schema:deathDate

[saumier]

The artist Renée Martel (Q3427157) passed away last week (18 December 2021). This sad occasion prompted me to think about the responsibility of Artdata in this situation.

Death Date Properties

Schema.org property https://schema.org/deathDate
Wikidata equivalent "date of death" https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Property:P570 which is mapped to schema:deathDate on Wikidata. As long as the wikidata class is imported into Artsdata the mapping should appear automatically.

Procedure when an artist passes

When an artist passes, the custodians of Artsdata should add the death date to Artsdata. If the artist is linked to Wikidata, then the property "date of death" from Wikidata should be pulled in to Artsdata. Only if the Artist is not available in Wikidata, then the custodian should trace the source of the artist data and try to update the source. For example, if the source is the curated list of artists managed by Culture Creates, then the death date should be added to that list. If it is not possible for the custodian to update the data source, then the custodian should add the person to Wikidata along with the deathDate and Artsdata ID, then pulled in to Artsdata. The deathDate should not be added manually to Artsdata given that Artsdata is secondary storage and everything in Artsdata needs an external reference.

The presence of the death date is important to prevent upcoming events that still have the artist in the programming, to not display the person as a performer (i.e. on stage).

1. The Artsdata Query API for events should filter out performers that have "passed" based on the event startDate.

2. The Artsdata Reconciliation API should also have the option to filter based on whether the person is alive. When tools, such as Footlight or Capacitor, reconcile performers for an event, the event startDate can be passed as an optional "point in time" parameter. When the "point in time" parameter is present, the reconciliation process of Artsdata must only return people that are alive at that date. When a person's deathDate is available, it is used. If the person only has a birth date, then a span of 100 years from the birthdate can be used to infer if the person is still performing.