Documentation

Decisions

Author

The description field for an Author has the formula: Country + occupation (e.g. Ghanaian writer)

Author name string

Author name string is used for records on authors where only names that are clearly aliases or fictional names, (such as ‘Badger’ or ‘Man'J Mam '96’), initials or abbreviated names are given in the source material. 

In such cases, Author name string is applied to both the Work and Version records. 

Until such time as the identity of the author is known to the project, 'author name string' will remain in the record

When only initials are given, then the name of the publication of the work is given in square brackets behind the author string. (e.g. C. M. [Drum Magazine]) 

Awards

Multiple awards given under the auspice of one organisation (e.g The Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Award for Fiction, The Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Award for Poetry etc), are grouped under an item (e.g. The Bank Windhoek Doek Literary Award), which is given as an instance of ‘Group of awards’. 'Group of awards' is an ' instance of ALMEDA category'.

Country of citizenship

All countries referred to in any biographical information on authors is included. Database notes on usage will include the proviso: 'The legal status of any given person's citizenship cannot be guaranteed.' 

Human settlement

We have included all human settlements in Africa with a population of 500 and above (with the exception of duplicate names of human settlements that we could not assign to a specific district). All capital cities of non-African countries are included, as are all human settlements with populations above 5000 in countries that have the following national languages: Dutch, English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish. All other human settlements will be added as the need arises.

Literary adaptation

Literary Adaptation is the only Form of the Creative Work belonging to the class Film. Other forms of film are outside of the domain of ALMEDA. All other filmic material in ALMEDA is modelled as content type within a version of the work. (e.g. https://wikibase.almeda.engelska.uu.se/wiki/Item:Q28756)

In the case of a Literary Adaptation, be sure to enter 'Originality of the item' as 'adaptation' in the version of the Filmic work

Reconciliation

Works are considered likely to be by the same person when the following conditions are met: the name or author string is the same; the date of birth of the author aligns with the date of the publication; the same name (initials etc.) are repeated in same venue of publication; the same creative form is produced in a contiguous publication (e.g. poetry in Swahili appearing in two Swahili newspaper venues, or crime stories in English appearing in two popular South African magazines). 

References

References are applied universally across the database for all statements from all datasources. Two properties are used: 'reference URL' and 'stated in'

When data comes from a common source that ALMEDA has not collected or published, and which does not have an external identifier or URL, the sourcing information can be found in a Provenance field.

Provenance indicates whether the data has been donated or retrieved and from what source. An item on the source is created.

Serialisation

Creative works serialised in Serial Works only use classes under creative work for ‘instance of’ (e.g. dramatic work, or literary work). The version record then includes: 'originality of the item': 'born serial'. 

The class 'Serial Work' refers to the container level: i.e. the magazine 'Drum Magazine' or the Newspaper 'Taifa Weekly'. 

Translated works

The Work field for a translated work (where the original language text is not available) will be labelled with the translation within square brackets. E.g. Author: 'Luis Carlos Patraquim', Title: [Summer], Translator: 'Luis Raphael'. The version level of the English translation of this Portuguese text uses the translated title (not in square brackets). (e.g links to be uploaded)

Using the entity 'unknown' (Q29141) vs the entity 'to be defined' (Q17817)

In the event that data may still be findable on a particular statement, or when ALMEDA plans to make a concerted effort to add this data, use 'to be defined'. When the data can never be ascertained, use 'unknown'.

Version, Edition, Translation

The description field for a Version, Edition, Translation, has the formula: Date of publication, Title of work: e.g. 1987 edition of When Rain Clouds Gather.

When a version of a work is published in a periodical that crosses multiple months and/or years, the first given date is given. e.g.

Serialisation	Year	Month	Volume	Pages	Author	Title	Form of the Creative Work	Language
MOTO Magazine	1982/1983	December/January	8	58-60	Sarah Kawaza	Kamuchacha	Story	chiShona

The year is given as 1982 and the Month as December.

Work flow for uploading data on Literary/Small Magazines:

Prior to uploading:

1. PI to check data follows the templates given to researchers and data collectors
2. EITHER, Data uploader to clean the data and send major problems back to the PI for referral to researcher or data collector, OR, Dataset goes back to PI for publishing in ZENODO
3. DOI created for ZENODO publication and sent back to data uploader to use as reference
4. Data uploader proceeds with upload

Process of uploading:

(see documentation by GA)

Post uploading:

Once a data set has been uploaded, a brief report is sent to the PI marking the upload as complete. This report includes a list of a list of author name strings that will be sent out by the PI for further research/assigned to student interns.

Authors without existing data to be routinely checked by PI and assigned to student interns for enrichment.

Works

All creative works and versions (even one-version works) will be modelled at two levels: Work and Version, Edition, and Translation, or in the case of performed works, Work and Performance.

All Scholarly Works will only be a reference or when need to use ‘stated_in’ we will create an item which only has the level of the version

The subclasses of Work are: Creative Work and Scholarly Work. Their subclasses are:

Creative Work
Anthology (under discussion)
Discursive, instructional or educational work
Dramatic work
Everyday expression
Film
Graphic Work
Literary Work

Scholarly Work
Edited Collection (under discussion)

When writing a description for a Work, the formula is: Form of Creative Work plus name of Author. E.g. A novel by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o

Writing systems

Writing systems should be noted when the item is not in Roman/Latin script (e.g. Karibu Mwambie: https://wikibase.almeda.engelska.uu.se/wiki/Item:Q21781). Writing system is classified as an 'ALMEDA category'.

Topics awaiting resolution

For a Federated search: If we don’t use literary award, and just award, do we lose anything? this determines whether we call awards 'awards' or include a sub-class of 'literary award'.

Events: define event vs activity/performance and consolidate the property list

'Default for language' field: can we include this in the language field of the label/description box?

Inception: used for work level, but can only be presumed in almost every case. Do we either 1. delete it, 2. put in 'sourcing circumstances' as 'presumed', 3. use 'publication date' as first known published version of the work, or 4. Put in the date under the statement 'inception' and write a proviso for the the whole dataset that these are all presumed?

A similar matter to Inception, Country of Citizenship can be found for many instances of 'sex/gender' , where the GaB of the author is assumed.

Using 'main subject' in both the work and version levels: this is a question of search ability (which links to issue of inception, too. If the link between the work and its version enables search across the levels, then these resolve more easily)

Data on publishers?