Lieber Georg,

...

In my basic model I will regard (implicitly) the underlying concepts of at least the TEI-Header, the Dublin Core Abstract Model and FRBR, although none of these will completely fill the bill.

Are there any further suggestions as to which other conceptual approaches I may take into account? I know you are aware of it - but I have to stress a bit on another model that we definitively have to take into account: The Vocabulaire internationale de diplomatique.

I will consider that too. But that is more about the border between charters and non-charters and less about der information characteristics of a charter. I don't have a strong position in defining what a charter is. We could set up a centralized definition or even leave it to the local views (constructivism: if somebody says it's a charter, then it is a charter). Or a position in between: you may call it a charter but it doesn't fit into our model, so we are not interested in this particular object ...

TEI, DC and FRBR (i.e.: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) are models for printed material (FRBR), generic texts (TEI) and documents (DC)

I know. You're perfectly right. That's why I said none of thme fills the bill completely. The FRBR-distinction between abstract and concrete entities is helpful, but it is derived from printed works. TEI sticks to an abstract notion of text on one hand and structures of printed material on the other. DC is interesting for combining simplicity with a nice theoretical model but doesn't really helps in defining what the object really is.

- and we are scholars of diplomatics (employed in archives, universities, libraries). We can learn from them - but we do need something that comes from our understanding what charters are ("historical texts with at least one physical representation on which its legal validity was based" - can anybody native speaking help me with this definition? :-). And you see: all three models you cited aren't really interested in the authenticity of a document. A scholar of diplomatics is ("discrimen veri ac falsi" ...). Thus also the models Luciana is talking of (MoReq e.g.) are of interest, I think.

Thanks for the hint on MoReq! 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 Of course, you could split up these things to obtain clear 1:n-relationships (one abstract charter, several manifestations; one entry in a cartulaire, several editions/regests/facsimiles). But that would make things more complicated than is necessary. In the real world, we are talking about digital metadata, so we have already a compound object which talks about the different ontological entities. We only have to keep things clear then. Some external references we cannot avoid: 1. something is part of something else which forms another object: the charter (as an printed edition) is part of a larger edition; is part of a cartulaire, is part of a digitization project etc. (collection level description) 2. Identification of something which has to be described as another object - this photo is about the same charter manifestation as that digitized print edition (this is some kind of normalization on the abstract text level) - this issuer is Person X (reference on authority files) With number 2 we are already in the future. For now I would like to have a model as simple as possible to make a general charter portal realizable. That's at least my starting point ... Comments? Best, Patrick

and what about METS? Objects in a digital library ... Arianna Ciula schrieb:

Dear Patrick,

among the other things you can consider the ontological model CIDOC-CRM, if you haven't done so already. It deals with a different perspective (one you are actually already considering) focused on material objects; it may be useful to reflect upon how to express provenance and life of a charter as a physical object intimately related to the archive/collection/library that hosts or has hosted it.

See you all in Munich, Arianna

Patrick Sahle wrote:

...

Lieber Georg,

...

...

In my basic model I will regard (implicitly) the underlying concepts of at least the TEI-Header, the Dublin Core Abstract Model and FRBR, although none of these will completely fill the bill.

Are there any further suggestions as to which other conceptual approaches I may take into account? I know you are aware of it - but I have to stress a bit on another model that we definitively have to take into account: The Vocabulaire internationale de diplomatique.

I will consider that too. But that is more about the border between charters and non-charters and less about der information characteristics of a charter. I don't have a strong position in defining what a charter is. We could set up a centralized definition or even leave it to the local views (constructivism: if somebody says it's a charter, then it is a charter). Or a position in between: you may call it a charter but it doesn't fit into our model, so we are not interested in this particular object ...

...

TEI, DC and FRBR (i.e.: Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records) are models for printed material (FRBR), generic texts (TEI) and documents (DC)

I know. You're perfectly right. That's why I said none of thme fills the bill completely. The FRBR-distinction between abstract and concrete entities is helpful, but it is derived from printed works. TEI sticks to an abstract notion of text on one hand and structures of printed material on the other. DC is interesting for combining simplicity with a nice theoretical model but doesn't really helps in defining what the object really is.

...

- and we are scholars of diplomatics (employed in archives, universities, libraries). We can learn from them - but we do need something that comes from our understanding what charters are ("historical texts with at least one physical representation on which its legal validity was based" - can anybody native speaking help me with this definition? :-). And you see: all three models you cited aren't really interested in the authenticity of a document. A scholar of diplomatics is ("discrimen veri ac falsi" ...). Thus also the models Luciana is talking of (MoReq e.g.) are of interest, I think.

Thanks for the hint on MoReq!

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

Of course, you could split up these things to obtain clear 1:n-relationships (one abstract charter, several manifestations; one entry in a cartulaire, several editions/regests/facsimiles). But that would make things more complicated than is necessary. In the real world, we are talking about digital metadata, so we have already a compound object which talks about the different ontological entities. We only have to keep things clear then. Some external references we cannot avoid: 1. something is part of something else which forms another object: the charter (as an printed edition) is part of a larger edition; is part of a cartulaire, is part of a digitization project etc. (collection level description) 2. Identification of something which has to be described as another object - this photo is about the same charter manifestation as that digitized print edition (this is some kind of normalization on the abstract text level) - this issuer is Person X (reference on authority files)

With number 2 we are already in the future. For now I would like to have a model as simple as possible to make a general charter portal realizable. That's at least my starting point ...

Comments?

Best, Patrick

-- ------------------------------------- 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

At 01:24 AM 21/02/2007, you wrote:

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 ...

It does matter for the user to assess the trustworthiness and authenticity of the record, the reliability of the source for the digitized copy, and the accuracy of the rendition. This is, in the context of what we call status of transmission, the format (in modern term) or the rendition....

Or does it really matter, as long as we have a concept for the individuation of the abstract charter?

We should have a concept for each of the things you listed

Following the discussion with great interest .

Likewise, Luciana

Dear Luciana, the discussion develops: You hit one point that results from the multilinguality of our project: As we are all scholars of diplomatics (although some became archivist ...) the notion of "document", "Urkunde", "act" seemed to be clear - and I decided to use "charter" as the expression in the DTD, knowing that in english the proper word would be 'document'. But "document" could be any kind of record, internal memoranda as well as an excel-sheet etc. "Charter" sounds a bit like "carta" and might evoke good associations in our minds. But you're right: A "charter" is something more specific in english. One reason why english as principal language of the DTD is a worry to me. And a reason why I stress so much on the VID: There we have the following definition: Un acte écrit (Lat.: Scriptum, scriptura, instrumentum) est un écrit où se trouve consigné, soit l'accomplissement d'un acte juridique, soit l'existence d'un fait juridique, soit encore éventuellement un fait quelconque dès lors que l'écrit est rédigé dans une certaine forme propre à lui donner validité. (VID n.3) (GV: A 'written document' is something written (a document/paper/writ ...), on which the execution of a legal act, the existence of a legal fact or any other fact is noticed and drawn up in a special form to give it authenticy - it's hard to trranslate something from one foreign language to another :-) and the following expressions: dt.: Urkunde - en.: written document - esp.: documento - fr.: acte écrit - it.: atto, documento - lat.: instrumentum, scriptura, scriptum Should we use 'instrumentum'? Maybe the latin word is the best ... But as Gautier pointed out rightly: Let's start with the concepts: Names and other encoding standards are the second step. We are talking about the "instrumentum"- concept that is - at the moment - called "charter". If I followed the discussion correctly, we start to add things to the traditional diplomatic concepts: The transmission as part of the authenticity (Luciana), the differentiation between an abstract concept of "instrumentum/charter" and it's material manifestations (Patrick). I will try to consider that in my improvements of the DTD-proposal. All the best Georg Luciana Duranti schrieb:

At 01:13 AM 20/02/2007, Georg Vogeler wrote:

We do need something that comes from our understanding what charters are ("historical texts with at least one physical representation on which its legal validity was based" - can anybody native speaking help me with this definition? :-).

That would be a historical "instrument," a document which gives formal expression to a legal act.

And you see: all three models you cited aren't really interested in the authenticity of a document. A scholar of diplomatics is ("discrimen veri ac falsi" ...).

amen...and I would add that such assessment is as much based on the extrinsic and intrinsic elements of form of the record and on its /traditio /or transmission as it is on its documentary context (archival description, being a collective authentication of the fonds and its internal relationships, provides the basis for that) and on the trustworthiness both of the custodian of the original record and of the person responsible for the digitization and for the maintenance of the digitized material. This is why metadata should be distinguished into two categories, according to the components of authenticity: identity metadata and integrity metadata. The former identify the original record, just like a regestum does, defines its status of transmission, establishes its place in the original aggregation of records, and names the legitimate custodian(s) overtime, while the latter identify the characteristics of the digitized version in terms both of digital presentation and of documentary manifestation (keeping in mind that digitization gives the illusion to users of dealing with a facsimile, but nothing could be further from it that a digitized copy of an analogue record), the responsibility for digitization, the date, the primary responsibility for maintenance of the digitized copies, subsequent upgradings and migrations with dates and responsibilities (do not forget that technological obsolescence is going to be increasingly frequent), new presentations etc.

However, as others have mentioned, the encoding of the record itself is separate from the encoding of its abstract and from the creation of the metadata for the digitized version of record and abstract. It seems to me that all three models mentioned earlier confuse those different things. In addition, the terminology of TEI is not consistent with any archival metadata schema which may be incorporated in any recordkeeping system which will hold and retrieve the digitized version. Consistency of terminology among those three components (encoding of the record, encoding of the abstract and metadata) is vital. However, indeed, the first thing to agree upon is what is the record for which we wish to develop an encoding language. What is a charter? Until today I spoke on the assumption that we were all on the same page as it regards what a charter is, but now I am getting this funny feeling that we are not. So, I will tell you what I think we are working on, and then you tell me whether you really referred to a much broader concept (including writs, deeds, etc.)

Charter:

"An instrument emanating from the sovereign power, in the nature of a grant, either to a whole nation, or to a class or portion of the people, to a corporation (e.g. city, university), or to a colony or dependency, assuring to them certain rights, liberties, or powers." This is the definition I prefer because it embraces both form and act and applies to charters through time.

Encyclopedia Britannica: "a document granting certain specified rights, powers, privileges, or functions from the sovereign power of a state to an individual, corporation, city, or other unit of local organization. ...in medieval Europe, monarchs typically issued *charter*s to towns, cities, guilds, merchant associations, universities, and religious institutions; such *charter*s guaranteed certain privileges and immunities for those organizations while also sometimes specifying arrangements for the conduct of their internal affairs. By the end of the European Middle Ages, monarchs granted *charter*s that guaranteed overseas trading companies monopolies of trade (and in some cases government) within a specified foreign geographic area. ...Modern *charter*s are of two kinds, corporate and municipal. A corporate *charter* is a grant made by a governmental body giving a group of individuals the power to form a corporation, or limited-liability company. A municipal *charter* is a law passed by a government allowing the people of a specific locality to organize themselves into a municipal corporation­/i.e.,/ a city. Such a *charter* in effect delegates powers to the people for the purpose of local self-government."

Because the charter is a also a documentary form, it may be used to give solemnity to an act that does not have the nature of a grant, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights, which is established by the people as represented in the legislature, but issued by the Queen.

Is this the entity we are talking about, or is it too limited a concept?

Luciana

Dr. Luciana Duranti Chair and Professor, Archival Studies Director, InterPARES Project ( www.interpares.org <http://www.interpares.org/>) School of Library, Archival and Information Studies The University of British Columbia Suite 301 - 6190 Agronomy Road Vancouver, B.C.V6T 1Z3 Canada Tel. 604/822-2587 FAX 604/822-6006 http://www.slais.ubc.ca/PEOPLE/faculty/faculty-bio/duranti-bio.htm http://www.interpares.org/ld/

-- ------------------------------------- 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

Dear Luciana, I'm not sure, I understood you right, but it looks to me that the CEI isn't talking about "record" but about "instrument": our main focus is not the totality of records in the archive - even if they have legal value - but those formal documents the traditional scholars of diplomatics are interested in, and that seems best described as "instrument" (or "deed"?). As we're principally historians of premodern (and I would assume even medieval) times, when all the records preparing the legal act often not survived, we focussed on the final result, the "instrument"/"deed" - and that would be the proper english term to use. Did I get it right? All the best Georg Luciana Duranti schrieb:

Dear Georg:

I am so glad I asked the question! Thanks, for the translation...I do speak French (thankfully, or I would be lost in a diplomatic world), and I do know the key German terms like the ones you refer to. So, I understand perfectly now what you are talking about.

Well, the fact that I took charter to mean what it indeed means does not imply that English is the wrong language for the DTD It simply means that you chose the wrong word ;-)

The concept you define is conveyed by two terms, one formal and traditional, "instrument", and one informal and modern, "legal record". A subcategory of instrument or legal record is "deed" or "act", which is the embodiment of a legal act ("ad substantiam") and therefore a dispositive record. Also, in English, document is any recorded information, while record is a document made or received in the course of an activity as a means for and byproduct of it, and kept for further action and reference. Thus, we are strictly speaking about records here, not documents.

I would insist on the English language because at least 50% of the terms you selected for the DTD elements are English words and consistency is a great thing for a product that aims at fostering consistency. Especially if you include all types of legal documents and expand the time line, you do not have much of a choice. And, believe me, there are English words for any type of legal record you can think of, although undoubtedly most of them have a Latin root. I did find a correspondent term in English for every documentary form I found in the State Archives of Rome and in the Vatican Archives.

One thing that you may want to consider is to have some sort of concordance glossary at the end of the DTD that links the corresponding term in each of the main languages. I think you would have to create such a thing in any case.

Luciana

At 12:54 AM 21/02/2007, you wrote:

...

Dear Luciana,

the discussion develops: You hit one point that results from the multilinguality of our project: As we are all scholars of diplomatics (although some became archivist ...) the notion of "document", "Urkunde", "act" seemed to be clear - and I decided to use "charter" as the expression in the DTD, knowing that in english the proper word would be 'document'. But "document" could be any kind of record, internal memoranda as well as an excel-sheet etc. "Charter" sounds a bit like "carta" and might evoke good associations in our minds. But you're right: A "charter" is something more specific in english. One reason why english as principal language of the DTD is a worry to me.

And a reason why I stress so much on the VID: There we have the following definition:

Un acte écrit (Lat.: Scriptum, scriptura, instrumentum) est un écrit où se trouve consigné, soit l'accomplissement d'un acte juridique, soit l'existence d'un fait juridique, soit encore éventuellement un fait quelconque dès lors que l'écrit est rédigé dans une certaine forme propre à lui donner validité. (VID n.3)

(GV: A 'written document' is something written (a document/paper/writ ...), on which the execution of a legal act, the existence of a legal fact or any other fact is noticed and drawn up in a special form to give it authenticy - it's hard to trranslate something from one foreign language to another :-)

and the following expressions:

dt.: Urkunde - en.: written document - esp.: documento - fr.: acte écrit - it.: atto, documento - lat.: instrumentum, scriptura, scriptum

Should we use 'instrumentum'? Maybe the latin word is the best ... But as Gautier pointed out rightly:

Let's start with the concepts: Names and other encoding standards are the second step.

We are talking about the "instrumentum"- concept that is - at the moment - called "charter".

If I followed the discussion correctly, we start to add things to the traditional diplomatic concepts: The transmission as part of the authenticity (Luciana), the differentiation between an abstract concept of "instrumentum/charter" and it's material manifestations (Patrick).

I will try to consider that in my improvements of the DTD-proposal.

All the best

Georg

Luciana Duranti schrieb:

...

At 01:13 AM 20/02/2007, Georg Vogeler wrote:

We do need something that comes from our understanding what charters are ("historical texts with at least one physical representation on which its legal validity was based" - can anybody native speaking help me with this definition? :-).

That would be a historical "instrument," a document which gives formal expression to a legal act.

And you see: all three models you cited aren't really interested in the authenticity of a document. A scholar of diplomatics is ("discrimen veri ac falsi" ...).

amen...and I would add that such assessment is as much based on the extrinsic and intrinsic elements of form of the record and on its /traditio /or transmission as it is on its documentary context (archival description, being a collective authentication of the fonds and its internal relationships, provides the basis for that) and on the trustworthiness both of the custodian of the original record and of the person responsible for the digitization and for the maintenance of the digitized material. This is why metadata should be distinguished into two categories, according to the components of authenticity: identity metadata and integrity metadata. The former identify the original record, just like a regestum does, defines its status of transmission, establishes its place in the original aggregation of records, and names the legitimate custodian(s) overtime, while the latter identify the characteristics of the digitized version in terms both of digital presentation and of documentary manifestation (keeping in mind that digitization gives the illusion to users of dealing with a facsimile, but nothing could be further from it that a digitized copy of an analogue record), the responsibility for digitization, the date, the primary responsibility for maintenance of the digitized copies, subsequent upgradings and migrations with dates and responsibilities (do not forget that technological obsolescence is going to be increasingly frequent), new presentations etc. However, as others have mentioned, the encoding of the record itself is separate from the encoding of its abstract and from the creation of the metadata for the digitized version of record and abstract. It seems to me that all three models mentioned earlier confuse those different things. In addition, the terminology of TEI is not consistent with any archival metadata schema which may be incorporated in any recordkeeping system which will hold and retrieve the digitized version. Consistency of terminology among those three components (encoding of the record, encoding of the abstract and metadata) is vital. However, indeed, the first thing to agree upon is what is the record for which we wish to develop an encoding language. What is a charter? Until today I spoke on the assumption that we were all on the same page as it regards what a charter is, but now I am getting this funny feeling that we are not. So, I will tell you what I think we are working on, and then you tell me whether you really referred to a much broader concept (including writs, deeds, etc.)

Charter:

"An instrument emanating from the sovereign power, in the nature of a grant, either to a whole nation, or to a class or portion of the people, to a corporation (e.g. city, university), or to a colony or dependency, assuring to them certain rights, liberties, or powers." This is the definition I prefer because it embraces both form and act and applies to charters through time.

Encyclopedia Britannica: "a document granting certain specified rights, powers, privileges, or functions from the sovereign power of a state to an individual, corporation, city, or other unit of local organization. ...in medieval Europe, monarchs typically issued *charter*s to towns, cities, guilds, merchant associations, universities, and religious institutions; such *charter*s guaranteed certain privileges and immunities for those organizations while also sometimes specifying arrangements for the conduct of their internal affairs. By the end of the European Middle Ages, monarchs granted *charter*s that guaranteed overseas trading companies monopolies of trade (and in some cases government) within a specified foreign geographic area. ...Modern *charter*s are of two kinds, corporate and municipal. A corporate *charter* is a grant made by a governmental body giving a group of individuals the power to form a corporation, or limited-liability company. A municipal *charter* is a law passed by a government allowing the people of a specific locality to organize themselves into a municipal corporation­/i.e.,/ a city. Such a *charter* in effect delegates powers to the people for the purpose of local self-government."

Because the charter is a also a documentary form, it may be used to give solemnity to an act that does not have the nature of a grant, such as the Canadian Charter of Rights, which is established by the people as represented in the legislature, but issued by the Queen.

Is this the entity we are talking about, or is it too limited a concept?

Luciana

Dr. Luciana Duranti Chair and Professor, Archival Studies Director, InterPARES Project ( www.interpares.org <http://www.interpares.org/>) School of Library, Archival and Information Studies The University of British Columbia Suite 301 - 6190 Agronomy Road Vancouver, B.C.V6T 1Z3 Canada Tel. 604/822-2587 FAX 604/822-6006 http://www.slais.ubc.ca/PEOPLE/faculty/faculty-bio/duranti-bio.htm http://www.interpares.org/ld/

-- ------------------------------------- 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

-- ------------------------------------- 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

Dear all, I have been on a winter vacation and have not had the opportunity to participate in the discussion. My comment is to the entire discussion about concept, TEI,DC,FRBR and CIDOC CRM. DC I find too weak and I think we should not concider to use it. FRBR is focused on the need of the libraries, and has the 4 levels: work, expression, manifestation and item CIDOC CRM was originally meant to be a conceptual model for the museum sector. In contrast to most models CIDOC CRM is truly event based and can handle what happens with both material and immaterial objects (like the abstract content of a image, text and a charter or a museum artefact like a piece of parchment. TEI is a set of recommendation on how to mark up electronic transcriptions of printed or hand written text. TEI can also be seen as a storing/archival format for texts. In the TEI tradition on finds the Old Norse text archive initiative (www.menota.org). The last 3 years an open working group initiated by the CRM SIG and the revision group on the FRBR, has been working on a harmonisation of FRBR and CRM. (see http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/frbr_inro.html) and a first version called FRBRoo has been published on the URL http://cidoc.ics.forth.gr/frbr_drafts.html. The intension of the work behind the FRBRoo is to create an event centric conceptual model both intellectual work and physical objects. The FRBRoo has inherited the four levels of FRBR but differs between what is common to a set of industrially produced copies and a single manifestation like a manuscript. In FRBR both are said to be manifestations. The abstract content of a charter may be seen as an expression and the physical charter is a manifestation singleton. A copy (vidimus) will be another expression. The two will be connected by an event. Thus the history or chain of events connected to a (abstract) text can be expressed in this framework. The history of the physical object can also be expressed in the same framework as can the content (a reading). So far I can see, the CEI dtd is in the TEI tradition and contains elements for formal parts of charters and physical parts and also elements for marking up printed editions of charters and also printed regesta collections. As long as we studying the content of charters as texts I think we should let CEI in this respect be an extension to TEI. The TEI header should be extended to full FRBRoo. The information given by a reading of a document may be kept separate from the CEI document or stored in a separate part by can be anchored to the corresponding parts of the text. METS is a very nice wau to combine different electronic resources and may well be used in this setting. This is all on an experimental level, but clearly possibble. I will try to explain the main ideas in my 15(!) minutes talk. Unfortunately I am not able to participate in the meeting on Saturday. I hope we can have some discussions during the seminar. Regards, Christian-Emil Ore Patrick Sahle wrote:

Cher Gautier, dear all,

...

With this list and this classification, we obtain a conceptual model to describe charters with the different problematic (archive science, edition, digitalisation, diplomatic perspectives...). This conceptual model is our reference and if we don't use the same name to our elements, it's not so a problem if each element corresponds with this model.

I completely agree with that. That's actually what I will try to do in my presentation: develop a conceptual model for the description of charters (as a prerequisite for future portal building and interoperability of data). To keep things simple I will concentrate on the Metadata-Level - but that will be already quite complex.

We really need a consensus on what our "object" is and how it can be described. If we have that, then we can try to derive from that a wider model of all the aspects of charters we wish to document or to encode. And if we have that wider model, we can start to think about element names, attribute names and values.

In my basic model I will regard (implicitly) the underlying concepts of at least the TEI-Header, the Dublin Core Abstract Model and FRBR, although none of these will completely fill the bill.

Are there any further suggestions as to which other conceptual approaches I may take into account?

Best regards, Patrick

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