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September 30, 2008
OAIS compliancy
The Open Archival Information System exists as a functional model, as a more holistic view of systems. The OAIS organization model outlines the system, processes and administrative aspects of creating a more sustainable digital repository. What is interesting to me, is that no one institution is completely complaint to the whole OAIS model, but somewhere on their way to becoming complaint. In an ideal world, this would be set up before digital information is ingested. We have a situation where many research institutions, museums, etc. have some sort of digital projects existent in various stages for quite some time, with no overarching order or system.
In the digital to digitize everything, digital files were often created without the consideration of storage or digital longevity issues (refreshing, migration, emulation). Online exhibitions are one example of this. In an effort for an institution to create an online display, digital files were perhaps created and stored on the server, and often in low quality formats. While this is good for increasing Web traffic and Web presence with online exhibitions for an institution, these are often short-term projects.
The five identified stages that are part of the OAIS compliancy include administration (organizational/technological means), ingest (specified methods to systematically take content into the digital library), archival storage (a comprehensive, secure AND auditable management for stored content with methods to validate content: checksum, digital signature, hashing), data management (accumulation, generation, updates, and the access by users to the corresponding metadata), preservation planning (development, implementation, and refinement of preservation strategy), access (identification, location and full rendering of stored objects at recall), and common service (enabling an operating system {permissions}, network connections and security services). While each stages act more as outlines than specific, tangible goals, they do represent a sort of game plan for digital repositories to work towards.
Stage definitions:
1. An institution would have little in place that constitutes a digital archive or is OAIS complaint, e.g., storage might consist of backups rather than true 'archival storage'.
2. An institution may have some pieces in place, but, especially working across projects, developments are likely to be spotty and difficult to systematic progress
3. An institution will be moving towards a digital archive and OAIS complaince; Ingest and Access are often the easiest and highest priority functional areas to develop
4. An institution will have a digital archive that is fully OAIS-complaint; achieving that across the institution
5. A collaborative digital archive which achieves OAIS-compliance through the sum of its efforts; reaching this level of development may require some backtracking to be interoperable
What I also found interesting in the literature for OAIS compliancy, is the consideration of the 'Designated Community', or the users. This can also be defined in the scope of the repository (temporal, subject based, etc.) It is also interesting to me to observe the compilation of digital materials that come into existence for online display, research projects, or other purposes, which often contribute to digital collections. I think there is a huge potential for survey on the user need (or, on the flip side, 'user use'- are we digitizing the
"right stuff"?) Part of OAIS is the open and free access of the collection to this Designated Communtiy, which will resonate more in either nonprofit scenarios or research institutions.
Part of the access requirement for the rendering aspect of digital information insists that the information is 'understandable to the Designated Community without the assistance of the information producers'. This is accomplished in part through complete metadata records, but also addressing the software and hardware specifications that are needed to access and view the digital file in its entirety. This adds another consideration for the information producers, particularly in regards to audiovisual file format requirements, and also another requirement on the access and display level.
Attaining total compliance to OAIS is a cumbersome road which no one has yet completed, but also seems to have the most complete view of digital longevity and storage. In the ideal world, this framework would have been in place before digital files are created. What comes next? Individual institutions can review existing structures and create a plan to move towards OAIS, though with an unknown cost at all levels of planning; storage, information producers, preservation planners, systems.
References:
Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS). CCSDS 650.0-B-1, Blue Book, January 2002, http://public.ccsds.org/publications/archive/650x0b1.pdf
Handouts from Digital Preservation, LIS 61095, Kent State University, Dr. Karen Gracy
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