Engineering note / Design draft · v0.1
A source-bound model for historical claims
A proposed contract for mentions, claims, event time and geographic uncertainty. This is a model discussion, not a deployed API specification.
Proposed design · Prepared for review · No implementation or measured performance claimed
Records and mentions
A record needs a stable local identifier, repository and collection references, a folio or page locator and the permitted uses. A mention keeps the original text, language and image region. Normalized names help retrieval but must not replace the original reading.
DEMO-001 names Joannes Martin and Maria Laurent in a marriage passage. DEMO-002 names a Joannes Martin in a later residence passage. Treat these as separate mentions before proposing a shared person identity.
Claims and review state
A claim links a subject, a relationship and an object to source-bound observations. Record whether it is an extraction, an inference or a researcher interpretation. Keep a separate review state: pending, accepted, rejected or disputed, with a decision rationale and consulted sources.
Accepting a reading does not automatically accept a person match. A later correction must retain the earlier decision and the reason for revision. None of the demonstration claims has been verified against a real source image.
Time and place without false precision
Keep event time separate from the time a claim was recorded or reviewed. Represent an exact date, a bounded interval and an unknown date distinctly. Preserve the original date expression and calendar where known; normalization needs a documented convention.
Keep a place as written separate from a proposed normalized location, a catalogue location and a historical jurisdiction. Coordinates and historical boundaries require their own sources. The proposed Anlier context of DEMO-001 cannot establish a route to the Arlon residence mention in DEMO-002.
A future export contract
An eventual institution handover should preserve record identifiers, source locators, claim evidence, permission constraints and review history. Agree the format and exclusions with the collection holder before processing. No downloadable graph dataset or interoperability guarantee is offered by this site.
Before implementation, specify identifier stability, revision handling, restricted-field behavior and validation with a bounded review set. Any published evaluation must document that set, the procedure and limitations rather than using demonstration examples as performance evidence.