Waiting for RiC The Release of Records in Contexts, version 1.0

At the end of November 2023, the International Council on Archives (ICA) released version 1.0 of Records in Contexts (RiC). This represents the first complete and stable version of a new archival description standard, intended to integrate and replace the ICA’s existing suite of standards: ISAD(G), ISAAR(CPF), ISDF, and ISDIAH. The terms just used here to describe RiC – new, complete, replace – all need to be qualified. RiC is not exactly new. The ICA’s Expert Group on Archival Description (EGAD) has been at work on RiC since 2012 and previously released consultation drafts in 2016 (version 0.1), 2019 (version 0.2 preview), and 2021 (version 0.2). Nor is it yet fully complete: RiC is envisioned as a set of four components, only three of which were included in the version 1.0 release: Records in Context – Conceptual Model (RiC-CM) defines the entities of interest to archival description, their attributes, and their relations. Records in Context – Ontology (RiC-O) provides rules for translating the model’s entities, attributes, and relations into the classes and properties of a web ontology language (OWL) that will allow archival descriptions to be published as linked data on the Web. Records in Context – Foundations of Archival Description (RiC-FAD) is a brief narrative introduction to the system. The last piece is titled “Application Guidelines” (RiC-AG); this has not yet appeared, and EGAD has only just started work on it. Finally, RiC’s replacement of the existing standards is not a straightforward substitution. RiC has radically recast the standards’ structure, such that “archivists familiar with ISAD(G) may initially find RiC-CM challenging to understand.” Its adoption will be dependent on software that largely does not yet exist. RiC’s authors foresee a gradual transition period, in which the existing standards continue to be used as both archivists and software developers find their way with the new standard. The purpose of this communication note is to help clarify some of the issues likely to be encountered along that way: What is RiC, how does it differ from previous standards, and what does it all mean for Canadian archivists still lumbering along with the Rules for Archival Description (RAD)? This note provides some background, exposition, and commentary, and it suggests some practical ways by which archivists can starting using RiC without adopting it (in the absence of RiC software). The tone is somewhat tentative throughout. It is difficult to assess RiC without working through the weeds of testing its model against existing descriptions or seeing its linked data implementations in action – two tasks that still largely belong to the future. My own perspective is that of an archivist with an interest in descriptive standards who entered the field in the late 1990s. This was a time when Canadian archivists were still flush with the success of their new standard, RAD; the heroic years of RAD conversion were still in swing, if winding down; and there was a general, somewhat complacent sense of the superiority of all things RAD. It was the release of the draft second edition of RAD (RAD2) in 2004 that really triggered my interest in descriptive standards. I recall the sense of shock that greeted RAD2 – a document aligned with ISAD(G) and developed in parallel to the Americans’ Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). RAD2 suggested that there were fundamental problems with a standard that had up to then only been celebrated. Canadian archivists seemed unready for change, skeptical of the need, and fearful of disruptive consequences (“We only just converted to RAD, now something new again?”). The Canadian Committee on Archival Description (CCAD) – the …