1.1 LtC Glossary

For the purposes of documenting the use of Latimer Core the following definitions will be used:

• Attributes are the values that a property can take. Attributes can be prescribed/controlled for a particular property and can be thought of as lookup lists, or they may be uncontrolled and thought of as free-form strings. For example ‘George’, ‘Rattus’, ‘under the tree by the rock’.

• Class is the word that we use for the grouping of properties. It defines the thing we are talking about. For example: a Person, a group of objects, etc.

• Controlled Vocabulary is a prescribed set of attributes that a property can have. Controlled vocabularies improve retrieval and reuse, as well as form the basis for machine-readability and -actionability.

• Collection is a term...

• Property is a concept within a Class. These are what we can say about the thing described by the class. For example: givenName, genus, etc.

• Range may differ from the Resource Description Framework’s (RDF) definition of ‘range’, which applies to RDF properties and their usage within RDF triples (https://www.w3.org/TR/rdf-schema/#ch_properties). In Latimer Core, range is meant to guide usage of properties from one LtC class in combination with properties of another LtC class.

• Repeatability: certain classes and/or properties can be repeated. For example, a Person can have several Identifiers of different identifierTypes. A collection (i.e. an ObjectGroup) can have several instances of the CollectionStatusHistory class to describe its different states through time.

• Reusability: several classes can be reused, that is, they can be simultaneously attached to different classes to expand the sets of properties of those classes. For example, the Identifier or TemporalCoverage classes can be used in conjunction with many other classes to describe in more detail and with enhanced functionality the identity and temporal scope of different aspects (represented by classes) of a single collection.

• Schema is the word we use for the defined structure of the record. The schema should describe shape, structure and rules of composition. Here, we pluralize ‘schema’ as ‘schemes’ or ‘schemas’.

• Term is a general word for either a class, a property, or an attribute, specifically for predefined attributes in the lists of controlled vocabularies.

• Vocabulary is a general word for a set of classes, properties and/or attributes.