Working with concepts
A concept is one term of a vocabulary: a subject, a place, a level of description, a kind of relation. This guide covers what you can do with one. For vocabularies as a whole, see Vocabularies.
Adding a concept
Open the vocabulary and choose Add a concept, or open a concept and choose Add a narrower concept to put the new one below it. Give its preferred label in your language; add its labels in other languages, alternative labels, hidden labels and a code if you need them. It can be used straight away.
Moving one
Move puts a concept, and every concept below it, under another broader concept, or at the top of the vocabulary.
Related concepts and matches
Related joins two concepts of equal standing that are worth seeing together. Matches in other vocabularies records that the concept is the same as, or close to, a concept elsewhere, such as an LCSH heading or a Wikidata item, by its IRI. Matches are exported with the concept, so a reader can follow them.
Merging duplicates
When two concepts turned out to be the same, open the one to drop and choose Merge into, then the one to keep. Everything moves across: its narrower concepts, the units of description and places that use it, its related concepts and matches. Its labels become alternative labels of the one kept, so a search for them still finds it. The dropped concept is deprecated and points to the one kept.
Deleting
A concept is never removed outright, so its IRI always resolves and every record that cites it stays readable. Delete deprecates it: it is no longer offered for new descriptions and is marked as deprecated where it appears. Restore brings it back. A vocabulary of your own that holds no concepts can be deleted altogether.
Concepts that are relation types
A concept in the relation types vocabulary can be made a relation type of your own: say which bundled type it narrows, how it reads in each direction (such as is the godparent of and is the godchild of), and whether it reads the same both ways. It then joins what the bundled type joins, takes its agent role, and is exported as that bundled type's RiC-O property, so your own distinctions never break the export.
Community protocols
A concept can carry a community protocol: a Traditional Knowledge or Biocultural label from Local Contexts, the community that owns it, and an access condition. An open, attribution or non-commercial condition shows the label but hides nothing. A restricted condition, such as seasonal, gendered or secret and sacred, hides the concept and every description that uses it from the public, in the catalogue, the API, OAI-PMH and exports, while staff with access still see them.