I can't suggest the perfect term, but I will weigh in AGAINST
provenance. Preservation or process are fine with me. But I sill never be
able to explain this "special" use of the word provenance to my rare book,
archives, and museum pals.
Merrilee
At 04:20 PM 6/8/2001 -0400, you wrote:
>Jerry and Nancy Hoebelheinrich: Thanks for the notes about "provenance"
>and "process." It is difficult to come up with the perfect word, hence
>this exchange.
>
>One version of the OAIS definition for provenance is this: "Provenance
>Information describes the source of Content Information, who has had
>custody of it, what is its history." (from a 1999 PowerPoint from the
>OAIS guys) This may cover a bit more ground than what we had in our
>processMD, which was focused on the chain of events that transformed X
>without attempting to offer a full description of X.
>
>We worry less about the fit to the OAIS dictionary than the possible
>terminological dissonance with our colleagues in libraries, archives,
>and (above all) museums, where _provenance_ has a special meaning that
>may lead to confusion here.
>
>Thus Nancy's suggestion of a combined term like "preservprocess" may
>have merit. There is logic to a term that expresses our wish to embrace
>BOTH preservation-meaning-reformatting and
>preservation-including-digital-migration. But the logic of this term
>may not outweigh its phonemic disadvantages. Meanwhile, one of our
>colleagues suggested alternates along the lines of "digiprov" or
>"digiprocess."
>
>Dear readers! Can anyone suggest the perfect term?
>
>Carl Fleischhauer
>Library of Congress
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