What is Records in Contexts?
RiC is the ICA's model that connects records to the people, activities, places and dates around them - replacing four older standards with one linked picture.
Records in Contexts (RiC) is the International Council on Archives’ next-generation model for archival description. It replaces four separate standards - ISAD(G) (records), ISAAR(CPF) (creators), ISDF (functions) and ISDIAH (institutions) - with a single, connected model.
The shift: from documents to a graph
The older standards described records, their creators, the functions they served, and their holding institutions as separate documents. RiC treats them as one connected web of entities joined by relationships.
So instead of describing a fonds in isolation, you describe the record and who created it and the activity that produced it and where and when - and the links between them all. That lets you ask questions a flat catalogue cannot answer:
- everything this person created or touched
- every record produced by this activity
- how these two collections relate
The building blocks
RiC is built from a small set of entity types. The ones you meet most:
| Entity | RiC-CM code | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| Record | RiC-E04 | The unit of recorded content |
| Record Set | RiC-E03 | An aggregation - fonds, series, collection |
| Record Part | RiC-E05 | A component of a record (a track, an entry, an attachment) |
| Agent | RiC-E07 | A Person (E08), Family (E10) or Corporate Body (E11) |
| Activity | RiC-E15 | Something done - a business process, an event |
| Place | RiC-E22 | A bounded, named location |
| Instantiation | RiC-E06 | A physical/digital carrier of a record |
| Rule | RiC-E16 | A mandate, law or policy that governs records |
Browse them all, with their attributes and relations, in the live RiC-CM navigator.
Two layers: RiC-CM and RiC-O
- RiC-CM - the conceptual model (the entities and relations above).
- RiC-O - the ontology: RiC-CM expressed in OWL/RDF so it can be published as linked data.
OpenRiC targets RiC-CM 1.0 / RiC-O 1.1.
Next
- What is OpenRiC? - how OpenRiC turns RiC into a working contract.
- The RiC entities & relations - the model in practical detail.
- Try the modelling wizard to see RiC applied to real material.
Something missing or unclear? Tell us in Discussions or email johan@theahg.co.za.