Target Model Specification

Formation and Dissolution of a Group

Version 2.2 (Previous versions)

At Glance

This pattern can be used to represent the information pertaining to the beginning and ending of a group of persons (formation and dissolution). It includes:

  • The date and location of the formation of a group (its beginning);
  • The actor·s mainly responsible for the formation of a group;
  • The date and location of the dissolution of a group (its ending);
  • The actor·s mainly responsible for the ending of a group.

It pertains specifically to the vital information of groups and not to their nature, their networks, or the vital information of the persons that comprise them (e.g. founding actor’s birth date, legal statute authorizing the creation of a group, etc.). As such, it does not include:

  • The formation or dissolution of groups of objects (such as collections);
  • The nature of a group;
  • The belonging of a member to a group (use the Group Belonging pattern instead);
  • The name, date, and location of the birth or death of the members of a group (use the Actor Identifiers and Appellations and the Birth and Death of a Person patterns instead);
  • The relationships between members of a group, or between a group to other groups of persons (use the Relationship pattern instead);
  • The roles endorsed by the members of a group, apart from founding and dissolving roles which are accounted for in this pattern;
  • The cause of the formation or dissolution of a group.

Introduction and Context

Theoretical Background

The recording of information pertaining to the formation and dissolution of groups is a statistically and culturally important part of heritage research and relies on groups either self-identifying or being identified later on by experts. As such, this information is often used to situate actors within larger societal trends as a key element of historical research (Yntema 2009, 145; Brumberg et al. 2012, 407).

Such information is not only meaningful, but also crucial to the disambiguation of actors (i.e. two different groups might have the same name by happenstance, or a single group might be associated to several names or spellings of a name) as it can be used to confirm a group’s identity (OCLC 2019, 4).

Data on the formation and dissolution of groups, however, is likely to be very fuzzy and entails expert assessments that might differ greatly in determining who constitutes a group, when it was formed and dissolved, and who was instrumental in forming and dissolving it, or even if a founding or dissolution event even happened. It relies on the perception of the subject matter expert or of the members themselves as having a cohesiveness and a unity as a group that is distinct from that of the individuals that comprise it (Lickel et al. 2000, 223).

Statement of Need

Because information about the formation and dissolution of a group is commonly used by heritage institutions as well as relied upon for disambiguation purposes, it is likely to be among the most widely documented. This, in turn, means that such vital data will predictably be among the most subject to exchange and mobilization by several providers. Thus, interoperability with other relevant models is of importance in the development of these patterns. This indicates a need to identify when, where, and by whom a group was formed or dissolved.

Description of the Pattern

The formation of a group is modelled as follows:

  • An instance of E74_Group is linked to an instance of E66_Formation by the property P95_has_formed. The instance of E66_Formation is linked to the group’s founder (an instance of E39_Actor) by the property P14_carried_out_by which is linked to an instance of both E41_Appellation and E33_Linguistic_Object by the property P1_is_identified_by. This instance is then linked to the literal value of the Founding Actor Appellation through the property P190_has_symbolic_content;
  • The place where the formation occurred is indicated by linking the instance of E66_Formation to the Formation Place value (an instance of E53_Place) value mobilized through the property P7_took_place_at;
  • The time when the formation occurred is indicated by using the Temporal Bounds pattern linked to the instance of E66_Formation through the property P4_has_time-span with values extracted from the Formation Date Begin, Formation Date Begin Qualifier, Formation Date End, and Formation Date End Qualifier entry nodes.

The dissolution of a group is modelled as follows:

  • An instance of E74_Group is linked to an instance of E68_Dissolution by the property P99_dissolved. The instance of E68_Dissolution is linked to the group’s actor responsible for the dissolution (an instance of E39_Actor) using the property P14_carried_out_by which is linked to an instance of both E41_Appellation and E33_Linguistic_Object by the property P1_is_identified_by. From this instance, the literal value of the Dissolving Actor Appellation is qualified through the property P190_has_symbolic_content;
  • The place where the dissolution occurred is indicated by linking the instance of E68_Dissolution to the Dissolution Place value (an instance of E53_Place) through the property P7_took_place_at;
  • The time when the dissolution occurred is indicated using the Temporal Bounds pattern linked to the instance of E68_Dissolution through the property P4_has_time-span extracted from the Dissolution Date Begin, Dissolution Date Begin Qualifier, Dissolution Date End, and Dissolution Date End Qualifier entry nodes.

Diagram

042_Pattern_GroupFormationDissolution_p

Examples

Example 1

Yousuf Karsh is a Companion of the Order of Canada (P190_has_symbolic_content, Actor Appellation) which was established on the 1st of July 1967 (P82a_begin_of_the_begin, Formation Date Begin; P82b_end_of_the_end, Formation Date End) by then Governor General Roland Michener (P190_has_symbolic_content, Founding Actor Appellation) in Ottawa (ON, Canada) (P7_took_place_at, Formation Place) (Hillmer 2018; Skidmore 2015).

Example 2

The Canadian Group of Painters (P190_has_symbolic_content, Actor Appellation) was formed in Toronto (ON, Canada) (P7_took_place_at, Formation Place) in 1933 (P82a_begin_of_the_begin, Formation Date Begin; P82b_end_of_the_end, Formation Date End) by 28 canadian artists, among which A. J. Casson (P190_has_symbolic_content, Founding Actor Appellation) (depicted alone in the following example for simplicity purposes). It was dissolved in 1969 (P82a_begin_of_the_begin, Dissolution Date Begin; P82b_end_of_the_end, Dissolution Date End) at an unknown place by an unknown actor (Toronto Public Library 2016).

External Models

Entry Nodes

CIDOC CRM Entities

P79_beginning_is_qualified_by [Scope Note]

  • P80_end_is_qualified_by [Scope Note]
  • P82a_begin_of_the_begin
  • P82b_end_of_the_end
  • P95_has_formed (was_formed_by) [Scope Note]
  • P99_dissolved (was_dissolved_by) [Scope Note]
  • P190_has_symbolic_content [Scope Note]

Discussion

Rationale

There is a substantive difference between belonging to a group and being an active founder or dissolver of that group. This is why founding and dissolving actor·s information is embedded in this pattern rather than in the Group Belonging one. Hence, only founding and/or dissolving instances of E39_Actor should be represented in this pattern knowing that, occasionally, founding actors might not be active members of a group.

In addition, what qualifies as a group and should be recorded as such can be subject to debate (see the Differences Between E39_Actor, E21_Person, and E74_Group section). This pattern exclusively concerns groups of persons and does not pertain to groups of objects such as collections or other heritage holdings. However, it might be difficult to determine whether certain groupings should be mapped to this pattern. For example, an art movement might be considered a group and modelled as such, but it can also be considered an interpretation of an ensemble of works by specialists (see Issue #21).

At the moment, even when a group can easily be ascertained as such, for example in the case of the Order of Canada, it remains undetermined, whether its members leave the group upon its dissolution or persist as members of that group (see Issue #36).

Limitations

The best way to record the existence and evolution of less formalized groups which exist but do not have recorded members, or only have a fraction of their members knowingly and officially recorded as such, is also a challenge. For example, movements such as Black Lives Matter, the Sunrise Movement, the Occupy Movement, or other activist groups are notoriously decentralized and encompass a wide range of people who espouse their values and affiliate with them without having a formal membership or being donors. People who are part of such movements are often anonymous for personal or systemic reasons (e.g. Sunrise is a youth-led movement that makes financial and official involvement more complicated for teenagers if they do not have the support of their parents). Leaders can be documented, but establishing official founders can in some cases be difficult, even more so for people who affiliate with a movement and are activists but do not hold a formally or informally recognized position with regards to the movement. Currently, because the scope note of the class E74_Group only includes formal groups that act collectively, those informal groups and the members associated with them are not addressed by this pattern, nor are they addressed by the Group Belonging pattern.

Edge Cases

Example 1

In 2008 (Formation Date Begin; Formation Date End), Yousuf Karsh’s wife, Estrellita Karsh (Founding Actor Appellation), endowed the Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs (Actor Appellation) position at the Museum of Fine Arts (Founding Actor Appellation) in Boston (MA, United States) (Formation Place). The curators that endorsed that position formed a group by the name “Estrellita and Yousuf Karsh Assistant Curator of Photographs” which is also an occupation they have all held (using the Occupation pattern would be possible, but the group would never be “created”). The endowment is ongoing and, as such, the group remains active (Estate of Yousuf Karsh 2021). Yet, an important question remains: can the members of the group (i.e. the curators) act collectively (thus qualifying as a group) even if only one of them endorses the title at once? In this context, how to treat the group remains unclear.

Example 2

The Abitibi Power and Paper Company was acquired by Price Brothers in 1974. Price Brothers was then merged with Stone Consolidated in 1997 which was in turn merged with Bowater to form AbitibiBowater in 2007, now known under Resolute Forest Products (Wikipedia 2021). In the case of such mergers and acquisitions, what would be considered to be the dissolution of the company is unclear.

Example 3

A group might not have a single Formation Place as its members can consider themselves part of a collective without sharing a common space. Also, when an event takes place online or in a virtual universe, it could become difficult to determine its physical location. For example, an artist might found a purely online group from a computer in Winnipeg yet use a gathering platform accessible on a web server that could also be considered as the location of the formation of the group. The location of each member can similarly be problematic (e.g. each participating player’s physical location in an online game).

Bibliography

Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter. Black Lives Matter, June 28, 2021. https://blacklivesmatter.com/.

Brumberg, H. L., D. Dozor, and S. G. Golombek. “History of the Birth Certificate: From Inception to the Future of Electronic Data.” Journal of Perinatology 32, no. 6 (2012): 407–411. https://doi.org/10.1038/jp.2012.3.

Doerr, Martin, and Christian Emil Ore, eds. Definition of the CIDOC Conceptual Reference Model. CIDOC CRM Documentations, 7.0.1. Paris, FR-IDF: International Council of Museums (ICOM), 2020. [http://www.cidoc-crm.org/sites/default/files/CIDOC%20CRM_v.7.0.1%2018-10-2020.pdf](http://www.cidoc-crm.org/sites/default/files/CIDOC%20CRM_v.7.0.1%2018-10-2020.pdf).

Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Yousuf Karsh.” Encyclopædia Britannica. London, UK-LND: Encyclopædia Britannica, n.d. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Yousuf-Karsh.

Estate of Yousuf Karsh. Yousuf Karsh. Yousuf Karsh, 2021. https://karsh.org/.

Hillmer, Norman. “Roland Michener.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto, CA-ON: Historica Canada, 2018 [2008]. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/daniel-roland-michener.

Lickel, B., D. Hamilton, G. Wieczorkowska, A. Lewis, S. Sherman, and A. N. Uhles. “Varieties of Groups and the Perception of Group Entitativity.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 78, no. 2 (2000): 223–246. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.78.2.223.

Linked.art. Linked Art Data Model. Linked.art, 2021. https://linked.art/model/index.html.

OCLC. Virtual International Authority File Guidelines. Dublin, US-OH: OCLC, 2019 [2015]. https://www.oclc.org/content/dam/oclc/viaf/VIAF%20Guidelines.pdf.

Skidmore, Colleen. “Yousuf Karsh.” The Canadian Encyclopedia. Toronto, CA-ON: Historica Canada, 2015 [2010]. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/yousuf-karsh.

Sunrise Movement. Sunrise Movement - We Are The Climate Revolution. Sunrise Movement, June 28, 2021. https://www.sunrisemovement.org/.

Toronto Public Library. « February 20: Remembering A. J. Casson and the Group of Seven. » Toronto Public Library Snapshots in History (blog). February 20, 2016. https://torontopubliclibrary.typepad.com/arts_culture/2016/02/snapshots-in-history-february-20-remembering-a-j-casson-and-the-group-of-seven.html.

Wikipedia. “Resolute Forest Products.” Wikipedia. San Francisco, US-CA: Wikipedia, 2021. https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Resolute_Forest_Products&oldid=1032134351.

Yntema, Douwe. “Material Culture and Plural Identity in Early Roman Southern Italy.” Ethnic Constructs in Antiquity: The Role of Power and Tradition, edited by Ton Derks and Nico Roymans. Amsterdam Archæological Studies 13. Amsterdam, NL: Amsterdam University Press, 2009: 145–166. https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt46n1n2.9.