Vocabulary Reuse Guide

Overview

The Iroko Framework vocabularies are released under CC0 (public domain) and designed for adoption by any institution documenting Afro-Atlantic cultural materials. This guide explains how to incorporate the vocabulary into your system and calibrate the access control model to your institutional context.

Understanding the Vocabulary Structure

The framework consists of five published modules plus a shared CSS/generator infrastructure:

• iroko-core — Cross-cutting governance: access control, epistemic types, provenance, contested knowledge, relationship assertions, sacred media
• iroko-ewe — Sacred plant knowledge, layered over Darwin Core
• iroko-nkisi — Spiritual entities (orisa, lwa, mpungo, etc.) with path/camino modeling
• iroko-travay — Ritual processes with property-level access control
• iroko-ile — Religious houses, lineage, initiation genealogy, and authority

The Core module is a dependency for all others. You can adopt individual modules without adopting the full framework.

Choosing Your Access Policy

Every property in the Iroko vocabulary carries an iroko:minimumAccessLevel annotation. This is the recommended minimum — your institution sets its own thresholds based on your relationship with the communities whose knowledge you hold.

• Universities drawing from published ethnographies may expose more fields publicly
• Temple archives holding active ceremonial records should restrict more aggressively
• Museums with mixed holdings (public exhibits + restricted donor records) can apply per-record or per-collection policies
• Researchers should apply community authorization requirements before publishing field data

RDF/TTL Usage Examples

Prefix declarations

@prefix iroko:  <https://www.irokosociety.org/iroko-framework/core#> .
@prefix ewe:    <https://www.irokosociety.org/iroko-framework/ewe#> .
@prefix nkisi:  <https://www.irokosociety.org/iroko-framework/nkisi#> .
@prefix travay: <https://www.irokosociety.org/iroko-framework/travay#> .
@prefix ile:    <https://www.irokosociety.org/iroko-framework/ile#> .

Describing a plant record

ex:Plant0001 a ewe:Plant ;
    dcterms:title "Iroko"@en ;
    skos:prefLabel "Ìròkò"@yo, "Iroko"@en, "Iroko"@es ;
    dwc:scientificName "Milicia excelsa" ;
    ewe:ritualUse ewe:ritual-cosmological ;
    ewe:medicinalUse ewe:medicinal-general-tonic ;
    iroko:minimumAccessLevel iroko:access-public-unrestricted ;
    ewe:harvestProtocol ewe:harvest-offering-required ;
    iroko:minimumAccessLevel iroko:access-initiated-only .

Applying access control in queries

# SPARQL: retrieve only public-unrestricted properties
SELECT ?property ?value WHERE {
  ex:Plant0001 ?property ?value .
  ?property iroko:minimumAccessLevel iroko:access-public-unrestricted .
}

Integration with Existing Systems

Darwin Core (botanical records)

The Ewé module is designed to layer over Darwin Core. Use Darwin Core properties for standard botanical fields (dwc:scientificName, dwc:vernacularName, etc.) and Iroko properties for ritual and sacred knowledge fields. The Iroko ewe:Plant class is a subclass of iroko:SacredEntity, which is compatible with Darwin Core occurrence records via dwc:Occurrence.

SKOS thesauri

All Iroko concept schemes are valid SKOS and can be imported into any SKOS-compatible thesaurus management system. The framework uses skos:inScheme, skos:hasTopConcept, skos:prefLabel, and skos:definition throughout.

Dublin Core

Use dcterms:bibliographicCitation for source references, dcterms:created for record creation dates, and dcterms:description for general descriptions. The Iroko vocabulary does not duplicate these.

SPARQL Patterns

Find all entities with contested status

SELECT ?entity ?notes WHERE {
  ?entity iroko:contestedStatus true ;
          iroko:contestedNotes ?notes .
}

Find all initiation events for a specific house

SELECT ?event ?type ?date WHERE {
  ?event a ile:InitiationEvent ;
         ile:eventHouse ex:MyHouse ;
         ile:initiationType ?type ;
         ile:eventDate ?date .
}

Getting Help

Open an issue on the GitHub repository or contact info@irokosociety.org with questions about adoption or integration.