A glossary for connected research

This glossary explains how recurring terms are used in the notebooks. It is a reading aid; the versioned specifications remain authoritative for formal definitions and conformance requirements.

Objects and representations#

Organology

The study of musical instruments, including their construction, histories, use and relationships. MODAVIS brings documentary, material and digital evidence into that inquiry.

Instrument state

A historically scoped condition or arrangement of an instrument. A statement about one state should not automatically describe the instrument at every date.

Configuration

An identified arrangement of components and their relationships. Rebuilding or reassigning parts can change a configuration while the instrument’s broader identity persists.

Digital surrogate

A representation of a subject, such as a photograph or model. The representation and the thing represented remain different entities.

Virtual instrument

A playable digital representation whose behaviour depends on particular resources, mappings and software. It is not identical to the physical instrument it may represent.

Auralization

Making an acoustic situation audible through a defined rendering or modelling process. The listening result depends on source, propagation and receiver assumptions.

Sources and interpretation#

Source account

An attributed description associated with a particular source. Several accounts can describe one instrument without being identical or independent.

Assertion

A statement that can be identified, attributed, qualified and reviewed. Its presence in a source or dataset does not by itself establish truth.

Evidence

Material offered as grounds for a claim. Its relevance depends on the claim, context, transmission and interpretation.

Provenance

The documented origin and processing or editorial history of a resource or statement. It explains how a result came about.

Context

The circumstances within which a statement applies, such as a historical configuration. Context is distinct from the history of how the statement was recorded.

Abstention

Leaving a proposed interpretation or link unresolved when available evidence is insufficient. It preserves a research question instead of forcing a false precision.

Canonical projection

An accepted, governed research view derived from evidence and decisions. It can support convenient use while retaining a route to the richer underlying account.

Packages and preservation#

Semantic release

A fixed VAO manifest and the exact realizations it identifies. Different carriers can transport selections from the same release.

Logical asset

An intellectual or functional resource, such as a take, a mesh or a score. Its role is distinguished from the particular bytes used to represent it.

Realization

One exact byte sequence representing an asset. Different encodings or derivatives have different exact identities.

Carrier

A package or workspace that contains a manifest, carrier mapping and selected realizations. Bootstrap, preservation-closure and custom carriers serve different delivery purposes.

Fixity

The ability to check that content matches a recorded identity, commonly through a cryptographic digest. It establishes sameness relative to that reference, not scientific truth.

Profile

A versioned set of additional requirements. A client must satisfy the declared capabilities before claiming full support for that profile.

Version DOI

A persistent identifier for a particular deposited release. A broader project or concept identifier may instead lead to a family of releases.

Reproducibility

A claim that a specified procedure can be repeated with a stated kind of agreement. Byte equality, numerical tolerance and historical interpretation require different evidence.