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collections
A Collection is a group of zero or more things associated with one or more organizing principles. (A Collection can be "empty.")
An organizing principle is an attribute shared by two or more things that is used for the purpose of aggregating those things into a Collection. Organizing Principles may indicate the "shared significance" of the things in a Collection, one such shared significance may be a need for the things in a Collection to be "operated on" together "in bulk." It is possible to have a Collection where the significance shared by the things in the object is that they were selected at random to be part of the Collection.
A collection is defined and minimally DESCRIBED BY a list of zero or more identifiers for things that comprise the Collection. The most compact description of a Collection is a list of the things in it. In order to list the things in a Collection, each thing must have a unique identifier.
An identifier for a thing is a name, phrase, string, code, or other signal that can be used to recognize and select that thing in particular from a set of all things.
- A collection of songs identified by title and performed by Frank Sinatra. [identifier: song name; organizing principle: sung_by_Frank_Sinatra]
- A collection of news stories identified by title published in the Los Angeles Times on the same day, 10/23/16. [identifier: article title; organizing principles: 1. published_in_Los_Angeles_Times, 2. published_on_October_23_2016.]
- A collection of knowledge objects identified by ARK ID with the same owner, Kevin Johnson. [identifier: first and last name of a person; organizing principle: owned_by_Kevin_Johnson]
• A Collection most often differs from a list of identifiers. A list of identifiers can be used to describe a Collection, but is usually NOT the Collection of interest. A Collection can be comprised of pointers (identifiers with locationing capabilities) that point to the things in the Collection.
• Because identifiers are things, by definition a Collection COULD BE a list of identifiers, IF the identifiers themselves are the two or more things of interest associated with one or more organizing principles. However, a Collection of identifiers is often of much less interest than a Collection of other things that the identifiers identify. More often, identifiers are used to MINIMALLY DESCRIBE a Collection. In other words, identifiers are used for descriptive purposes and are not the things of interest in many cases. For example, a Collection of knowledge objects can be MINIMALLY DESCRIBED by a list of identifiers.
• A Collection is NOT necessarily comprehensive. A Collection can contain some items associated with one or more organizing principles or all items associated with one or more organizing principles but does NOT HAVE TO include all items associated with one ore more organizing principles.