Lieber Patrick,
To outline my model a little bit further: A charter (as it's digital representation) is a complex object (I would like to avoid splitting it up into several simple objects). To describe it we need data on different ontological entities in that complex object. To give an example: - the charter is an abstract thing (like the "work" in FRBR) - it has an issue date, an issuer, an issue place etc. - the charter might be a material thing (or may have more than one material manifestations) - with format, support, and a reference to an archive or achival holding etc. - there may be - for example - a date differing from the issue date of the abstract thing - the charter might have one or several forms of further representation - like in an edition - or a photograph - or a "regestum" - and all of these have further attributes (publishing date for example) - and then you have digital forms of these thing - yet with other attributes
With this model a bit generic isn't the printed edition something similar to a copy in a medieval chartulary, the 14th century notarial transsumptum or the manuscript of a 19th century scholar - and thus any kind of material manifestation even the original? All of them are manifestations of the abstract thing. Or do you distinguish between Manuscript Age (one parchment = one text), Gutenberg Galaxy (one edition = one text) and Virtual World (??)? Or couldn't we better distinguish between the mode of the attempt to represent the abstract charter: transcription, edition, photograph, regestum ... Or does it really matter, as long as we have a concept for the individuation of the abstract charter? Following the discussion with great interest ... Georg -- ------------------------------------- Dr.Georg Vogeler Historisches Seminar - Abt. Geschichtliche Hilfswissenschaften Ludwig-Maximilians-Universtitaet Muenchen e-mail: g.vogeler@lrz.uni-muenchen.de Internet: http://www.geschichte.uni-muenchen.de/ghw/personen_vogeler.shtml