Dear All
Please vote "YES" for accept, "NO" for not accept:
Background
Proposal by Franco Niccolucci (9 January 2022)
With other colleagues, I am translating into Italian the CIDOC CRM
documentation. This forced me to (or if you prefer, it gave me the
opportunity of) reading it with great attention to minute details.
On page 10 of the Introduction I found a couple of things that may
need to be changed: both are in the bottom of the page describing
the CRM Intended Scope, where some expressions used in such
description are explained in greater detail.
1. In the first bullet point, the term “scientific and scholarly
documentation” is explained as compliant to the quality level
“expected and required by museum professionals and researchers in
the field.” What about archaeologists, architectural historians
etc.? I would replace this statement with “expected and required
by heritage professionals and researchers in the field.”, which
would also expand the “field” beyond museology as implied by the
other formulation, which is also contradictory with the much wider
ambit listed in the second bullet.
2. In the second bullet point the meaning of the term “available
documented and material evidence” is explained. Actually, a
different expression was used in the previous text, being clarified
here; “available documented and empirical evidence”. When
defining a term, I think it is preferable to avoid using different
albeit equivalent expressions. Moreover, the equivalence of
“empirical” and “material” is debatable: according to my
Oxford dictionary
empirical = based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation
or experience rather than theory or pure logic
material = denoting or consisting of physical objects rather than
the mind or spirit
I may agree with “empirical” but I am not sure I would agree
with “material”.
As you can see, this is a fussy comment. But the devil is in the
details... and in this case a naughty commenter (not my case) might
think that both are Freudian slips :)
3. In the third and fourth bullet points, collections are addressed.
But the third point considers “cultural heritage collections”
and the fourth “museum collections”, actually in the same
copy-paste sentence. Is this difference intentional, or again a
slip? I imagine in both cases “cultural heritage collections”
must be used.
-------------------------
PROPOSAL:
OLD:
SCOPE OF THE CIDOC CRM
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 heritage
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. NEW:
SCOPE OF THE CIDOC CRM
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 heritage
professionals engaged in cultural and scientific heritage and
researchers in these fields.
· As “available documented and empirical material evidence”
are regarded all types of material collected and displayed by
museums and related institutions, as defined by ICOM[1], and other
collections of things providing evidence about the past, 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.
· Delete the fourth paragraph, it is repeating the third!
-------------------------
[1] The ICOM Statutes provide a definition of the term “museum”
at http://icom.museum/statutes.html#2 The term “should” is used
in the sense of a binding recommendation by the standards. This is
what users adhering to the standard have to do. It “should” be
consistently used throughout the document.
--
------------------------------------
Dr. Martin Doerr
Honorary Head of the
Center for Cultural Informatics
Information Systems Laboratory
Institute of Computer Science
Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH)
N.Plastira 100, Vassilika Vouton,
GR70013 Heraklion,Crete,Greece
Vox:+30(2810)391625
Email: [email protected]
Web-site: http://www.ics.forth.gr/isl
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