Class E21 Person is used here to model people. The scope note for this class uses the term ‘historical figures’ which may be considered as problematic especially when references are made to established conventional historical textbooks. Marking a person as a ‘historical figure’ implies an assessment of their importance in history and as such it provides little room to accommodate those who are not written in the historical text books, who are invisible or hidden. Clarification is needed on the use of the term in the scope note to include any person who has existed regardless of their contextual history. The examples included in the scope note are Western focused and the scope note should be revised to make visible historical actors, by referring to the histories of resistance of people of color. The class E21 Person and its superclass E39 Actor imply that after one’s death there is no capacity for agency. The necessity of being alive excludes experiences of dead people being present in rituals from various religions. Class E39 Actor does not include non-human actors. While examples are rare and almost always correspond to documenting species as opposed to individual organisms (for example the performance piece FreePort), this class is not suitable to describe the agency of animals. Additionally, from other perspectives and ontologies an object has as much agency as a person, for example the Benin bronzes being considered as living ancestors and the agency of the sacred altars of K’iche’ Maya.

Class E21 Person is used here to model people. The scope note for this class uses the term ‘historical figures’ which may be considered as problematic especially when references are made to established conventional historical textbooks. Marking a person as a ‘historical figure’ implies an assessment of their importance in history and as such it provides little room to accommodate those who are not written in the historical text books, who are invisible or hidden. Clarification is needed on the use of the term in the scope note to include any person who has existed regardless of their contextual history. The examples included in the scope note are Western focused and the scope note should be revised to make visible historical actors, by referring to the histories of resistance of people of color. The class E21 Person and its superclass E39 Actor imply that after one’s death there is no capacity for agency. The necessity of being alive excludes experiences of dead people being present in rituals from various religions. Class E39 Actor does not include non-human actors. While examples are rare and almost always correspond to documenting species as opposed to individual organisms (for example the performance piece FreePort), this class is not suitable to describe the agency of animals. Additionally, from other perspectives and ontologies an object has as much agency as a person, for example the Benin bronzes being considered as living ancestors and the agency of the sacred altars of K’iche’ Maya.