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Records in Contexts

Records in Contexts (RiC) is the latest archival description standard, that makes it possible to describe archival records and the multiple layers of contexts in which they are inscribed through time, from their creation to their curation in an archival institution. It enables archivists and records managers to move forward, from the four previous ICA description standards (ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDF and ISDIAH) to a more accurate, more nuanced, easier to process, multidimensional description.

RiC is developed by International Council on Archives Expert Group on Archival Description (ICA EGAD).

RiC has three components for now:

  • an introduction to archival description (RiC-IAD) which is a brief introduction to the principles and purpose of archival description. The latest version of RiC-IAD is RiC-IAD v0.2, dated December 2021, which can be downloaded here.
  • a conceptual model (RiC-Conceptual Model or RiC-CM) which defines the entities that exist in the world of archives, their attributes and the relations that can connect an entity to another one. A 0.1 version of RiC-CM was published in September 2016. The latest version of RiC-CM is RiC-CM v0.2, dated July 2021, which can be downloaded here.
  • an OWL 2 ontology, (RiC-Ontology or RiC-O). It is a formal representation of Records in Contexts Conceptual Model (RiC-CM). It provides a generic vocabulary and formal rules for creating RDF datasets (or generating them from existing archival metadata) that describe in a consistent way any kind of archival record resource. It can support publishing RDF datasets as Linked Data, querying them using SPARQL, and making inferences using the logic of the ontology. The latest public release of RiC-O, RiC-O v0.2, to which RiC-O Converter v2 is compliant, was published in February 2021. It is fully documented in English and available here: https://www.ica.org/standards/RiC/ontology.

Since the end of March 2020, RiC-O sources are available on GitHub (https://github.com/ICA-EGAD/RiC-O), along with some examples and diagrams. You will find there the latest version of RiC-O. The GitHub repository comes with a small information web site (https://ica-egad.github.io/RiC-O/); this is where you will find the latest news on RiC-O.

If you want to get the latest news on RiC, you can also get the main information from the ICA website.

You can also join the recently created “Records in Contexts users” group on Google groups. This is where you can provide or get information on ICA RiC and on events concerning this standard, contact the community of interested persons and users of the standard, ask questions, discuss current or future implementation issues and projects.