MEDI ELECTRONIC ambiguities

[dthaler]

ELECTRONIC is ambiguous since could apply to an online source or a digital source in personal possession (e.g., floppy disk, DVD, CD-ROM, hard drive, flash drive, etc.)

If you have an audio recording on a CD, is it AUDIO or ELECTRONIC?
If you have a digital photograph, is it PHOTO or ELECTRONIC?

Also, CD-ROM is another ambiguity. The fact that a source is from a CD-ROM is important in Evidence Explained since it explicitly appears in the citation text. See EE pages 283, 378, 392, 509, 711, and 799 as examples.

https://gedcom.io/specifications/FamilySearchGEDCOMv7.html#g7enumset-medi has values for, among other things: ELECTRONIC and OTHER. It is unclear what to use for a CD-ROM, such as a book on CD-ROM (BOOK is defined as only a "bound" book).

OTHER with a PHRASE of CD-ROM is of course usable but may not be reliably parsed by programs due to the various forms it might occur in ("CD", "CDROM", "CD-ROM", etc.)

Option 1 (possible for 7.1): add an enumerated value MEDI CDROM for it, just like ones exist for microfilm, microfiche, etc.
Option 2: add a Note (in 7.0) with an example using PHRASE CD-ROM with MEDI ELECTRONIC.
Option 3: add a Note with an example using PHRASE CD-ROM with MEDI OTHER.

[Norwegian-Sardines]

A digital artifact (the definition used for "Electronic") actually refers to a any item in a digital form, magazine, newspaper, music, photo, Facebook. In Library Science we often refer to things as "Born-Digital".

Yale University says:

Born-digital items are materials that are created in a digital format. This includes websites, email, digital photographs, electronic records, and more. Born-digital items are distinct from analog items that are subsequently digitized, such as paper manuscripts or photographs.

So any item on the list could be digitized (be "electronic") even a "bound book".

I think that we need to find a better term for "Electronic" for media that was "born that way" vs media that was digitized from its original format. Most family historians are looking at websites like A.com, FamilySearch, myHeritage, digitized newspapers, find a grave, and municipality websites to find all of their information. Few go to the archives to look at a paper census, newspaper, etc. All of that is "Electronic" by strict understanding. As you say All Audio and Video Recordings are "electronic" in nature, otherwise the other items in the list are "born analog" but could be digitized.

[dthaler]

Discussion 6/15/2023:

• MEDI in SOURCE_REPOSITORY_CITATION and MEDI in MULTIMEDIA_RECORD have different meanings. In the former, it's how you might need to look for it given the CALN information. In the latter, it arguably doesn't provide real value since one might always expect it to be ELECTRONIC for example, and the FORM <MediaType> already gives the format information.
  • We could consider deprecating the ELECTRONIC value.
  • We could consider deprecating the use of MEDI in MULTIMEDIA_RECORD.
• In SOURCE_REPOSITORY_CITATION, we should add clarifying text. For example, what physical form it is in if that matters.

For the CD-ROM issue, we might consider adding values for CD-ROM, DVD, and Tape, but then there are many formats (VHS, Beta, 8-track, ...)? or generic like "Digital Storage Medium" and "Online" (replacing ELECTRONIC)? Rather than enumerating all formats, the second approach is simpler and may be sufficient for now.

[Norwegian-Sardines]

Yes in the case of “multi-media” and the “Multmedia_Record” the term “Electronic” is assumed.

wikipedia defines multi_media as:

Multimedia is a form of communication that uses a combination of different content forms such as text, audio, images, animations, or video into a single interactive presentation, in contrast to traditional mass media, such as printed material or audio recordings, which features little to no interaction between users.

Therefore the list of media types should be enumerated but remove anything not listed above, i.e. “printed newspaper” and exchange that for “text”. I’m not sure what value of Form <MediaType> without tell us that the media is a text, image, video, etc.

On the other hand CALN.MEDI definitely requires us to indicate how the repository holds the media and electronic is one of those options.

G7:MEDI needs to be divide into two uses MultiMedia type and Repository Holding type.

[Norwegian-Sardines]

Unfortunately in GEDCOM V5.5.1 and the software (a web based application) I use the SOURCE_MEDIA_TYPE is used to represent what information is contained in the media (audio | book | card | electronic | fiche | film | magazine | manuscript | map | newspaper | photo | tombstone | video) and that is used in the online display of selected media. For example I only display tombstones in the widget on the home page. Other people may want the widget to display photos that they define as images of people or video or audio clips.

EDIT: I don’t recall for sure but I think we may have added a few more MEDI to the media object like “coat of arms” and “painting” to help in defining the contents of the media file.

Deleting the ability to define the content of the file would be detrimental to our use!

[tychonievich]

PR #317 handles recommended practice for CALN.MEDI
PR #318 handles splitting ELECTRONIC in half (for 7.1)

We need a PR to update the use of ELECTRONIC from #317's example in 7.1

We have not yet handled the use of FORM.MEDI; the steering committee discussed adding an alternative path for the use case @Norwegian-Sardines noted, but do not yet have a concrete proposal for implementing that.

[dthaler]

We need a PR to update the use of ELECTRONIC from #317's example in 7.1

That one is now done in PR #320