Dear CRM-SIG Colleagues, Martin Doerr wrote: > "How to model sequences of physical and conceptual objects? > Action: Tony Gill to work this up with a real data example that is in scope."
I'm going to give two different examples that I hope will illustrate the need for the CRM to model sequences of physical and conceptual objects -- one very specific, and the other based on a proposed extension of the practical scope [http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/crm_scope_definition.html] to partially cover a new developing standard. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Example 1: The Ellesmere Chaucer The Huntingon Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens [http://www.huntington.org/] recently contributed an electronic copy of the Ellesmere Chaucer manuscript to RLG Cultural Materials. Here is their description of it: "Created within the first decade after Chaucer's death, the Ellesmere manuscript is generally regarded to be the most complete and authoritative source for the text of the Canterbury Tales. It is written on 232 vellum leaves in a vernacular book hand known as anglicana formata. The 23 miniature paintings depicting the Canterbury Pilgrims are a notable feature, as well as the many illuminated and decorated borders." (Date c.1410). The manuscript is numbered using a folio system, i.e. each vellum leaf of the manuscript is sequentially numbered, with the front of the leaf being identified as "recto" and the back as "verso". There is also some front and end matter that use a different numbering scheme. Naturally, since this is a (medieval) manuscript, it is important to preserve the sequence of the leaves (physcial objects) in order to preserve the correct flow of the narrative (in this case, the canonical copy of The Canterbury Tales). Since there are two different numbering schemes used for the manuscript, this cannot be achieved by the folio numbers alone. For RLG Cultural Materials, the Huntington supplied us with approximately 460 high-resolution 65MB TIF images (conceptual objects?) on 54 CD-ROMs (I know this because I uploaded them all!). Although these are surrogates for the vellum leaves, there are two discrete image files per leaf (one for each side). Again, it is important to present the images in the correct sequence when providing access to them online. In both cases, the sequence of the objects, whether they are leaves of the original manuscript or digital reproductions of them, is an important part of the object's description and needs to be supported by the CRM. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Example 2: Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard METS (http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/) is a new metadata standard based on XML that is maintained by the Library of Congress. It primarily functions as a "wrapper" for "complex digital objects" that are comprised of multiple components. A METS document consists of four sections: Descriptive Metadata Adminstrative Metadata File Inventory Structural Map METS is non-prescriptive on the descriptive and adminstrative metadata -- it provides a place to embed or link to the metadata, but does not prescribe the elements or their semantics. However, it *does* specify the encoding of the file inventory and structural map, and allows both sequences and hierarchies of composite digital objects (such as the Ellesmere Chaucer) to be encoded. Since a number of institutions (including RLG) are actively investigating the use of METS for both the presentation and long-term archiving of digital cultural heritage objects, I claim that it should be added to the practical scope of the CRM. Cheers, T. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Tony Gill <> [email protected] Research Libraries Group <> http://www.rlg.org/ 1200 Villa Street, Mountain View, CA 94041 USA Voice: +1 (650) 691-2304 <> Fax: +1 (650) 964-1461
