RiC-O must be immediately usable.Th

RiC-O must be immediately usable.This is a key feature for a new model. In particular, it is very important that existing archival metadata, that are created or generated in current information systems, can be converted to RDF conforming to RiC-O, without losing any data, structural or partially implicit information. What is at stake here is that metadata conforming to the previous existing ICA standards can be processed successfully.During the ongoing development process, a lot of successful testing has been made, using XML/EAD finding aids and XML/EAC-CPF authority records, that have been converted to RDF datasets, either by hand or using scripts. A conversion software is being developed and will soon be available.While some existing metadata sets may have a very fine level of granularity and accuracy, already using, for example, controlled vocabularies, or describing curation events separately, often these metadata don’t have the very precise structure that RiC-CM recommends. Even then, such a conversion process should remain possible. In order to allow this, RiC-O sometimes provides several methods for representing information (as described below). From this point of view, the current official version of RiC-O may be considered a transitional ontology, in which some components may be deprecated later on.The usability of a model also depends on its documentation. That’s why the current official release has been fully documented (this documentation will be continously improved).RiC-O will also soon be acompanied with examples (RDF datasets). Some tutorials should also be written, and EGAD will organize practical workshops.