Records make sense in context.
OpenRiC connects archival records to the people and organisations behind them, the activities that created them, and the places and dates that tie them together - so those connections can be followed across tools and institutions instead of living in one catalogue.
New here? OpenRiC in five minutes - one object followed end to end, read live from the reference service. Or build with OpenRiC. What works today? Review it.
OpenRiC is a specification, not an application. OpenRiC Workspace, an archival application built on it, is planned.
OpenRiC in 60 seconds
Archival description has always implied those links. Traditionally they sit in prose, readable by a person and invisible to everything else. RiC - the International Council on Archives' model, replacing ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDF and ISDIAH with one connected picture - makes them explicit. OpenRiC is an open contract for publishing and exchanging that picture, so any conformant tool can follow the links. Rather like IIIF for images: nobody had to agree on storage, only on how to ask.
RiC is the ICA's standard; OpenRiC is not. RiC defines what archival description means (the model, RiC-CM, and the ontology, RiC-O). OpenRiC is an independent project that defines how to serve and test RiC data over the web. It is not an ICA-approved extension of RiC. RiC and OpenRiC compared →
Try it now
A demonstration archival dataset as a catalogue. Search it, filter by type, open any record. No account, no server address, no API key.
Open Browse →The same data as a graph. Start at a record and walk out to its creator, the activity behind it, and where it happened.
Open the Graph Explorer ↗Describe what you actually hold and work through the decisions, with the reasoning shown rather than assumed.
Open the wizard →Why it is worth the trouble
- The context survives the system. Relationships live in the data, not in one vendor's schema, so they still mean something after a migration.
- Description already written maps forward. ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDF and ISDIAH records have a documented route into RiC - see the mapping specification.
- Conformance is testable, not asserted. A black-box probe, SHACL shapes and a fixture pack decide whether an implementation actually conforms.
- It is a contract, not a product. Any system can implement it and no system is privileged by it. Specification CC-BY 4.0, reference code AGPL-3.0.
What OpenRiC deliberately does not try to replace - IIIF, Linked Art, CIDOC CRM, Wikidata, or the catalogue you already run - is set out in About.
Where to go next
What RiC is, which entity fits what you have, and the distinctions that cost people the most time.
Learn & model →The HTTP contract, JSON-LD, profiles, SHACL, OpenAPI, OAI-PMH and the conformance probe.
Build with OpenRiC →What adopting this commits you to, what is production versus draft, and what is honestly still missing.
Read the brief →Technical state
- Specification v0.52.0
- 12 profiles, 7 normative
- Targets RiC-O 1.1 (namespace audit, April 2026)
- Standards baseline
- Proof of implementation
- Known drift
- GitHub