[Esip-preserve] context, metadata, and provenance

[Bruce Barkstrom]

Have you got this material stated in the language of the OAIS RM?

Personally, I'd like to get a list of objects and then see what people
call them, rather than having discussions with lots of abstract terms
being moved around.  I'm not sure we've got the same mental model,
particularly when the objects might be instantiated differently and
where the terms that identify the category of the object might depend
on the use of the object.

Bruce B.

On Tue, Apr 5, 2011 at 3:20 PM, James Frew <frew at icess.ucsb.edu> wrote:
> On 2011-04-05 09:56, Bruce Barkstrom wrote:
>>
>> In looking at the Wiki, I agree with Mark on the difference between
>> provenance and context.  We need some concrete illustrations of
>> the differences between them.  Also, in talking with Alice, she suggested
>> that "metadata is data that leads to data" -- which I think might be a
>> more useful definition than "data about data".
>
> Metadata is the representation of context.
>
> "Contextual metadata" is redundant: all metadata is context.
>
> To distinguish between metadata and context *generally* is to distinguish
> between context that we can represent and context that we can't. This is a
> useful distinction when discussing (for example) metadata standards.
>
> To distinguish between *the* metadata and context of a *particular* resource
> is not useful: the metadata is the only information we have about the
> resource's context, and therefore *is* the context.
>
> I.e. 99.44% of the time, metadata = context.
>
> Provenance is a specific kind of context (and therefore a specific kind of
> metadata) that describes how a resource was *derived*. From
> http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/prov/XGR-prov-20101214/#Provenance_and_Metadata
> :
>
> "... metadata of a resource only becomes part of its provenance when one
> also specifies its relationship to deriving the resource. For example, a
> file can have a metadata property that states its size. But, this, is not
> typically considered provenance information since it does not relate to how
> the file was created. The same file can have metadata regarding its creation
> date, which would be considered provenance-relevant metadata. So even though
> a lot of metadata potentially has to do with provenance, both terms are not
> equivalent. In summary, provenance is often represented as metadata, but not
> all metadata is necessarily provenance."
>
> /Frew
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