This presentation is a short introduction to preservation metadata and PREMIS, and involves a practical exercise to show how information already being collected by digital repositories can be described by entries in the PREMIS Data Dictionary. It was given as part of module 3 of a 5-module course on digital preservation tools for repository managers, presented by the JISC KeepIt project. For more on this and other presentations in this course look for the tag 'KeepIt course' in the project blog http://blogs.ecs.soton.ac.uk/keepit/

1. Applying preservation
metadata to repositories
This section by Steve Hitchcock Based on an earlier workshop
KeepIt project presented for the Repositories
Support Project (RSP), London,
January 2008
For JISC KeepItcourse on Digital Preservation Tools for Repository Managers
Module 3, Primer on preservation workflow, formats and characterisation
Westminster-Kingsway College, London, 2 March 2010

2. Applying preservation
metadata to repositories
Overview of session
 Why preservation metadata?
 Background on PREMIS
 Group work: preservation metadata exercise
 Teams report back; discussion of findings
 Conclusions: Are IRs preservation repositories?

3. Aims of the session
 How much preservation Is your repository doing?
 Demonstrate that repositories do more
preservation-related work than you might think
 Show how preservation support is responding to
what repositories do
 Not a tutorial on PREMIS

4. Preservation metadata
Metadata designed for managing
digital content over a long period of
time is commonly referred to as
preservation metadata, and typically
informs, describes and records a range
of activities concerned with preserving
specific digital objects.

5. PREMIS: Preservation Metadata
Implementation Strategies
 Currently, the authoritative reference on
preservation metadata
 Emphasis: implementation
 Produced a Data Dictionary (v2.0 April 2008)
http://www.loc.gov/standards/premis/
 Describes and defines over 100 semantic units,
i.e. items of metadata
 Applicable to preservation repositories. Are IRs
preservation repositories?

6. PREMIS Data Dictionary: entities
PREMIS dictionary documents four types of entity:
Objects: things the repository stores
Events: things that happen to the objects
Agents: people, or organisations or software that
act on objects
Rights: expression of rights applying to objects

7. PREMIS Data Dictionary:
example entry
This table taken from V1.0 (May 2005)

8. PREMIS data: where might it
come from?
 Repository software
 Submitting author
 Repository administrators
 Repository policy
 Preservation tools, e.g. format ID
 Preservation services

9. Team task
 You will be given a list of selected entries
from the PREMIS Data Dictionary
 The aim is to:
 identify those entries that can serve
your repositories, and
 indicate where that information
(metadata) is, or could be, generated
Good luck with your team task!

10. Did we achieve the aims of the
session?
 This was not a test, not a survey, not a tutorial
 It was about making preservation real for your repository
 We often think of ‘preservation’ in an abstract sense, but
repositories are already taking actions that affect preservation
and contribute towards preservation results
 You are probably doing more preservation than you think

11. Updating PREMIS
It is likely that future revisions of PREMIS will accommodate the
emerging Planets model of significant properties.
Recording explicitly how a preservation action creates a new
representation from an old one. This involves recording
the relationship between:
 the representations
 the preservation action event
 the agent used to perform the preservation action
and details, such as
 configuration parameters
 significant characteristics which guided the choice of preservation
action
 measured differences between the source and the target (outcome
information), etc.