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Links between entities

RiC uses relations to link two entities. Relations may have a type to mark their purpose, sometimes also called a relator.

What is a Relation?​

Relations in RiC are used to define the ways in which different archival entities are related to each other. Relations describe the connections or associations between different entities, activities, or concepts described in archival records. They thus help establish the context and interconnectedness of the different components within an archival collection.

What is a Relator?​

The "Relator" describes the role or function that a particular entity or activity plays in relation to another entity or activity. Relators add a type to a relation and provide a way to qualify and describe the nature of the connection between entities.

For example, if you have a relation between a letter and its author, the relator might be "author of". This relator indicates the role that the entity (the author) plays in relation to the other entity (the letter).

Other examples include relationships like "is part of", "is related to", "is associated with", "occurs before", "occurs after".

Note that RiC speaks only of "types of relations" and doesn't call these "relators". The term is often used, though, and we thus use it in our constructs for defining a relation, as well as throughout this documentation.

Which relations and relators do exist?​

The Records in Contexts (RiC) standard provides a flexible framework for describing relations between entities and activities, and it does not define a fixed set of supported relations and relators. This flexibility is intentional and acknowledges the diverse ways in which archival collections can be organised and the wide range of relationships that can exist between entities and activities.

RiC, however, does provide guidelines and examples to help users understand how to create meaningful and consistent descriptions. These guidelines promote interoperability by encouraging the use of common concepts and terms.

The following relations and relators are currently supported in docuteam context.

Relations and relators supported out-of-the-box

The rough meaning of these links is as follows.

Agent linked to a Record resource​

  • origination: Denotes the author or creator of an archival document.
  • processInfoArchivist: Points to an archivist, which worked on the archival document.

Concept linked to a Record resource​

  • subjectGeneral: A concept, topic or theme touched on by the document.

Place linked to a Record resource​

  • locationOfOriginals: Where the originals of an archival document are stored. This is used if the original is not stored along other representations (instantiations) of the document inside the archive.

Agent linked to an Instantiation of a Record resource​

  • instantiationLocation: Use to mark the location of the instantiation, e.g. the box the document is contained in or the server a PDF version is stored on.

A Location is a subset of a Place indicated by its inScheme property set to locationManagement.

Place linked to another place​

  • placeIsContainedBy: Marks the source place to be part or inside of the target place.

Concept linked to another concept​

  • conceptHasBroader: Marks the target as broader concept of the source concept.
  • conceptHasRelated: Marks two concepts as being related to each other.

Additional relations and relators can be added easily with mostly low, sometimes moderate effort, depending on their use case, thanks for a flexible, underlying system design.