Question about some problems concearning ISAD(G) and RiC

[Ivana Marinović]

Dear RiC group, 

I am currently working on adapting an old finding aid from Croatian State Archives that was created according to the ISAD(G) while following the recommendations of the Records in Contexts (RiC) standard. The archival fonds has been organised according to ISAD(G) principles into series, sub-series, and documents. While reviewing the finding aid, I noticed a case where one of the series in the fonds contains only a single document. I would like to know whether I can classify this entity as a document instead of referring to it as a series, and state that it is equivalent to the other series within the collection. Can I treat a series and a document as entities of the same level (equivalent) in an archival fonds?

I can give you some examples that I have:

 

Old:

1. Ministry of Health (archival fonds)

1.1. Administration and General Affairs of the Ministry of Health (series)

1.1.   Circulars, Orders, and Regulations of the Ministry of Health (series)

1.2.   The Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health (series) contains a single document

1.3.   General Correspondence of the Ministry of Health (series)

 

Question:

1. Ministry of Health (archival fonds)

1.1. Administration and General Affairs of the Ministry of Health (series)

1.1.   Circulars, Orders, and Regulations of the Ministry of Health (series)

1.2.   The Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health (document)

1.3.   General Correspondence of the Ministry of Health (series)

 

Thanks for your help and patience!

 

Kind regards,

Ivana

 

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[Karen J. Trivette]

Hi Ivana!

If I may suggest, series are not defined by extent of content, but rather by a shift in functional role and the records as business activity byproduct.

The fact that the Ministry’s President records are currently a single document is a little surprising, but given the importance of such a role—and a possibility of more records being discovered or created—I would maintain your classification as noted.

That said, given the President is an Administrator, the President’s records could be declared a sub-unit of that series.

That decision here hinges on the probability of a high research value of the President’s records and if you want them more or less easily discoverable.

Happy to discuss further!

Karen

Karen J. TRIVETTE, MLS, PhD
Archival Science
www.karenjtrivette.net

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[Juan E. Thomas]

 Translated by AI.
Hi Ivana, you can classify the document directly, but not at the series level — it should be at the document level. That is, 1.0.1, where the zero indicates the absence of a series and the document is linked directly to the fonds.
Also, keep in mind what Karen mentioned, as this allows the classification to remain unchanged in case of a future increase in document generation.

Saludos 

Juan   

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[Hope, Aaron (MPBSDP)]

Dear Ivana,

 

My preference would be to represent and describe what actually exists rather than what might hypothetically exist in future, so I would map the single document to the RiC entity “Record” (RiC-E04 or rico:Record) rather than pretending it is a series (which, in RiC terms, is a kind of “Record Set”: RiC-E03 or rico:RecordSet). If in future more records are added that derive from the same function or activity, you could then create a record set and include the currently existing document in that. I wouldn’t worry about making the single document equivalent to a series in the fonds, since, as I understand it, levels of description don’t really exist in RiC. Instead, there are only different types of record sets (see RiC-A36).

 

Cheers,

Aaron Hope

 

From: records_in_c...@googlegroups.com <records_in_c...@googlegroups.com> On Behalf Of Ivana Marinovic
Sent: September 2, 2025 6:24 AM
To: Records_in_C...@googlegroups.com
Subject: [Records in Contexts users] Question about some problems concearning ISAD(G) and RiC

 

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[Richard Williamson]

Dear Ivana,

(I am an EGAD member, not that this implies that the replies you
received from the others are worth any less!). Just to draw out a few
things that are implicit in Aaron's reply, the relation RiC-R024i 'is
or was included in' has domain 'Record or Record Set', and it is
perfectly valid to do the following.

'Administration and General Affairs of the Ministry of Health' is or
was included in 'Ministry of Health'
'Circulars, Orders, and Regulations of the Ministry of Health' is or
was included in 'Ministry of Health'
'Document P' is or was included in 'Ministry of Health'
'General Correspondence of the Ministry of Health' is or was included
in 'Ministry of Health'

Here I model everything except 'Document P' as a Record Set (if you
wish, with Ministry of Health having the attribute Record Set Type
(RiC-A36) set to 'fonds', and the others set to 'series'). By Document
P I mean the document that is in the 'Files of the Presidency of the
Ministry of Health', I model it as a Record in RiC.

I understand what you are getting at, and I think basically your idea
is good, but strictly speaking it does not really quite make sense I'd
say to equate 'Document P' and 'Files of the Presidency of the
Ministry of Health', as this is kind of an ontological mismatch:
Record Sets and Records have quite different semantics. I'll elaborate
below upon what one can do instead.

One of Aaron's points was that RiC is very flexible: if one interprets
'is or was included in' transitively (i.e. A ---is or was included
in--->B----is or was included in--->C implies A ----is or was included
in--->C), as is permitted, then saying that 'Document P' is or was
included in 'Ministry of Health' is fully compatible with making the
following two judgements later if you need to:

'Document P' is or was included in 'Files of the Presidency of the
Ministry of Health'
'Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health' is or was included
in 'Ministry of Health'

I.e. you do not lose anything by not introducing the series straight
away, even if you need it later.

Of course there is potentially a difference between what is possible
technically and what may be wise archival practice. Karen and Juan
offered some nice thoughts on the latter; I'd just like to add a
somewhat different viewpoint, namely that the Activity entity in RiC
can be used to express the kind of functional classification aspects
that Karen was referring to. In particular, if you follow Aaron's
'bottom-up' approach rather than the more traditional 'top-down' one,
you could regard 'Presidency of the Ministry of Health' as an
Activity, and use the relation 'documents' (RiC-R033) to connect the
Record Document P to this Activity, establishing the functional
provenance in that way. In this approach, there is no need for a
series entity at all conceptually, even in future: one certainly could
form an aggregation (Record Set) of all Records documenting the
'Presidency of the Ministry of Health' activity if you wish, but maybe
one might like to regard Document P as belonging to other aggregations
too, this is all perfectly possible further down the line as needed,
without needing to commit oneself to a hierarchy at the beginning!

Best wishes,
Richard

On Tue, Sep 9, 2025 at 7:25 PM 'Hope, Aaron (MPBSDP)' via
Records_in_Contexts_users <Records_in_C...@googlegroups.com>
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[Ivana Marinović]

Dear all,
Thank you all: Karen, Richard, Aaron, Juan, and Jhon, for your time, patience, and help.
The information and suggestions you provide are helpful!
I will rethink and find a perfect way to represent this archival fonds.

It's nice to have such a professional group online.

:-)

Best regards!
Ivana

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[Arian Rajh]

Dear all,

 

...and this is why we need the application guidelines. Creating hierarchical structures from the outset and organizing knowledge about archival materials accordingly is not the focus of RiC - because there can be many structures in which archival materials exist. However, shifting from monohierarchical knowledge organization to a network-based one without guidance is challenging. 

 

Kind regards,

Arian

[Ivo Zandhuis]

Hi Arian,

Maybe to manage some expectations. I think it is very difficult to write
one single document that incorporates various levels of knowledge,
cultures and situations, as well as meeting the needs of very different
audiences (archivists, managers, IT departments) that are all involved
in this shift. I've seen dozens of attempts in answer to a similar
question, they all had effect up to a certain point. I hope the AG can
kick-off the process, but after that questions like this can best be
handled in the community in the way we (excluding myself :-) did in
Ivana's case.

Best regards,

Ivo Zandhuis



Arian Rajh schreef op 2025-09-10 06:28:

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Ivo Zandhuis, PhD
Freelance consultant - Digital • Heritage • Humanities
Research Fellow - International Institute of Social History

[CLAVAUD Florence]

Dear all,

My two cents about this discussion.

IMHO this is first and foremost all about representing some archival reality, beyond the standard you want to apply.

I will nevertheless quote the definition given by ICA ISAD(G) to a series; a series is "Documents arranged in accordance with a filing system or maintained as a unit because they result from the same accumulation or filing process, or the same activity; have a particular form; or because of some other relationship arising out of their creation, receipt, or use. A series is also known as a records series."
This definition is directly linked to the concept of organic provenance and documentary context, without excluding at all the functional provenance, since the definition also includes series as resulted from an activity (RiC Activity).
RiC has not changed anything to this definition, and RiC-O even includes the "series concept", as an instance of rico:RecordSetType, just as it is.
Series are quite fundational in the world of archival resources; there are series in any repository, be the records they include analogue, born digital, or be the series hybrid.

So, I would definitely as you did, Ivana, consider that "Administration and General Affairs of the Ministry of Health", "Circulars, Orders, and Regulations of the Ministry of Health" and " General Correspondence of the Ministry of Health " are series as defined previously. And I would keep the information, using the RiC-CM Record Set Type attribute, or the Record Set Type class in RiC-O.

As Richard said, the document described under the level "The Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health (document)" in the source finding aid, is a Record, not a Record Set. Records and Record Sets are not the same (though not disjoint in RiC-O).
If the source finding aid includes a level of description "The Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health" above this single document, it is either an 'error', or it reflects some fact like: there were other records in this series (and those records were lost, deleted, or integrated to another record set by the creator or accumulator before they were transferred to the archival repository); or there may be, later, other documents in the series (the series is an open one and accruals are expected.)
So if after investigating a bit, if you find that this was not an 'error', IMHO you should keep this "The Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health" series and connnect the single record it includes with this series using the 'includes or included' relation. You could also if you wish so, document the deletions or integrations using the History or ScopeAndContent attributes of the series Record Set, or 'is or was affected by + an Event, or a relation to this other record set, like 'included' in RiC-O. You could document expected accruals using e.g. the RiC-CM accruals attribute.
If this was an error, you can direcly connect this single record to the fonds. Of couse many archival fonds have an irregular structure, where a Record can be found at the same hierarchical ISAD(G) 'level' as a file or series, may include directly some subfonds and series, etc. No structure is predetermined, a fonds is shaped by the history and activities of its creator(s).

As Richard said, in RiC-CM 'includes or includes' may be interpreted transitively; which is not actually really something new in archival description. When in a ISAD(G) finding aid, you organize your descriptions hierarchically, you in fact want to express, using some convention understandable by human readers, that any aggregation or item directly included in a file, the file being included in a sub-series, the sub-series in a series, the series in a fonds (and whatever intermediate aggegations you have; there may be a lot more), is indirectly part of these upper levels, up to the fonds. This may BTW be a search criterion.
What RiC brings new, is that with RiC those relations are explicitely represented; and that when you implement RiC, you should implement the relations so that they can be processed by machines, searched and navigated. So RiC builds on ISAD(G).
What RiC also brings is that it enables, unlike a classic ISAD(G) finding aid, to represent the fact that any Record resource can be included simultaneously or through time, in many distinct aggregations. As Richard also said. And that you can also, simultaneously or choosing this single perspective, use relations with activities to assert that some series, record or any record resource results from some activity, process, transaction. Or use relations to connect items ad their authors, record resources and their subjects, etc. etc.
Also, a lot of relations are defined with present and past tense. Includes or included is a relation of this kind, which also can help represent past facts.
Finally, RiC does not by itself asks that your descriptions are complete. You can assert what you know. You can say, if you do not know more, that a series includes one record. This is what you know, it does not mean that the series does not include other records or record sets.
In short, RiC helps produce more accurate and nuanced, multifaceted, descriptions of archival reality, which is quite inherently complex. Partitive relationships between record sets and their parts are part of this reality. It is also a general reference framework, that does offer multiple possibilities; among which you may sometimes also choose some, depending on various 'local' parameters. The framework is also very flexible, so that you can move forward step by step.

Hope it helps,
Best regards

Florence Clavaud
Executive member of ICA/EGAD ; lead of RiC-O development team
Conservatrice générale du patrimoine | General curator
Responsable du Lab des Archives nationales de France| head of the Lab, Archives nationales de France

>
> 1.2. The Files of the Presidency of the Ministry of Health (series) contains a single document
>
> 1.3. General Correspondence of the Ministry of Health (series)
>
> (series)
>
> 1.1. Circulars, Orders, and Regulations of the Ministry of Health (series)

Florence Clavaud
Conservatrice générale du patrimoine | General curator
Responsable du Lab des Archives nationales | head of the Lab
Direction du numérique et de la conservation
Archives nationales
59 rue Guynemer
90001
93383 Pierrefitte-sur-Seine Cedex — France
Téléphone : +33 (0)1 75 47 20 20

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De : records_in_c...@googlegroups.com <records_in_c...@googlegroups.com> De la part de Richard Williamson
Envoyé : mercredi 10 septembre 2025 02:08
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Objet : Re: [Records in Contexts users] RE: Question about some problems concearning ISAD(G) and RiC

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Merci de nous aider à préserver l'environnement en n'imprimant ce courriel et les documents joints que si nécessaire.

[Arian Rajh]

Dear Ivo, yes, it would be challenging to create a single document that addresses all possible dilemmas, but it would be helpful to have some methodological guidelines to assist users and, let's say, direct them during the transition period.

[Ivana Marinović]

Dear Florence,
Thanks for the answer and suggestions!
You and other members of this chat have helped me a lot.

L.p.
Ivana

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To: Records_in_C...@googlegroups.com

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