A Daunting PREMIS: Implementing Preservation Metadata within the METS Framework

Presented at 2006 International Conference on Digital Archive Technologies (ICDAT2006)

Jerome P. McDonough
Graduate School of Library & Information Science, UIUC

19-20 October 2006

NOTES: A few key aspects of OAIS relating to digital preservation:
Representation Information: The information that maps a Data Object into more meaningful concepts. An example is the ASCII definition that describes how a sequence of bits (i.e., a Data Object) is mapped into a symbol.

Representation information includes:
Structure Information: The information that imparts meaning about how other information is organized. For example, it maps bit streams to common computer types such as characters, numbers, and pixels and aggregations of those types such as character strings and arrays.

and

Semantic Information: The information needed to properly interpret the full meaning of various bits of structured information in the data object. The difference between properly interpreting data as an ISO conformant date, and knowing the date represents the copyright date for the object, or knowing whether the string “Chou” is referring to the Dynasty or the pastry dough.

Preservation Description information, which includes:

Reference Information: stable identifiers for the object and its components;

Provenance Information: The information that documents the history of the Content Information. This information tells the origin or source of the Content Information, any changes that may have taken place since it was originated, and who has had custody of it since it was originated. Examples of Provenance Information are the principal investigator who recorded the data, and the information concerning its storage, handling, and migration.

Context Information: The information .that documents the relationships of the Content Information to its environment. This includes why the Content Information was created and how it relates to other Content Information objects.

And finally

Fixity information: the information that lets you know that the object is stable and unchanged.

PREMIS exists to support recording representation information and preservation description information.