Aboutness

All information objects stored in an archive make statements about physical or conceptual entities in the world. They all have a subject matter and refer to something.

General Pattern The patternAboutnessforms, together with the patternProvenance(V:2.1.1), the upmost layer of the AKM in terms of its semantics. All other general patterns are specializa-tions of one of these two patterns.

The patternAboutnesscovers the genericcontext of aboutnessof information objects. The principle semantic of the pattern is:

1. The things (E1) about which identifiable but immaterial things (E73) make a general statement about or have as their primary subject.

Figure44shows the core of the principalAboutness pattern: Any instance of the classE73 Information Objectmay make a statement about any instance of the classE1 CRM Entity.

The classE73 Information Objecthas been introduced in the context of theProvenancepattern (V:2.1.1). The classE1 CRM Entityis the topmost concept in the CRM and comprises all things in the discourse universe of the CRM. In principle, therefore, the patternAboutnessallows us to assert any aboutness relationship between an instance ofE73 Information Objectand any instance ofE1 CRM Entitysince the latter is the super-class of all other classes in the CRM.⁷⁵

The nature of this relationship may be either one of general reference, expressed by the propertyP67 refers to (is referred to by), or one ofprimary subject, expressed by the propertyP126 is about (is subject of)which is a sub-property ofP67 refers to (is referred to by).For example, a census list (E31) generally refers to (P67) a group of people (E74), while a report (E31) has as its primary topic (P129) the activity (E7) on which it is reporting. TheAboutnesspattern thus resembles a simple subject relationship between an information object and its subject matter.

Figure 44– Core of theAboutnesspattern.

Within the scope of this study, the discourse universe is mostly limited to a particular range of relevant entities. The most relevant entities are summarized in Figure45.

75With the exception of primitive values (E59), to be exact.

In resource-discovery questions, users mostly ask for instances of the classE73 Information Objectwhich are primarily about an instance of either the classE7 Activityor the classE39 Actorand their sub-classes. These information entities are given as the qualification of the pattern assignment. Thetype of question, incidentally; that is, resource discovery, indicates that the question is about an information object, that the pattern assignment provides the general aboutness of the question in terms of the historical context to which it refers, and that the information entity given with the pattern assignment indicates the aboutness of the information object requested by the user in a question.

The other patterns, which are specializations of theAboutness pattern, further describe the specific historical context for these classes. This historical context is derived from the interpretation of the questions. The patterns provide the additional relevant entities, mostly thegiveninformation from the questions, and adequate context from the historical and archival domain.

TheEventspattern (V:2.2.2) focuses on questions about the context of activities in general, and thePlanspattern (2.2.3) on questions about the planning, and wanting and execution of plans, while theActorspattern (V:2.2.4) focuses on questions about the activities of persons and groups. TheThingspattern (V:2.2.5) describes the history of objects. Questions about information objects (E73) are covered by theDocumentspattern (V:2.2.6).

Figure 45– GeneralAboutnesspattern.

Questions referring to information objects (E73) about unintentional events (E5), places (E53), time-spans (E52), periods (E4), or physical things (E24) were not relevant. This means that users did not ask for information objects (E73) focusing on unintentional events such as

accidents (E5) or plagues (E5), the history of particular places such as cities (E53) or countries (E53), physical objects such as monuments (E24) or devotionals (E24), or time-spans (E52) or periods (E4) such as a document about the 1980s.⁷⁶

Proper general subjects are covered byE55 Type. The analysis of the questions, however, did not provide any evidence that users inquire after things referring specifically to a general subject.⁷⁷ This is not surprising since the inquiries focus on primary documents and facts in order to either describe or gather evidence for historical phenomena. Only one question specifically asked for a secondary source about the “Development of the law of associations and the policy regarding associations 1933-1945”. In principle, however, any primary document may be about or refer to a general subject. The patternAboutnesstherefore includes the classE55 Type,which may be used to state a general aboutness of an instance of the classE73 Information Objectin terms of general subject.

Factual questions may inquire aboutany material fact described in the patterns; that is, AboutnessandProvenancepatterns such as the name of a person, the date of joining a political party, or the mandates of a particular group.

Instances ofE31 Documentmay have as their primary subject any instance ofE73 Information Object. This specific case is covered in more detail in the Documentspattern (V:2.2.6). For example, a finding aid (E31) or holding guide (E31) describes (P126) the context of archival documents (E73) in a holding. Questionsaboutthe type or form of a written or visual document or any other qualities of information objects, including features of the archive and its holdings, are also covered by the patternDocuments(V:2.2.6).

Since it is assumed that every information object is about something, theAboutnesspattern is assigned to a question if the aboutness of the information object to which the question refers is not known or not given, and cannot be reasonably deduced. Since this is seldom the case and only very few questions belong to this category, only one additional example is given here. Other examples for the patternAboutnessinclude those given in the patternProvenance(V:2.1.1).

Example - “Reports about anything”

Context “I would like to visit the Bundesarchiv SAPMO in Berlin in order to look up various documents of the KPD and the SPD for the period between 1914 and 1933: (...).”

Q002-01-09_barch “Reports of the ZRK; (...).”

The general question type isresource discovery <specific type>. Thewantedentity is<group.by>, more specifically documents of the type “report” created by the ZRK⁷⁸. Thegivenentities are

76All of these aboutness relationships are without a doubt representable with the AKM since theAboutnesspattern allows for an aboutness relationship with any instance of the classE1 CRM Entity.

77Note thatgeneral subjectis not the same as the givengeneral context. As previously discussed,general contextdenotes fragments of inquiries which have not been analyzed further.

78Zentrale Revisionskommission(Central Auditing Commission).

particular group(“KPD”, “SED”, “ZRK”),time-span(“between 1914 and 1933”), andtype of document(“reports”).

The question is amaterial factquestion since it inquires about an observable relationship between a creator and documents. The provenance context isdocumentation [particular group]

since the reports must have been created by the group ZRK based on a mandate. The aboutness of these reports is unknown and cannot be reasonably deduced; therefore we assign theaboutness [any]pattern in this case.

However, since a report does, of necessity, report on something, and a documentation activity cannot document a general subject, we can assert that the reports are either about instances of E39 Actoror instances ofE5 Event.

Figure 46– Q002-01-09barch: Reports about anything.

Figure46shows a possible instantiation of a query pattern for Q002-01-06. A documentation activity has been carried out by the ZRK during the time-span “1914-1933” on the basis of a mandate. The activity documented actors or events and produced reports. It can be assumed that the main subjects of these reports include the documented actors or events and thus assert a relationship ofP129 is about (is subject of)instead of the even more cautious relationshipP67 refers to (is referred to by). Note that an actual query would not have to include theP129 is about (is subject of)andR1akmdocuments (is documented by)relationship or even theC5akmMandate.

As mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, the example shown here represents principal instantiations showing relevant entities for a query.

Furthermore, it may also be reasonably assumed that the “reports of the ZRK” may imply reports on the ZRK’s own activities, in which case the patternSelf-Documentation(V:2.1.3) may

be used and may be more precise regarding theE39 Actorand possibly about the documented activities.

Statistics In the complete sample, the Aboutness pattern is assigned to only 41 questions (8.6%). In the BArch sample, theAboutnesspattern occurs 33 times which represents 9.6% of all questions in that sample. In the NAN sample, the pattern appears in eight cases representing 6.1%.

Aboutness Context All(n=467) BArch (n=345) NAN (n=131)

Aboutness 41 8.6% 33 9.6% 8 6.1%

Table 10– Occurrences of the general patternAboutness.

The results show that inquiries are seldom general or unspecific regarding the topical interest of the requested archival materials. In other words, in most cases reasonable assumptions can be made about the historical reality to which a question relates.

Summary The Aboutness pattern covers the basic relationships of general reference and primary subject between an information object and some other entity. The pattern is assigned when the context of aboutness is either not specified or cannot be specified, or is irrelevant. Here,

“context of aboutness” means the general or primary topic of an information object. The pattern therefore focuses on basic topical questions and inquiries where the subject relationship is too broad and thus cannot be specified. Just as in the case of the patternProvenance(V:2.1.1), the pattern allows for generic and thus inclusive queries such as requests for all documents which have the GDR as their primary subject. More specific historical contexts are described in the following sub-patternsEvents(V:2.2.2),Plans(V:2.2.3),Actors(V:2.2.4),Things(V:2.2.5), and Documents(V:2.2.6).