Dear Eleni, Thank you for the reminder. I have followed up this issue, connnecting with Nicholas Crofts to ask about some of the work that has been done previously on this. He was also able to share an earlier document worked on by himself, Martin and others in creating the original diagrams.
My understanding to date, evolving, is that the original purpose of the diagrams that are now under the 'use and learn; section was actually to make a solid connection to museum practice and the existing information standards of ICOM Documentation (nee CIDOC). This is the standard in 1995: https://cidoc.mini.icom.museum/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2020/03/guidelines1995.pdf And at some point it even gets broken down into suggested fields, which we find in the document on the link you share here: CIDOC reference model Information Groups (1997 <https://cidoc-crm.org/Resources/cidoc-reference-model-information-groups>) But as a generation of learners of CIDOC CRM can attest, I believe, the diagrams have since evolved to also play an important role in learning about the ontology itself. So it seems like they are now called upon to do a dual function. As we have been working to update them we have been updating them more towards making them towards the standard as it is, but haven't been focussed on connecting back to the original CIDOC information groups etc. I think this poses a question, which I think the group needs to consider and answer together. The diagrams we are working on now, are they for a) explaining and learning the CRM, b) connecting the CRM to the CIDOC Information Categories or c) both. My opinion is that they are uncomfortably for both right now. I wonder if we shouldn't create a set of diagrams which are just for learning the ontology (maybe these are fewer and more targeted) and we separate this function from the CIDOC information categories question. For the b functionality, representing CIDOC information categories, I think we should connect with ICOM Documentation and find out if this would be a priority and an interest. We could try to make this a collaboration with other committees and museums. In effect this is just a semantic modelling exercise of fields, at which we are very good now and for which many tools exist to create the data. The meaningful thing here though might be to really connect up with active documentation work, so that ICOM Documentation can illustrate the categories in action and those categories are correctly linked up to the best present state of CIDOC CRM ontology and semantic modelling practice. This is what I have to report. I think it's quite interesting and worth a discussion at the next SIG and also of course here on the list. Best, George On Sun, Sep 7, 2025 at 1:34 PM Eleni Tsouloucha <[email protected]> wrote: > Dear all, > in the last SIG meeting you volunteered to look at the original CIDOC > reference model Information Groups (1997) > <https://cidoc-crm.org/Resources/cidoc-reference-model-information-groups> > for issue 687 > <https://cidoc-crm.org/Issue/ID-687-review-the-textual-descriptions-to-diagrams-in-the-functional-overview>, > to determine whether the diagrams in the Use and Learn section were > intended as part of the original standard or if they were meant as > examples, and on the basis of the diagrams therein to establish if we need > to add/change in the diagrams of the Use and Learn. > > Is this something you are willing to do ahead of the October meeting? > Please let me know. > > Best, > > > -- > Eleni Tsouloucha > Philologist - MA Linguistics & Language Technologies > Center for Cultural Informatics > Information Systems Laboratory - Institute of Computer Science > Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas (FORTH) > > Address: N. Plastira 100, GR-70013 Heraklion, Grece > email: [email protected], [email protected] > Tel: +30 2810391488 >
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