Entity types

Entity types

Main Page > User manual > UM-1 System overview > UM-1.3 Entity types

Relationships

Users deal with four main types of entity in ICA-AtoM:

• Archival descriptions
• Authority files (actors)
• Archival institutions
• Terms

Note that ICA-AtoM's architecture includes other entity types, but from the users' point of view these will be the primary ones with which they interact.

Archival Descriptions

• Contextual information about archival materials
• Arranged into hierarchical levels (fonds, series, files, items).
• Data elements based on the ICA's General International Standard Archival Description (ISAD-G).

Authority files (actors)

• Descriptions of the actors (corporate bodies, persons and families) that interact with archival materials as creators, custodians, subjects access points, etc.
• Data elements based on the ICA's International Standard Archival Authority Records (Corporate bodies, Persons, Families) (ISAAR(CPF)).

Archival institutions

• Descriptions of repositories that preserve and provide access to archival materials.
• Data elements based on the ICA's International Standard for Describing Institutions with Archival Holdings (ISDIAH).

Terms

• Controlled vocabularies (functions, subjects, places) used throughout the system (e.g. as access points or in drop-down value lists).
• Organized into separate taxonomies.
• A future iteration of ICA-AtoM will extend one such taxonomy ('Function description') to include the elements found in the ICA's International Standard For Describing Functions (ISDF).

Actors (corporate bodies, persons, families) are described in ISAAR(CPF) authority files. Actors can be creators, custodians and subjects of the material described in archival descriptions. These relationships are registered as ICA-AtoM events delimited by start / end dates. Through events, 1 actor can have 0, 1 or many relationships to 0, 1 or many archival materials; and 1 archival unit can have 0, 1 or many relationships to 0, 1 or many actors. Event relationships link ISAAR authority files (descriptions of actors) and ISAD records (descriptions of archival materials).

An archival institution is an actor that holds archival materials. Like all actors, it has an ISAAR authority record. But its characteristics as a repository (e.g. its opening hours, research services, contact information) are described separately in an ISIAH institution record. The ISIAH elements that are inherited from its ISAAR authority file are:

• Authorized Form Of Name
• Other Forms of Name
• Parallel Forms of Name
• History
• Administrative Structure