worksand

Worksand is a term used in speculative discourse to denote a dual-layer data model for organizing creative outputs and their contextual information. It treats works as the primary objects and sand as the surrounding context.

The core layer, works, records each creative object with metadata such as title, author, date, format, version, and licensing. The secondary layer, sand, stores provenance, permissions, annotations, and relationships to other works.

Relationships are rendered in a graph structure, enabling tracking of derivations, adaptations, translations, and influences. Licenses and usage terms are linked to objects in the works layer and can be inherited or overridden by the sand context.

Potential applications include digital archives, publishing platforms, and collaborative projects, where the integration of content and context supports traceability, rights management, and reuse across platforms.

Challenges include standardization of fields and licenses, scalability for large collections, privacy concerns, and governance of who can annotate or alter contextual data.

In practice, worksand remains a theoretical construct rather than a widely adopted standard, discussed as a framework to unify content management with provenance and rights across media types. See also: provenance, metadata standards, and rights management.