Hollinger’s Edge: The Retrieval Object at the Margins of the Archival Ontology

Archival resources are frequently described in two parallel representations: as intellectual groupings that facilitate discovery, and as physical inventories that facilitate retrieval and requesting. At the time a researcher requests to use material, it must be possible to map the intellectual grouping to the corresponding retrieval object. In this paper, we analyze three emerging archival linked data standards (BIBFRAME-ARM, Records in Contexts, and Linked.Art) from the perspective of retrieval. We find that only Linked.Art is currently capable of representing retrieval objects natively, and that neither BIBFRAME-ARM nor Records in Contexts are semantically interoperable with archival inventory management or requesting.