Illuminating connections and contexts: building an ontology for Chinese ration coupon archival resources based on RiC-O
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.47989/ir31iConf64213Keywords:
Knowledge representation, Ontology construction, Records in context-ontology, Archival description, Chinese ration couponsAbstract
Introduction. Ration coupons defined everyday life in China from 1953 to 1993, and evolving trends in research demand more sophisticated ways of describing archival resources that document this unique period of history. This study constructed the Chinese Ration Coupon Ontology (CRC-O) using the Records in Contexts-Ontology (RiC-O) model to represent and describe a resource collection of ration coupons, policy documents, and oral histories.
Method. CRC-O was built through combining a bottom-up process of inductively identifying key metadata elements through analysing the resources with a top-down application of RiC-O via mapping processes and creating local extensions.
Results. CRC-O provides a unified conceptual framework that links three types of resources through shared entities. It reuses 24 core classes and over 50 object and data properties from RiC-O and introduces local extensions. The construction process also illuminated the strengths and limitations of RiC-O.
Conclusion. The study offers an application of RiC-O to a new domain, demonstrating its capability to represent and integrate multiple types of archival resources, surface connections between resources, and enable rich, detailed descriptions.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Linqing Ma , Ruohua Han , Xiaoyan Yang Yang , Yina Wu , Jiaqi Shi
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