The April 19 Revolution, which rose in protest against the dictatorship and election fraud, was the first student and citizen-centered democratic movement after the liberation of Korea. Acknowledged for their historical significance, the historical ar...
The April 19 Revolution, which rose in protest against the dictatorship and election fraud, was the first student and citizen-centered democratic movement after the liberation of Korea. Acknowledged for their historical significance, the historical archives of the April 19 Revolution were designated as a National Registered Cultural Heritage in 2020 and registered in the UNESCO World Documentary Heritage in 2023.
The historical archives of the April 19 Revolution consist of collected manuscripts centered around the event. These records were created in various environments nationwide and produced in diverse formats by various entities.
These archives are fragmented and dispersed and are managed according to the rules of each institution where they are kept. As the archives have been collected from multiple sources, they lack in consistency and coherence, which has led to difficulties in utilizing them. This study proposes technical (draft) guidelines based on RiC-O v0.2 as an organization strategy to build a rich contextualization of manuscripts from the archives of the April 19 Revolution, as well as improve interoperability between archival institutions.
First, we examined the concepts and characteristics of the manuscripts through a review of the literature, along with RiC-O, one of the archival standards of the ICA. To understand the features of RiC-O v0.2, we subsequently compared and analyzed RiC-CM v0.2 (preview), RiC-CM v0.2 (2021.7.), RiC-O v0.1, and RiC-O v0.2, based on which seven features of RiC-O v0.2 were identified.
Second, to understand the state of the technological aspects of the archives of the April 19 Revolution, an investigation centering on eight archival institutions was conducted. The results revealed challenges in understanding the coherence of the archives and incorporating multiple sources; issues were found in searching and utilizing the archives of the April 19 Revolution due to the disparate technical elements among institutions.
To address these issues, the technological elements of the archives were analyzed to identify common elements, and then guidelines were developed using RiC-O v0.2. A total of 28 classes were derived, with common technical items including the title, creation date, document format, identification number, author, and collection (subject). Furthermore, the derived elements were applied to the archive case studies, following which the technical information of the archives was displayed using the ontology editor Protege v5.5.0.
This study is significant in that it confirmed that RiC-O v0.2 is a suitable reference model for structuring manuscript archives for the April 19 Revolution and that derived specific application (draft) guidelines for interoperability among institutions storing the archives.