Beyond OAIS : towards a reliable and consistent digital preservation implementation framework

Current work in digital preservation (DP) is dominated by the "Open Archival Information System" (OAIS) reference framework specified by the international standard ISO 14721:2003. This is a useful aid to understanding the concepts, main functional components and the basic data flows within a DP system, but does not give specific guidance on implementation-level issues. In this paper we suggest that there is a need for a reference architecture which goes beyond OAIS to address such implementationlevel issues - to specify minimum requirements in respect of the policies, processes, and metadata required to measure and validate repository trustworthiness in respect of the authenticity, integrity, renderability, meaning, and retrievability of the digital materials preserved. The suggestion is not that a particular way of implementing OAIS be specified, but, rather that general guidelines on implementation are required if the term 'OAIS-compliant' is to be meaningful in the sense of giving an assurance of attaining and maintaining an operationally adequate or better level of long-term reliability, consistency, and crosscompatibility in implemented DP systems that is measurable, verifiable, manageable, and (as far as possible) futureproofed

Quality interoperability within digital libraries: the DL.org perspective

Quality is the most dynamic aspect of DLs, and becomes even more complex with respect to interoperability. This paper formalizes the research motivations and hypotheses on quality interoperability conducted by the Quality Working Group within the EU-funded project DL.org (<a href="http://www.dlorg.eu">http://www.dlorg.eu/</a>). After providing a multi-level interoperability framework – adopted by DL.org - the authors illustrate key-research points and approaches on the way to the interoperability of DLs quality, grounding them in the DELOS Reference Model. By applying the DELOS Reference Model Quality Concept Map to their interoperability motivating scenario, the authors subsequently present the two main research outcomes of their investigation - the Quality Core Model and the Quality Interoperability Survey

Planets: Integrated Services for Digital Preservation

The Planets Project is developing services and technology to address core challenges in digital preservation. This article introduces the motivation for this work, describes the extensible technical architecture and places the Planets approach into the context of the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model. It also provides a scenario demonstrating Planets’ usefulness in solving real-life digital preservation problems and an overview of the project’s progress to date

BlogForever: D3.1 Preservation Strategy Report

This report describes preservation planning approaches and strategies recommended by the BlogForever project as a core component of a weblog repository design. More specifically, we start by discussing why we would want to preserve weblogs in the first place and what it is exactly that we are trying to preserve. We further present a review of past and present work and highlight why current practices in web archiving do not address the needs of weblog preservation adequately. We make three distinctive contributions in this volume: a) we propose transferable practical workflows for applying a combination of established metadata and repository standards in developing a weblog repository, b) we provide an automated approach to identifying significant properties of weblog content that uses the notion of communities and how this affects previous strategies, c) we propose a sustainability plan that draws upon community knowledge through innovative repository design

Quality Program Provisions for Aeronautical and Space System Contractors

This publication sets forth quality program requirements for NASA aeronautical and space programs, systems, subsystems, and related services. These requirements provide for the effective operation of a quality program which ensures that quality criteria and requirements are recognized, definitized, and performed satisfactorily

The Role of Evidence in Establishing Trust in Repositories

This article arises from work by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) Working Group examining mechanisms to roll out audit and certification services for digital repositories in the United Kingdom. Our attempt to develop a program for applying audit and certification processes and tools took as its starting point the RLG-NARA Audit Checklist for Certifying Digital Repositories. Our intention was to appraise critically the checklist and conceive a means of applying its mechanics within a diverse range of repository environments. We were struck by the realization that while a great deal of effort has been invested in determining the characteristics of a 'trusted digital repository', far less effort has concentrated on the ways in which the presence of the attributes can be demonstrated and their qualities measured. With this in mind we sought to explore the role of evidence within the certification process, and to identify examples of the types of evidence (e.g., documentary, observational, and testimonial) that might be desirable during the course of a repository audit.

BlogForever D3.2: Interoperability Prospects

This report evaluates the interoperability prospects of the BlogForever platform. Therefore, existing interoperability models are reviewed, a Delphi study to identify crucial aspects for the interoperability of web archives and digital libraries is conducted, technical interoperability standards and protocols are reviewed regarding their relevance for BlogForever, a simple approach to consider interoperability in specific usage scenarios is proposed, and a tangible approach to develop a succession plan that would allow a reliable transfer of content from the current digital archive to other digital repositories is presented

Assessing digital preservation frameworks: the approach of the SHAMAN project

How can we deliver infrastructure capable of supporting the preservation of digital objects, as well as the services that can be applied to those digital objects, in ways that future unknown systems will understand? A critical problem in developing systems is the process of validating whether the delivered solution effectively reflects the validated requirements. This is a challenge also for the EU-funded SHAMAN project, which aims to develop an integrated preservation framework using grid-technologies for distributed networks of digital preservation systems, for managing the storage, access, presentation, and manipulation of digital objects over time. Recognising this, the project team ensured that alongside the user requirements an assessment framework was developed. This paper presents the assessment of the SHAMAN demonstrators for the memory institution, industrial design and engineering and eScience domains, from the point of view of user’s needs and fitness for purpose. An innovative synergistic use of TRAC criteria, DRAMBORA risk registry and mitigation strategies, iRODS rules and information system models requirements has been designed, with the underlying goal to define associated policies, rules and state information, and make them wherever possible machine-encodable and enforceable. The described assessment framework can be valuable not only for the implementers of this project preservation framework, but for the wider digital preservation community, because it provides a holistic approach to assessing and validating the preservation of digital libraries, digital repositories and data centres