There are a large number of metadata standards and initiatives that have relevance to digital preservation, e.g. those designed to support the work of national and research libraries, archives and digitization initiatives. This paper introduces some of these, noting that the developers of some have acknowledged the importance of maintaining or re-using existing metadata. It is argued here that the implementation of metadata registries as part of a digital preservation system may assist repositories in enabling the management and re-use of this metadata and may also help interoperability, namely the exchange of metadata and information packages between repositories.
Publisher
2003 Dublin Core Conference: Supporting Communities of Discourse and Practice-Metadata Research & Applications
Publication Location
Seatle, WA
Critical Arguements
CA "This paper will introduce a range of preservation metadata initiatives including the influential Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model and a number of other initiatives originating from national and research libraries, digitization projects and the archives community. It will then comment on the need for interoperability between these specifications and propose that the implementation of metadata registries as part of a digital preservation system may help repositories manage diverse metadata and facilitate the exchange of metadata or information packages between repositories."
Conclusions
RQ "The plethora of metadata standards and formats that have been developed to support the management and preservation of digital objects leaves us with several questions about interoperability. For example, will repositories be able to cope with the wide range of standards and formats that exist? Will they be able to transfer metadata or information packages containing metadata to other repositories? Will they be able to make use of the 'recombinant potential' of existing metadata?" ... "A great deal of work needs to be done before this registry-based approach can be proved to be useful. While it would undoubtedly be useful to have registries of the main metadata standards developed to support preservation, it is less clear how mapping-based conversions between them would work in practice. Metadata specifications are based on a range of different models and conversions often lead to data loss. Also, much more consideration needs to be given to the practical issues of implementation." 
SOW
DC Michael Day is a research officer at UKOLN, which is based at the University of Bath. He belongs to UKOLN's research and development team, and works primarily on projects concerning metadata, interoperability and digital preservation. 
Type
Conference Proceedings
Title
Preserving the Fabric of Our Lives: A Survey of Web Preservation Initiatives
This paper argues that the growing importance of the World Wide Web means that Web sites are key candidates for digital preservation. After an [sic] brief outline of some of the main reasons why the preservation of Web sites can be problematic, a review of selected Web archiving initiatives shows that most current initiatives are based on combinations of three main approaches: automatic harvesting, selection and deposit. The paper ends with a discussion of issues relating to collection and access policies, software, costs and preservation.
Secondary Title
Research and Advanced Technology for Digital Libraries, 7th European Conference, ECDL 2003, Trondheim, Norway, August 2003 Proceedings
Publisher
Springer
Publication Location
Berlin
Critical Arguements
CA "UKOLN undertook a survey of existing Web archiving initiatives as part of a feasibility study carried out for the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK further and higher education funding councils and the Library of the Wellcome Trust. After a brief description of some of the main problems with collecting and preserving the Web, this paper outlines the key findings of this survey." (p. 462) Addresses technical, legal and organizational challenges to archiving the World Wide Web. Surveys major attempts that have been undertaken to archive the Web, highlights the advantages and disadvantages of each, and discusses problems that remain to be addressed.
Conclusions
RQ "It is hoped that this short review of existing Web archiving initiatives has demonstrated that collecting and preserving Web sites is an interesting area of research and development that has now begun to move into a more practical implementation phase. To date, there have been three main approaches to collection, characterised in this report as 'automatic harvesting,' 'selection' and 'deposit.' Which one of these has been implemented has normally depended upon the exact purpose of the archive and the resources available. Naturally, there are some overlaps between these approaches but the current consensus is that a combination of them will enable their relative strengths to be utilised. The longer-term preservation issues of Web archiving have been explored in less detail." (p. 470)
SOW
DC OAIS emerged out of an initiative spearheaded by NASA's Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. It has been shaped and promoted by the RLG and OCLC. Several international projects have played key roles in shaping the OAIS model and adapting it for use in libraries, archives and research repositories. OAIS-modeled repositories include the CEDARS Project, Harvard's Digital Repository, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the Library of Congress' Archival Information Package for audiovisual materials, MIT's D-Space, OCLC's Digital Archive and TERM: the Texas Email Repository Model.
Type
Electronic Journal
Title
Metadata Corner: Working Meeting on Electronic Records Research
CA Just as the digital library has forced librarians to rethink their profession, so has the electronic record done the same for archivists and recordkeepers. Much of the debate centers around what e-records are and how to deal with them.
Phrases
<P1> Their presentations at the Working Meeting elaborated on the concept of "literary warrant," which can be defined as the mandate from outside the archives profession -- from law, professional best practices and other special sources -- which requires the creation and maintenance of records. (p.1) <P2> Systems that records professionals devise to maintain these concepts over time, may, therefore, be of interest to information professionals interested in digital preservation. Authenticity, indeed, is a key component of Peter Graham's description of "intellectual preservation." (p.3)
Conclusions
RQ How can metadata be linked to its record over time? How can we ensure the "least-loss" migration of metadata over time? Collaboration with warrant creators from other fields such as lawyers and auditors is desirable.
CA "The Australian SPIRT Recordkeeping Metadata Project was initially a project funded under a programme known as the Strategic Partnership with Industry -- Research and Training (SPIRT) Support Grant -- partly funded by the Australian Research Council. The project was concerned with developing a framework for standardising and defining recordkeeping metadata and produced a metadata element set eventually known as the Australian Recordkeeping Metadata Schema (RKMS). The conceptual frame of reference in the project was based in Australian archival practice, including the Records Continuum Model and the Australian Series System. The RKMS also inherits part of the Australian Government Locator Service (AGLS) metadata set."
The creation and use of metadata is likely to become an important part of all digital preservation strategies whether they are based on hardware and software conservation, emulation or migration. The UK Cedars project aims to promote awareness of the importance of digital preservation, to produce strategic frameworks for digital collection management policies and to promote methods appropriate for long-term preservation - including the creation of appropriate metadata. Preservation metadata is a specialised form of administrative metadata that can be used as a means of storing the technical information that supports the preservation of digital objects. In addition, it can be used to record migration and emulation strategies, to help ensure authenticity, to note rights management and collection management data and also will need to interact with resource discovery metadata. The Cedars project is attempting to investigate some of these issues and will provide some demonstrator systems to test them.
Notes
This article was presented at the Joint RLG and NPO Preservation Conference: Guidelines for Digital Imaging, held September 28-30, 1998.
Critical Arguements
CA "Cedars is a project that aims to address strategic, methodological and practical issues relating to digital preservation (Day 1998a). A key outcome of the project will be to improve awareness of digital preservation issues, especially within the UK higher education sector. Attempts will be made to identify and disseminate: Strategies for collection management ; Strategies for long-term preservation. These strategies will need to be appropriate to a variety of resources in library collections. The project will also include the development of demonstrators to test the technical and organisational feasibility of the chosen preservation strategies. One strand of this work relates to the identification of preservation metadata and a metadata implementation that can be tested in the demonstrators." ... "The Cedars Access Issues Working Group has produced a preliminary study of preservation metadata and the issues that surround it (Day 1998b). This study describes some digital preservation initiatives and models with relation to the Cedars project and will be used as a basis for the development of a preservation metadata implementation in the project. The remainder of this paper will describe some of the metadata approaches found in these initiatives."
Conclusions
RQ "The Cedars project is interested in helping to develop suitable collection management policies for research libraries." ... "The definition and implementation of preservation metadata systems is going to be an important part of the work of custodial organisations in the digital environment."
SOW
DC "The Cedars (CURL exemplars in digital archives) project is funded by the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) of the UK higher education funding councils under Phase III of its Electronic Libraries (eLib) Programme. The project is administered through the Consortium of University Research Libraries (CURL) with lead sites based at the Universities of Cambridge, Leeds and Oxford."
Type
Web Page
Title
Metadata for preservation : CEDARS project document AIW01
This report is a review of metadata formats and initiatives in the specific area of digital preservation. It supplements the DESIRE Review of metadata (Dempsey et al. 1997). It is based on a literature review and information picked-up at a number of workshops and meetings and is an attempt to briefly describe the state of the art in the area of metadata for digital preservation.
Critical Arguements
CA "The projects, initiatives and formats reviewed in this report show that much work remains to be done. . . . The adoption of persistent and unique identifiers is vital, both in the CEDARS project and outside. Many of these initiatives mention "wrappers", "containers" and "frameworks". Some thought should be given to how metadata should be integrated with data content in CEDARS. Authenticity (or intellectual preservation) is going to be important. It will be interesting to investigate whether some archivists' concerns with custody or "distributed custody" will have relevance to CEDARS."
Conclusions
RQ Which standards and initiatives described in this document have proved viable preservation metadata models?
SOW
DC OAIS emerged out of an initiative spearheaded by NASA's Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems. It has been shaped and promoted by the RLG and OCLC. Several international projects have played key roles in shaping the OAIS model and adapting it for use in libraries, archives and research repositories. OAIS-modeled repositories include the CEDARS Project, Harvard's Digital Repository, Koninklijke Bibliotheek (KB), the Library of Congress' Archival Information Package for audiovisual materials, MIT's D-Space, OCLC's Digital Archive and TERM: the Texas Email Repository Model.
