| skos:scopeNote
| - A Record or Record Part must have been instantiated at least
once, though this instantiation may no longer exist at the moment of description. An
instantiation might also exist at the moment of description, but be destroyed at a later
moment in time, when, for example, a derived instantiation might become the only
remaining instantiation. A Record Set may have an instantiation, which is to say that it
is not a necessary condition. An Instantiation may be derived from another
Instantiation. A Record Resource may have many Instantiations simultaneously (for
instance, a record printed and saved in the same time as DOCX and PDF/A would have 3
concurrent instantiations) or through time (for example, copy of a record). Depending on
the context, a new instantiation may be seen as a new or as the same record resource.
During in the process of re-instantiation something is lost and something is preserved,
but it is up to the context and the Agent that produces or uses that Instantiation to
assess whether the two instantiations are functionally equivalent or not. For instance,
a postcard representing a town map from 1874 (Instantiation 1) is digitized and kept as
a JPEG file (Instantiation 2). The digital copy may be considered as instantiating the
"same" Record by an Agent considering the information transmitted by the Record (e.g.,
the urban landscape displayed), but as a" different" Record by an antiquarian more
focused on the materiality of the carrier. Successive instantiations may change the
perceivable boundaries of a Record Resource. For instance, a case file comprising many
records may be digitized and saved as one single PDF file, which, from management
perspective, may be treated as one Record. Similarly, a large Record Set (a fonds or a
series) may be maintained as one database. On the other hand, one record (main document
and its annexes) may be digitized in separate files and each one may be managed as a
discrete “physical” item. Instantiations may require mediation to communicate the
information in the Record Resource. While a traditional Record on paper can simply be
read by an Agent in order to understand the information, a vinyl recording, a video
cassette or a digital file needs a device (mediator) to codify or decodify the
information conveyed. This mediator may imply simple physical components (a turntable
needle, for example), or a complex gallery of software and hardware elements.
Instantiations are more than the mere informational content of Record Resource and may
be the focus of preservation and physical management of records. The use of particular
document types for records, such as a medieval charter, may have implications for the
authenticity of the records. Hence, the way a Record Resource is instantiated
contributes to the contextualizing of the content.record resource is instantiated
contributes to the contextualizing the content. Distinguishing the message conveyed
(Record Resource) and its physical representations (Instantiation) allows for the
efficient management of their descriptions, and preserve information about a Record
Resource even when no physical representation of it exists or is known to exist anymore.
The relations between distinct instantiations can then be expressed wherever they
coexist, and they can be related to the Record Resource they
instantiate.
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![[RDF Data]](/fct/images/sw-rdf-blue.png)
