The collection of such statements would reflect an aggregation of these instances of this property holding over the time-span of the item’s existence. If a more specific temporal knowledge is required/available, it is recommended to explicitly describe the events leading to the assertion of that property for that item. For example, in the case of acquiring or losing an item, it would be appropriate to declare the related event class such as E9 Move. By virtue of this principle, the CRM achieves monotonicity with respect to an increase of knowledge about the states of an item at different times, regardless of their temporal order.

Time-neutral properties may be specialized in a future monotonic extension by time-specific properties, but not vice-versa. Also, many properties registered do not change over time or are relative to events in the model already. Therefore, the CIDOC CRM always gives priority to modelling properties as time-neutral, and rather representing changes by events.

However, for some of these properties many databases may describe a “current” state relative to some property, such as “current location” or “current owner”. Using such a “current” state means that the database manager is able to verify the respective reality at the latest date of validity of the database. Obviously, this information is non-monotonic, i.e., it requires deletion when the state changes. In order to preserve a reduced monotonicity, these properties have time-neutral superproperties by which respective instances can be reclassified if the validity becomes unknown or no longer holds. Therefore, the use of such properties in the CRM is only recommended if they can be maintained consistently. Otherwise, they should be reclassified by their time-neutral superproperties. This holds in particular if data is exported to another repository, see also the paragraph “Authorship of Knowledge Base Contents”

2.6 Disjointness

Classes are disjoint if they cannot share any common instances at any time, past, present or future. That implies that it is not possible to instantiate an item using a combination of classes that are mutually disjoint or with subclasses of them (see “multiple instantiation” in section “Terminology”). There are many examples of disjoint classes in the CIDOC CRM.

A comprehensive declaration of all possible disjoint class combinations afforded by the CIDOC CRM has not been provided here; it would be of questionable practical utility, and may easily become inconsistent with the goal of providing a concise definition. However, there are two key examples of disjoint class pairs that are fundamental to effective comprehension of the CIDOC CRM:

  • E2 Temporal Entity is disjoint from E77 Persistent Item. Instances of the class E2 Temporal Entity are perdurants, whereas instances of the class E77 Persistent Item are endurants. Even though instances of E77 Persistent Item have a limited existence in time, they are fundamentally different in nature from instances of E2 Temporal Entity, because they preserve their identity between events. Declaring endurants and perdurants as disjoint classes is consistent with the distinctions made in data structures that fall within the CIDOC CRM’s practical scope.
  • E18 Physical Thing is disjoint from E28 Conceptual Object. The distinction is between material and immaterial items, the latter being exclusively human-made. Instances of E18 Physical Thing and E28 Conceptual Object differ in many fundamental ways; for example, the production of instances of E18 Physical Thing implies the incorporation of physical material, whereas the production of instances of E28 Conceptual Object does not. Similarly, instances of E18 Physical Thing cease to exist when destroyed, whereas an instance of E28 Conceptual Object perishes when it is forgotten or its last physical carrier is destroyed.

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3 Introduction to the basic concepts

The following paragraphs explain the most general logic of the CIDOC CRM. The CIDOC CRM is a formalized representation of historical discourse, a formal ontology. In this capacity, it is meant to support the (re)presentation of fact based, analytic discourse about what has happened in the past in a human understandable and machine-processable manner. It achieves this function by proposing a series of formalized properties (relations) and classes. The formalized properties support the making of semantically explicit statements relating classes of things. Their formal definition logically explicates the classes of things to which they may pertain. The CIDOC CRM properties thus enable a formal, logically explicit description of relations between individual, real world items, classified under distinct ontological classes. Encoding analytic data pertaining to the past under such a system of statements provides a standard representation for data and allows the uniform application of reasoning to large sets of data.

Grounding this high-level logic is a hierarchical system of classes and relations, that provide basic ontological distinctions by which to represent historical discourse. Familiarity with the basic ontological distinctions made in the top level of the class hierarchy provides the basic entry point to understanding how to apply the CIDOC CRM for knowledge representation.

The highest-level distinction in the CIDOC CRM is represented by the top-level concepts of E77 Persistent Item, equivalent to the philosophical notion of endurant; E2 Temporal Entity, equivalent to the philosophical notion of perdurant and, further, the concept of E92 Spacetime Volume.

As an event-centric model, supporting historical discourse, the CIDOC CRM firstly enables the description of entities that are themselves time-limited processes or evolutions within the passing of time using E2 Temporal Entity and its subclasses. Their basic function is to capture the fact of something having happened over time. In addition to allowing the description of a temporal duration, the subclasses of E2 Temporal Entity are used to document the historical relations between objects, similar to the role of action verbs in a natural language phrase. The more specific subclasses of E2 Temporal Entity enable the documentation of events pertaining to individually related/affected material, social or mental objects that have been described using subclasses of E77 Persistent Item. This precise documentation is enabled through the use of specialized properties formalizing the manner of the relation or affect. Examples of specific subclasses of E2 Temporal Entity include E12 Production, which allows the representation of events of making things by humans, and E5 Event which allows the documentation, among other things, of geological events and large-scale social events such as a war. Each of these subclasses have specific properties associated to them which allow them to function to represent the specific, real world connection between instances of E77 Persistent Item, such as the relation of an object to its time of production through P108 was produced by (E12) or the relation of a place to a geological phenomenon through P7 was place of (E5). The entities that E2 Temporal Entity documents, being time limited processes / occurrences, are such that their existence can be declared only on the basis of direct observation or recording of the event, or indirect observation of its material outcomes. Evidence of such entities may be preserved on material objects that are permanently changed because of them. Likewise, events may have been recorded in text or remembered through oral history. E2 Temporal Entity and its subclasses are central to the CRM and essential for almost all modelling tasks (e.g., in a museum catalogue one cannot consider an object outside its production event).

The real-world entities, which the event centric modelling of the CIDOC CRM aims to enable the accurate historical description of, are captured through E77 Persistent Item and its subclasses. E77 Persistent Item is used to describe entities that are relatively stable in form through the passage of time, maintaining a recognizable identity because their significant properties do not change. Specific subclasses of E77 Persistent Item can illustrate this point. E22 Human Made Object is used for the description of discrete, physical objects having been produced by human action, such as an artwork or monument. An artwork or monument is persistent with regards to its physical constitution. So long as it retains its general physical form, it is said to exist and to participate in the flow of historical events. E28 Conceptual Object is also used to describe persistent items, but of a mental character. It is used to describe identifiable ideas that are named and form an object of historical discourse. Its identity conditions rely in having a carrier by which it can be recalled. The entities described by E77 Persistent Item are prone to change through human activity, biological, geological or environmental processes, but are regarded to continue to exist and be the same just as long as such changes do not alter their basic identity (essence) as defined in the scope note of the relevant class.

The notion of identity is key in the application of CIDOC CRM. The properties and relations it provides are designed to allow the accurate historical description of the evolution of real-world items through time. This being the case, classes and properties are created in order to provide a definition, which will allow the accurate application of the classes or properties to the same real-world items by diverse users. Identity, in the sense of the CIDOC CRM, therefore, means that informed people are able to agree that they refer to the same, single thing in its distinction from others, both in its extent and over its time of existence. The criteria for such a determination should come from understanding the scope note of the respective CIDOC CRM class this thing is regarded to be an instance of, because communication via information systems may not leave space for respective clarifying dialogues between users. For example, the Great Sphinx of Giza may have lost part of its nose, but there is no question that we are still referring to the same monument as that before the damage occurred, since it continues to represent significant characteristics and distinctness from an overall shaping in the past, which is of archaeological relevance. Things lacking sufficient stability or differentiation, such as atmosphere, soil, clouds, waves, are not instances of E77 Persistent Item, and not suited for information integration. Discourse about such items may be documented with concepts of the CIDOC CRM as observations in relation to things of persistent identity, such as places.

Learning to distinguish and then interrelate instances of E77 Persistent Item (endurants) and instances of E2 Temporal Entity (perdurants) using the appropriate properties is key to the proper understanding and application of CIDOC CRM in order to formally represent analytic historical data. In the large majority of cases, the distinction this provides, and the subsequent elaboration of subclasses and properties is adequate to describe the content of database records in the cultural and scientific heritage domain. In exceptional cases, where we need to consider complex combinations of changes of spatial extent over time, the concept of spacetime (E92 Spacetime Volume) also needs to be considered. E92 Spacetime Volume describes the entities whose substance has or is an identifiable, confined geometrical extent in the material world that may vary over time, fuzzy boundaries notwithstanding. For example, the built settlement structure of the city of Athens is confined both from the point of view of time-span (from its founding until now) and from its changing geographical extent over the centuries, which may become more or less evident from current observation, historical documents and excavations. Even though E92 Spacetime Volume is an important theoretical part of the model, it can be ignored for most practical documentation and modelling tasks.

The key to the proper understanding of CIDOC CRM comes through the appropriation of its basic divisions and the logic these represent. It is important to underline that the CIDOC CRM is not intended to function as a classification system or vocabulary tool. The basic class divisions in CIDOC CRM are declared in order to be able to apply distinct properties to these classes and, in so doing, formulate precise, analytic propositions that represent historical realities. The expressive power of CIDOC CRM comes not from the application of classes to classify entities but in the documenting the interrelation of individual historical items through well-defined properties. These properties characteristically cover subjects such as relations of identifying items by names and identifiers; participation of persistent items in temporal entities; location of temporal entities and physical things in space and time; relations of observation and assessment; part-decomposition and structural properties of anything; influence of things and experiences on the activities of people and their products; reference of information objects to anything.

We explain these concepts with the help of graphical representations in the next sections.

3.1 Relations with Events

Figure 1 illustrates the minimal properties in the CIDOC CRM for documenting “what has happened”, the central pattern of the Model. Let us first consider the class E1 CRM Entity, the formal top class of the model. It primarily serves a technical purpose to aggregate the ontologically meaningful concepts of the model. It declares however two important properties of general validity and distinct features of the Model: P1 is identified by, with range E41 Appellation, makes the fundamental ontological distinction between the identity of a particular and an identifier (see section “Reality, Knowledge Bases and CIDOC CRM” above), and in practice allows for describing a discourse about resolving historical ambiguities of names and reconciliation of multiple identifiers. The property P2 has type, with range E55 Type, constitutes a practical interface for refining classes by terminologies, being often volatile, as detailed in the section “About Types” below.

Figure 1: High Level Properties and Classes of CIDOC CRM

All classes in figure 1 are direct or indirect subclasses of E1 CRM Entity, but for better readability, only the “subclass of” -link from E2 Temporal Entity is shown. The latter comprises phenomena that continuously occur over some time-span (E52 Time-Span) in the natural time dimension, but some of them may not be confined to specific area, such as a marriage status. Further specializing, E4 Period comprises phenomena occurring in addition within a specific area in the physical space, which can be specified by P7 took place at, with range E53 Place. Instances of E4 Period can be of any size, such as the Warring States Period, the Roman Period, a siege or just the process of making a signature. Further specializing, E5 Event comprises phenomena involving and affecting certain instances of E77 Persistent Item in a way characteristic of the kind of process, which can be specified by the property P12 occurred in the presence of. This concept of presence is very powerful: It constrains the existence of the involved things to the respective places within the specified time and implies the potential of passive or active involvement and mutual impact. Via presence, events represent nodes in a network of things meeting in various combinations in the course of time at different places.

The most important specializations of E77 Persistent Item in this context are: E39 Actor, those capable of intentional actions, E18 Physical Thing, having an identity bound to a relative stability of material form, and E28 Conceptual Object, the idealized things that can be recognized but have an identity independent from the materialization on a specific carrier. The property P12 occurred in the presence of has 36 direct and indirect subproperties, relating these and many more subclasses of E5 Event and E77 Persistent Item. Regardless whether a CRM-compatible knowledge base is created with these properties only or with their much more expressive specializations, querying for the above presented five properties will provide answer to all “Who-When-Where-What-How” questions, and allow for retrieving potentially richly elaborated stories of people, places, times and things.

This pattern of “meeting” is complemented by two more subclasses of E5 Event: E63 Beginning of Existence and E64 End of Existence, which imply not only presence, but constitute the endpoints of existence of things and people in space and time, often in explicit presence and interaction with others, be they causal by producing or consuming or just witnessing. Note that the Model supports multiple instantiation. As a consequence, particular events can be instances of combinations of these and others classes, describing tightly integrated processes of multiple nature. The representation of things connected in events by presence, beginning and end of existence is sufficient to describe the logic of termini postquos and antequos, a major form of reasoning about chronology in historical studies.

Example:

As a simple, real example of applying the above concepts we present a historical event, relevant for the history of art: Johann-Joachim Winkelmann (a German Scholar) has seen the so-called Laocoön Group in 1755 in the Vatican in Rome (at display in the Cortile del Belvedere). He described his impressions in 1764 in his “History of the Art of Antiquity”, (being the first to articulate the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art, characterizing Greek art with the famous words “…noble simplicity, silent grandeur”). The sculpture, in Hellenistic "Pergamene baroque" style (Bieber 1961, Brilliant 2000) is widely assumed to be a copy, made between 27 BC and 68 AD (following a Roman commission) from a Greek (no more extent) original. Johann-Joachim Winkelmann was born 1717 as child of Martin Winkelmann and Anna-Maria Meyer and died in 1768 in Trieste.

Figure 2 presents a semantic graph of this event, as described above, using CIDOC CRM concepts. The facts in parentheses above are omitted for better clarity. Instances of classes are represented by informative labels instead of identifiers, in boxes showing the class label above the instance label. Properties are represented as arrows with the property label attached. After class labels and property labels, we show in parenthesis the identifiers of the respective superclasses and superproperties from figure 1, in order to demonstrate that the story can be represented and queried with these concepts only. It also shows how concept specialization increases expressiveness without losing genericity. It is noteworthy that the transfer of information from the Greek original, to the copy, to the mind of Winkelmann and into his writings can be solely understood by this chain of things being present in different meetings. Note also that the degree to which a fact is believed to be real does not affect the choice of CIDOC CRM concepts for description of the fact, nor the reality concept underlying the Model.

Figure 2: CIDOC CRM Encoding Example (Winkelmann seeing Laocoön)

Figure 2 represents in addition one more top-level property of the CIDOC CRM: P67 refers to, which describe an evidence-based fact that an information object makes reference to an identifiable item.

As mentioned above, the central concept of the CIDOC CRM is the representation of a part of reality that can be approximated as a network of things meeting in various combinations in spacetime. Using the same example from above, figure 3 illustrates this concept via an alternative symbolic representation. It aims at rendering the idea that people and things in the past have performed mostly unknown trajectories in spacetime and the historical facts known to us constrain their possible whereabouts for some limited time-spans to having been together at some known or unknown place.

We use a one-dimensional representation of space, as used in archaeology to describe the spatial evolution of periods or cultures over time, and a vertical time axis. We symbolize the trajectories of things and people as fuzzy lines between events in order to render their relative indeterminacy between known events. Non-animate things use to be stationary if not transferred, whereas people may move around on their own. We symbolize events as fuzzy ovals to render the fuzzy boundaries of events in space and time. Note that in this representation, as a general pattern, things may “survive” events, emerge from events or end in events. Beginning and ending of existence impose an additional temporal order on events of causal nature, which can be stronger than explicit dates. We symbolize the unreported ends of existence of people and things, which are also events, by a dot at the end of the trajectory.