Linked Art and CIDOC-CRM

CIDOC-CRM is the upstream model archAIc uses internally for typed entities, events, and relationships. Linked Art is the applied JSON-LD profile of CIDOC-CRM used by Getty, Rijksmuseum, Yale Center for British Art, and an increasing share of the cultural-heritage data ecosystem. archAIc emits Linked Art as the per-DLU and per-libro JSON-LD format.

Where IIIF describes images and canvases, Linked Art describes the objects, people, places, and events. Together they are the complete record.

What archAIc emits

Endpoint	Returns
`GET /v1/linked-art/{collection}/{libro}/dlu/{id}`	One DLU as `HumanMadeObject` plus its production event, agents, places, and dates
`GET /v1/linked-art/{collection}/{libro}`	The whole libro plus every descendant DLU
`GET /v1/linked-art/authority/{kind}/{id}`	An authority record where `{kind}` is one of `person`, `place`, or `group` (organisation). Canonical name, alt names, dates / coordinates as applicable, every mention in the corpus

Each authority IRI is dereferenceable. IIIF manifests and AnnotationPage entity bodies point at these URLs through seeAlso and identifying, so a viewer that follows the link gets the full graph context.

The entity-typing convention

archAIc keeps both CIDOC-CRM and Linked Art / FOAF / archaic-specific types on every entity, so consumers that walk either ontology see the same instance.

archAIc	CIDOC-CRM class	Linked Art / co-ontology
Person	`E21_Person`	`Person`, `foaf:Person`
Place	`E53_Place`	`Place`, `crm:E53_Place`
Organisation / corporate body	`E74_Group`	`Group`, `foaf:Organization`
Event (archive-relevant)	`E5_Event` or `E7_Activity`	`Event`, `Activity`
Birth / death	`E67_Beginning_of_Existence`, `E68_Dissolution`	`Birth`, `Death`
DLU (the document itself)	`E22_Human-Made_Object`	`HumanMadeObject`
Mention `(page, line)`	`archaic:Mention`	sub-property under `referred_to_by`

The whole graph is open-world: archAIc emits the standard triples plus its extension triples on the same subject IRI. A consumer that only knows Linked Art sees a complete Linked Art record. A consumer that knows the archaic: namespace gets the line-level anchors, the confidence scores, the autofill provenance, and the SME review state on top.

Anchored mentions (proposed extension)

Linked Art’s referred_to_by is the natural attachment point for a future line-anchor extension. The design intent is that each (page, line) mention becomes one archaic:Mention referred to by the entity:

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json",
  "id": "https://archaic.example/v1/linked-art/authority/person/8421",
  "type": "Person",
  "_label": "Don Emilio Romay Montoto",
  "identified_by": [
    { "type": "Name", "content": "Don Emilio Romay Montoto", "classified_as": [{ "id": "aat:300404670", "type": "Type", "_label": "preferred name" }] },
    { "type": "Name", "content": "Don Emyl. Romai", "classified_as": [{ "id": "aat:300404675", "type": "Type", "_label": "surface form" }] }
  ],
  "born": { "type": "Birth", "timespan": { "type": "TimeSpan", "begin_of_the_begin": "1887-01-01", "end_of_the_end": "1887-12-31" } },
  "referred_to_by": [
    {
      "type": "archaic:Mention",
      "archaic:mentionedOnPage": 12,
      "archaic:mentionedOnLine": 8,
      "archaic:onCanvas": "https://archaic.example/v1/iiif/rmcr/1/canvas/12#xywh=1058,223,1643,85",
      "archaic:mentionEvidence": { "type": "CertaintyDeclaration", "value": 0.93 }
    },
    {
      "type": "archaic:Mention",
      "archaic:mentionedOnPage": 47,
      "archaic:mentionedOnLine": 22,
      "archaic:onCanvas": "https://archaic.example/v1/iiif/rmcr/1/canvas/47#xywh=1158,640,1480,82",
      "archaic:mentionEvidence": { "type": "CertaintyDeclaration", "reviewState": "sme_verified" }
    }
  ]
}

Today the emitter ships only the biography LinguisticObject inside referred_to_by; the per-mention archaic:Mention array is a planned extension lined up with the RiC-O export work (ticket #222). The design intent — two mentions, two canvases, two confidence postures, one autofilled with a probability and one verified by an SME, both line-bbox-anchored back to the IIIF Canvas — is what the future shape will look like.

A DLU as HumanMadeObject

{
  "@context": "https://linked.art/ns/v1/linked-art.json",
  "id": "https://archaic.example/v1/linked-art/rmcr/1/dlu/514.json",
  "type": "HumanMadeObject",
  "_label": "Probanza · pp 10–59",
  "classified_as": [{ "id": ".../thes/probanza", "type": "Type", "_label": "probanza" }],
  "produced_by": {
    "type": "Production",
    "carried_out_by": [{ "id": ".../authority/person/8421", "type": "Person", "_label": "Don Emilio Romay" }],
    "took_place_at": [{ "id": ".../authority/place/331", "type": "Place", "_label": "Santiago de Compostela" }],
    "timespan": { "type": "TimeSpan", "begin_of_the_begin": "1640-01-01", "end_of_the_end": "1645-12-31" }
  },
  "subject_of": [{ "id": "https://archaic.example/v1/iiif/rmcr/1/manifest.json", "type": "VisualItem" }]
}

The subject_of link closes the loop with IIIF: the Linked Art object knows which IIIF manifest depicts it.

Why both CIDOC-CRM and Linked Art

Linked Art is opinionated about field names and the shapes you can mint; CIDOC-CRM is the underlying ontology that lets a consumer reason about the data without committing to Linked Art’s specific vocabulary choices. Emitting both labels (E21_Person and Person) costs almost nothing on the wire and serves both audiences. Museums and Getty-style aggregators speak Linked Art; cultural-heritage graph researchers speak CIDOC-CRM. archAIc speaks both at once.