arm

Custodial History : Provenance Ownership Model

LD4P ArtFrame and RareMat Ontology Groups

Created: 2017-10-04 Revised: 2018-07-03

Table of Contents

Overview

Understanding the ownership or custodial history of an item is fundamental in understanding its contextual and historical importance as well as during valuation, when applicable.

Current descriptive practice includes these data as strings. For instance: “Unrecorded until purchased in 1893 from Agnew’s by J. Pierpont Morgan; sold by him at auction in 1905; Christie’s 1910; Pres. and Mrs. Nicholas Murray Butler; donated by their estate to Columbia in 1955.”

In modeling ownership and custodial history, the ArtFrame and Rare Materials Ontology Extension groups wanted to leverage more queryable data afforded by an entity-focused model; this differs from both current descriptive practice as well as BIBFRAME use of bf:custodialHistory as a datatype property. As such, we recommend using object properties alongside resources for different components of custodial history.

An item’s custodial history is complex and provides a rich area for querying. Through the model proposed below, we believe we can trace individual custodial histories for items in collections while aggregating materials related to the same auction, sale or donation.

While the custodial history model was developed specifically to address the descriptive needs of bibliographic items in the art and rare materials domains, we define it as an independent model with the expectation that it could be useful in the description of the custodial history of a broad range of resources.

Summary of the Model

Prefixes

The following prefixes are used in the remainder of this document:

activity: https://w3id.org/arm/activity/ontology/ - ARM Activity Ontology arm: https://w3id.org/arm/core/ontology/ - ARM Core Ontology bf: http://id.loc.gov/ontologies/bibframe/ - Library of Congress BIBFRAME ontology ch: https://w3id.org/arm/custodial_history/ontology/ - ARM Custodial History Ontology (described in this document) edtf: Extended Date/Time Format schema: http://schema.org - Schema ontology seq: http://www.ontologydesignpatterns.org/cp/owl/sequence.owl# Sequence ontology

New resource types

The model posits two new classes for the description of a resource’s custodial history: CustodialEvent and CustodialHistory.

A CustodialEvent represents a single event or period in the custodial history of a resource, such as a sale, donation, or period of ownership. The CustodialEvents for a specific Item are aggregated and potentially ordered in a CustodialHistory resource representing the entire custodial history of that Item.

The CustodialEvent directly linked to the CustodialHistory of a resource (hereafter “individual CustodialEvent”) may be part of a larger CustodialEvent (hereafter “aggregate CustodialEvent”) encompassing multiple Items; e.g., a manuscript auctioned together with other manuscripts. Note that these are not distinct types of resources; rather, the distinction is maintained by direct or indirect linkage to a resource’s CustodialHistory. The individual CustodialEvent node intervening between a resource’s CustodialHistory and the aggregate CustodialEvent allows the individual events to be aggregated and sequenced independently of any other Item’s CustodialHistory.

The CustodialHistory class is provided so that additional assertions can be made about it, distinct from assertions about specific events (the class also has conceptual appeal as a “container” of individual CustodialEvents). Whether this class is useful, as opposed to linking individual CustodialEvents directly to Items, remains to be seen through implementation and experimentation with the model (see Areas for Future Research).

Relationships between resources

The types of CustodialEvents encompassed by the provenance model include the following (and possibly others yet to be identified):

Each of these event types is represented by a subclass of CustodialEvent.

Note that these types of CustodialEvents include both what are typically thought of as “events” (sale, loan, etc.) and static time periods such as ownership. The former also subclass schema:Event. As a matter of implementation, a static period may pertain to only a single Item; e.g., Items sold together in one lot may later be sold in unrelated events, so that a single ownership event could not represent all Items. On the other hand, a single library can be sold multiple times together, and buyers may wish to keep the library intact as much as possible.

Both individual and aggregate CustodialEvents may be typed, but an individual event that is part of an aggregate event should have the same type, and typing is in that case redundant.

Activities appropriate to a specific CustodialEvent type are linked to a CustodialEvent instance. For example, a sale will typically have activities such as buyer and seller, while a loan may have activities such as borrower and lender.

Importantly, this model enhances the Activity model by providing a way to connect interrelated or interdependent activities. For example, we can assert seller and buyer activities on an item, but have no way to express the fact that specific seller and buyer activities are related to one another. If multiple such activities are related to a single item, there is no way to express the relationship of particular activities to one another. Dates may sometimes serve that purpose but cannot be relied upon.

Out-of-scope event and activity types

Concepts similar to but disjoint from ownership (i.e., to be represented by other models):

Diagram

Custodial History Diagram

RDF Sample

This sample describes a scenario in which one item has been sold twice, with an intervening period of ownership, and a second item has been sold once, as part of a lot that included the first sale of the first item.

:item1 a bf:Item ;
    ch:hasCustodialHistory :history1 .

:item2 a bf:Item ;
    ch:hasCustodialHistory :history2 .

:history1 a ch:CustodialHistory ;
    bf:hasPart :individualEvent1 ; :individualEvent2 ,  :individualEvent3 .

:history2 a ch:CustodialHistory ;
    bf:hasPart :individualEvent4 .

:individualEvent1 a ch:Sale ; 
    seq:precedes :individualEvent2 ;
    bf:partOf :aggregateEvent1 .

:individualEvent2 a ch:OwnershipEvent ; 
    seq:precedes :individualEvent3 .
    
:individualEvent3 a ch:Sale .

:individualEvent4 a ch:CustodialEvent ;
    bf:partOf :aggregateEvent1 .

:aggregateEvent1 a ch:Sale ;
    activity:hasActivity :sellerActivity1 ;
    bf:date “1984”^^edtf:edtf ;
    arm:atLocation <uri-of-location> ;
    schema:priceSpecification :price1 .

:sellerActivity1 a ch:SellerActivity ;
    bf:agent <uri-of-agent> .

:price1 a schema:PriceSpecification ;
    schema:price “10” ;
    # Note: The Schema definition of priceCurrency specifies the object as
    # a 3-letter ISO 4217 format - i.e., a literal rather than a URI. This
    # is left as [an area for future research](#AreasForFutureResearch).
    schema:priceCurrency <iso-4217-code> .

Requests to Library of Congress

bf:custodialHistory

Define custodial history-related classes

bf:Event

Term Specifications

Classes

schema:Event

bf:Item

ch:CustodialHistory

ch:CustodialEvent

CustodialEvent Subclasses

Some of these classes are also defined as subclasses of schema:Event. “Static” events such as Ownership do not subclass schema:Event.

ch:Accessioning

ch:Auction

ch:Bequest

ch:ClaimOfOwnership

ch:Deaccessioning

ch:Deposit

ch:Destruction

ch:Discarding

ch:Donation

ch:Inheritance

ch:Loan

ch:Loss

ch:Offer

ch:Ownership

ch:Recovery

ch:Repatriation

ch:Sale

ch:Theft

ch:Transfer

ch:Activity

Activity Subclasses

ch:AccessionerActivity

ch:AcquisitionActivity

ch:BorrowerActivity

ch:BuyerActivity

ch:ClaimantActivity

ch:DeaccessionerActivity

ch:DealerActivity

ch:DepositorActivity

ch:DestructionActivity

ch:DiscarderActivity

ch:DisputantActivity

ch:DonorActivity

ch:InheritorActivity

ch:LenderActivity

ch:LossActivity

ch:OfferActivity

ch:OwnerActivity

ch:PatronActivity

ch:RecipientActivity

ch:RecovererActivity

ch:RepatriatorActivity

ch:SellerActivity

ch:TestatorActivity

ch:ThiefActivity

ch:TransfererActivity

ch:WitnessActivity

arm:AccessionNumber

bf:Agent

bf:Place

schema:PriceSpecification

Properties

ch:accessions

ch:accessionedBy

activity:hasActivity

activity:isActivityOf

ch:hasCustodialHistory

ch:isCustodialHistoryOf

bf:hasPart

bf:partOf

seq:precedes

seq:follows

seq:directlyPrecedes

seq:directlyFollows

bf:place

arm:isLocationOf

bf:date

schema:price

schema:priceCurrency

schema:priceSpecification

bf:agent

arm:agentOf

Areas for Future Research