Collections Digitization Glossary

A defined term set in the domain of museum collections digitization

Terms

153 results
Collections

The formal, documented process to legally add an object or group of objects to a museum collection. A single accession transaction occurs when one or more objects are acquired in the same manner, from one source, and at one time.

Collections

An activity with the objective of gaining physical custory of an object for a museum collection through purchase, donation, bequest, transfer, or fieldwork. This includes the associated metdata primarily derived from primary sources.

Workflows

A semantically identifiable behavior of an entity or group of entities

Workflows

An activity is something that occurs over a period of time and acts upon or with entities; it may include consuming, processing, transforming, modifying, relocating, using, or generating entities.

Global

An agent is something that bears some form of responsibility for an activity taking place, for the existence of an entity, or for another agent's activity.

Collections

Collection objects in the physical custody of a collection that have not completed the verbatim data capture or acqusition phase of a digitization project.

Collections

Digital coding system showing an eye-visible linear array of rectangular marks of (possibly) varying width, height and vertical alignment, separated by spaces of (possibly) varying width in which the positioning and size of marks and spaces are used to code information to identify various types of material objects

Collections

Individual items (physical objects) of a material nature, which live, have lived, or are natural products of or from living organisms.

Workflows

A new instance of a workflow that splits from an existing workflow triggered by a planned activity such as acquiring a new collection object from an existing one (subsampling). The new workflow runs in parallel and is optionally reconnected for mobilization purposes.

Collections

Written or electronic documentation that captures the unique identifying number assigned to a museum object or group of objects, along with a physical description, condition, provenience, and other pertinent information that facilitates physical and intellectual access.

Collections

Designates an accumulated group of objects with a focal characteristic that is assembled and maintained by an agent over time.

Collections

All practices and procedures implemented by a museum in acquiring, documenting, handling, accessing, cataloguing, storing, securing, lending, conserving and disposing of collection objects

Collections

An integrated software tool with a metadata structure specifically designed for capturing, curating, preserving, and accessing data associated with museum collections

Collections

A planed activity that defines role(s), procedures, task(s), and a specific structure in direct support of the care and digitization of museum collections

Global

Activity leading to the establishment of a correspondence between two or more closely related or overlapping concepts having in order to eliminate or reduce minor differences between them.

Collections

Person who performs the operations necessary to maintain the integrity and value of material objects in an information and documentation organization

Collections

Comprises aggregations of physical objects that are curated and preserved by one or more Agents over time for a specific purpose and audience, and according to a particular collection development plan.

Collections

Person responsible for overseeing a collection with expertise in the same domain as the collection

Workflows

Deliberate action that results in the registration of a record into a record keeping system.

Workflows

A planned process in which existing data is collected, organized, and improved in preparation for subsequent use.

Workflows

An activity that includes the preservation of data in a repository, archive, or a deposition database; and curation of data and metadata, database accessions, annotation, and data provenance with the goal of ensuring that data is findable and reusable.

Collections

Person tasked with reviewing, enhancing, cleaning, or standardizing metadata and the associated data submitted for storage, use, and maintenance within a centralized data store or repository

Data

The process by which original, source data is inputed by a human into a digital, structured format for later use and analysis.

Data

The control of data entry and maintenance to ensure the data meets defined standards, qualities, or constraints.

Data

Systematic combining of data from different independent and potentially heterogeneous sources, to create a more compatible, unified view of these data for research purposes

Data

Entire period of time that data exists. This lifecycle describes the flow of data starting from planning, collecting, processing, analysing, preserving, sharing and finally reusing the data.

Data

Statement describing how data will be managed throughout a specified life cycle including terms regarding archiving and potential preservation of the data in a data repository. The plan is considered to be a 'living' document, i.e. one which can be updated when necessary.

Data

A person primarily responsible for database creation, data collection, validation, integration, coding, review, quality evaluation, and archiving, as well as for preparation of reports and data displays.

Data

Data preparation is the process of manipulating (or pre-processing) data (which may come from disparate data sources) to improve their quality or reduce bias in subsequent analysis.

Data

Detailed description of a dataset or dataset series together with additional information that will enable it to be created, supplied to and used by another party

Data

The statistical analysis and assessment of the quality of data values within a dataset for consistency, uniqueness and logic.

Workflows

Activities and processes in a digital environment that lead to the publication of data, associated metadata and accompanying documentation as a web-based resource.

Data

Process whereby data are subjected to an assessment process to determine whether they should be acquired by a repository; followed by a rigorous acquisition and ingest process that results in products being publicly made available and supported for the long-term by that repository.

Data

Role within an organization responsible for ensuring metadata quality, integrity, and access in a manner that is consistent with policies and practices established through data governance to ensure the data is fit for reuse.

Collections

The formal, documented process by which a museum or institution permanently removes an object from its permanent collection.

Collections

A derivation is a transformation of an entity into another, an update of an entity resulting in a new one, or the construction of a new entity based on a pre-existing entity.

Collections

Designates an aggregation of digital objects, including digital versions of physical media, digitised resources, or born-digital items. The collection may be online presented or not.

Data

An entity is a physical, digital, conceptual, or other kind of thing with some fixed aspects; entities may be real or imaginary.

Data

A planned data integration process that extracts concretizations of information from a data source, prepares and transforms them, then loads the transformed concretizations into a target data store.

Data

The FAIR principles are guidelines to improve the Findability, Accessibility, Interoperability, and Reuse of digital assets. The principles emphasise machine-actionability (i.e., the capacity of computational systems to find, access, interoperate, and reuse data with none or minimal human intervention) because humans increasingly rely on computational support to deal with data as a result of the increase in volume, complexity, and creation speed of data. The principles refer to three types of entities: data (or any digital object), metadata (information about that digital object), and infrastructure.

Collections

Investigation or other type of formal activity practiced by direct observation in the field as a form of primary reconnaissance

Collections

An amount of matter primarily (dominantly) having parts created by geologic processes. Can include minor parts that are not of geologic origin, such as organic material, and can be solid, fluid, or a mix.

Collections

A word, number, letter, symbol, or any combination of these used to uniquely identify or reference an individual instance of an entity within a specific information domain.

Workflows

Something that sets into motion some course of events or causes something to happen.

Data

A grouping of entities that share a common set of characteristics in a particular context.

Collections

The temporary transfer of custody of museum property on either a short- term (three years or less) or long-term basis.

Data

Designates an assigned code that is uniquely and meaningfully defined only in the local source system or within the scope of an internal management system.

Collections

Comprises all persistent physical objects of any size that are purposely created by human activity and have physical boundaries that separate them completely in an objective way from other objects.

Collections

An entity that exists in full during the length of time of its existence, persists through this time while maintaining its identity and has no temporal parts.

Collections

A material entity that represents an entity of interest in whole or in part dwc:MaterialSample. Top concept in material sample object type hierarchy. Represents any material sample object.

Workflows

The process of preparing and transferring data from an internal resource or system to external networks for the purposes of distribution

Data

A self-contained component (unit or item) that is used in combination with other components.

Collections

An institution that cares for (conserves) a collection of artifacts and other objects of scientific, artistic, cultural, or historical importance.

Collections

An object aggregate that has as member parts a material sample that is located in a museum as a result of a process of curation.

Collections

A virtual collection primarily designed and collocated for online presentation. The items presented in an online collection may refer to physical objects or digital resources, or both.

Collections

Items of a material nature that are units for documentation and have physical boundaries that separate them completely in an objective way from other objects.

Collections

Comprises items of a material nature that are units for documentation and have physical boundaries that separate them completely in an objective way from other objects.

Workflows

An entity that represents a set of intended actions or steps executed by one or more agents to achieve some goals.

Workflows

A directive information entity with action specifications and objective specifications as parts, and that may be concretized as a realizable entity that, if realized, is realized in a process in which the bearer tries to achieve the objectives by taking the actions specified.

Workflows

A process that is initiated by an agent who intends to carry out a plan to achieve an objective through one or more actions as described in a plan specification.

Collections

Person carrying out the operations required for the conservation of dead animals for decoration purposes or for scientific study

Collections

Materials that provide first-hand documentation or knowledge, usually of people, places, events or time periods.

Workflows

An intentional planned process performed by an agent within the context of a workflow

Workflows

A specification on the order, transitions and trigger of multiple action specifications that are part of some aggregate action specification.

Workflows

A coordinated (parallel and/or serial) sequence of tasks that are connected in order to achieve a common goal as part of a workflow

Global

A standard operating procedure (SOP) that is a collection of activities and the rules that describe when each activity is performed to achieve a specific purpose or objective(s).

Workflows

A collection of logically-related project activities, usually culminating in the completion of an intended goal or devlierable

Workflows

A variable that can be considered (as an investigated property) within a processing step

Collections

Information that documents the history of a described object and related described activities, and that contains information about the origin or source of the described object, any changes that can have taken place since it was originated, and who has had custody of it since it was originated

Collections

Any changes in ownership and custody of a resource since its creation that are significant for its authenticity, integrity, and interpretation.

Collections

Person responsible for the surveilling, handling and the action(s) of physical placement of material objects in a museum

Data

A Web-based resources that preserve, manage, and provide access to many types of digital materials in a variety of formats.

Data

A proposition that states a set of conditions that have to be fulfilled to achieve some specific objective.

Global

The function of an entity or agent with respect to an activity, in the context of a usage, generation, invalidation, association, start, and end.

Collections

A material entity that represents a specific known entity (feature of interest)

Data

The capability of different information systems to communicate information consistent with the intended meaning, which encompasses the data structure elements involved, the terminology appearing as data and the associated identifiers

Workflows

A specification is a description of the essential technical attributes/requirements for an object or procedure, and may be used to determine that the object / procedure meets its requirements/attributes.

Collections

A material entity that represents a generalized population or "kind of" something defined within some context.

Workflows

An atomic unit of a workflow plan that describes a specific task performed by an Agent

Workflows

An atomic unit of a task in a workflow procedure where one or more distinct, clearly defined actions are performed and may be characterized by a starting and ending time

Workflows

Physical or digital eesource that helps an agent perform an action

Workflows

A cooperative interaction between two agents, involving the exchange or transfer of exchangeable products, services, rights, or funds or the processing of some request by one entity on behalf of the other

Workflows

A specific event in a planned process that initializes a new workflow branch

Data

A planned process with objective to check that the accuracy or the quality of a claim or prediction satisfies some criteria and which is assessed by comparing with independent results

Data

An articulation that is by social convention understood to be potentially assignable to a variable

Collections

A specimen that physically and permanently documents data in published literature by verifying the identity of the organism(s) used in the study and by doing so ensures that a study which otherwise could not be repeated can be accurately reviewed or reassessed.

Workflows

A recorded sequence of connected steps, which may be automated, specifying a reliably repeatable sequence of operations to be undertaken during the lifecycle of data

Workflows

An Event with at least one participatory Agent that executes a Task that typically defined in a Plan as part of a Workflow

Workflows

Something that “happens” during a process as part of a workflow and commonly affects the flow of the process.

Workflows

A system that defines, creates and manages the execution of workflows through the use of software, running on one or more workflow engines, which is able to interpret the process definition, interact with workflow participants and, where required, invoke the use of IT tools and applications.

Workflows

A distinguished part of a workflow comprised of a grouping of processes based on conceptual, thematic, functional and temporal criteria

Collections

Anthropology is the scientific study of humans, human behavior and societies in the past and present.

Collections

Archaeology, or archeology, is the study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture.

Collections

Biology is the science of life. It is concerned with the characteristics and behaviors of organisms

Collections

Environmental science is the science of the interactions between the physical, chemical, and biological components of the environment, but with particular attention to the effects of humans on the natural environment.

Collections

Recognizable remains such as bones, shells, leaves, burrows, impressions, or tracks of past life on the earth.

Collections

Study of the planet earth, its composition, structure, physical and chemical processes, and history since its origin.

Collections

The natural sciences are those branches of empirical science that produce a comprehension of the natural world through the use of data collected from it by observation and measurement to construct deterministic and/or stochastic quantitative models of its phenomena.

Collections

Paleontology is the study of the developing history of life on earth, of ancient plants and animals based on the fossil record, evidence of their existence preserved in rocks.

Collections

Space science encompasses all of the scientific disciplines that involve space exploration and study natural phenomena and physical bodies occurring in outer space, such as space medicine and astrobiology.

Collections

The social sciences are academic disciplines concerned with the study of the social life of human groups and individuals including anthropology, economics, geography, history, political science, psychology, social studies, and sociology.

Collections

Cultural studies is a field of theoretically, politically, and empirically engaged cultural analysis that concentrates upon the political dynamics of contemporary culture, its historical foundations, defining traits, conflicts, and contingencies.

Collections

Legacy of physical objects and intangible attributes of a group or a society that are inherited from past generations, maintained and protected in the present and preserved for future generations

Collections

Organization, or part of an organization, the main aim of which is to facilitate the use of such information resources, services and facilities as are required to meet the informational, research, educational, cultural or recreational needs of its users

Data

Full set of logically connected steps needed to transform input data into a result, for which one or more outputs of one data transformation step can be the input of one or more subsequent steps