Scope

THE FOCUS OF this chapter is on metadata for recording the provenance of medieval manuscripts, considered primarily as movable physical cultural heritage objects or artefacts. By “provenance,” I mean the stages in the history of these manuscripts from the point of their production to the present day—often spanning a period of 1,000 years or more. Among the main elements to be included in this provenance history are: who created these manuscripts, who owned them, how they were transmitted from one owner or custodian to another and from one location to another, and how and why these changes occurred.

In this context, provenance is an umbrella term covering a series of stages in the history of a cultural heritage object, from its creation to its current status. This history is often fragmentary, since evidence is often lacking, especially for the period before the nineteenth century. But even a fragmentary history of this kind is vital for understanding the processes by which tens of thousands of manuscripts have survived over many centuries to play a crucial role in our knowledge of medieval and early modern Europe. They serve as witnesses to a very different and distant era, which still forms a major component of the European cultural heritage.

Provenance has a different meaning in the domain of computer science: “information about entities, activities, and people involved in producing a piece of data or thing, which can be used to form assessments about its quality, reliability or trustworthiness.” Modelling provenance in this context focuses on tracking the production of digital data and digital assets, and includes such elements as file formats, software, and hardware. A useful example is given in the PROV Model Primer, which is an introduction to the PROV Data Model and Ontology. A blogger notices an apparent error in a chart published in an online newspaper article about crime statistics. The chart is based on data provided by a government portal, aggregated by geographical regions. The blogger needs to investigate the provenance of the various elements involved, to see whether the error lies in the chart, the article, or the government statistical data.