Navigating through the Panoply of Provenance (PoP) Standards: A Series of Conference-Based Provenance Investigations

In this series of conference events, we discuss and evaluate real-world provenance challenges with invited speakers and conference participants. Emphasis will be placed on highlighting the strengths and capabilities different approaches to doing and documenting provenance, as well as shortcomings of individual models.

iPres 2023, Urbana, Illinois

Retrospective, Subjunctive, Prospective: Provenance Challenges Across Time

This panel will explore provenance: as theory and practice; as a tool for sustainability; and as a space of shared struggle and challenge for digital preservations and those in fields ranging from archives to cluster computing. In digital preservation, provenance tells us where an object has come from, the myriad preservation actions we could take to care for it, and where we predict the object will need to go in future. This panel is intended for anyone who is interested in the world of provenance: defining it, understanding it, modeling it, addressing the vague dissatisfaction practitioners often have when researching and documenting it. Provenance is more about the journey than the destination: this panel aims to surface a variety of experiences with provenance and to facilitate discussion and a community of practice around the relationship between digital preservation and provenance.

ASIS&T 2022 Panel, Pittsburgh, PA

Storied Past, Bright Future: A Provenance Jam Session

The ability to tell the story of objects stretches back hundreds, if not thousands, of years. In some industries, provenance is bread and butter with literal fortunes gained or lost through provenance. The panel coordinators frequently tell provenance stories by referencing the BBC television show Fake or Fortune, which explores the stories of unauthenticated artworks. Across its many seasons, Fake or Fortune demonstrates time and again that physical, chemical, and stylistic analysis alone cannot determine the authenticity of an historical object: authenticity is not necessarily inherent to physical properties. Forgers use repurposed materials, ancient techniques, and careful stylistic recreation to create fake works of art. In such cases, it is the documentation of the unbroken chain of history, the provenance, tracing the story of an object from the creator’s hand to the present moment that constructs a persuasive proof of authenticity. Even well-documented histories can fail to persuade: in the face of the same corpus of provenance data, two experts could disagree about the authenticity of a work of art.

This panel will explore provenance of the past, present, and future in information science and technology, as both a concept and professional and intellectual value. The OED defines “provenance” as origin, source, ownership of an artwork, or guidance to determine authenticity. Provenance today is not limited to history domains. It can be used to describe what did happen (retrospective provenance), what will happen (prospective provenance), and what could happen (subjunctive provenance). Provenance transcends disciplines, and this panel is intended for anyone who is interested in the world of provenance. Perhaps echoing life in general, provenance is more about the journey than the destination. The goal of the panel is not to find an authoritative answer to why we choose one method or theory of provenance over another. Rather, this ‘jam session’ will empower participants- panelists, moderators, and audiences alike- to frame and answer provenance questions for their own work.

Panelist

iConference 2021 PoP workshop | March 19th, 2021 

Excited about our iConference 2021 workshop?

See separate tabs for the iConf21 schedule and materials. Just a brief sneak peek: we will be using Animal Crossing New Horizons examples for our workshop! Workshop- [schedule][materials]

Never played ACNH? No problem! Here’s a short video for the uninitiated:

See the conference materials at the Miro board for the !PoP! Workshop here: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lYPJm68=/

Navigating through the Panoply of Provenance Metadata Standards useful for Digital Curation | IDCC 2020

This workshop covers a variety of established provenance metadata standards and controlled vocabularies useful in digital curation, including PREMIS, PROV, PROV-ONE, PRIMAD and DPC-Vocab. The morning session introduces the capabilities and limitations of these metadata models along with examples using real-world research data. The afternoon session includes group discussions as well as hands-on experiments of cross-walking between the metadata standards.