Requirements Document Template

BitCurator: Metadata Generation/Export Module (v0.7) Project: BitCurator – Tools for Digital Forensics and Workflows in Real-World Collecting Institutions Date(s): December 19, 2011; July 30, 2012 Prepared by: Kam A. Woods Additional preparation: ______Document status: __ Draft __ Proposed _X_ Validated __ Approved 1 Goal Generate and export metadata based on forensic imaging and analysis activities. Provide a simple method and interface to create mappings from elements within this metadata to elements in existing user templates. The priority for this module is metadata mappings where there are clear semantic mappings that can be pre-selected by users. 2 Rationale Metadata provides foundational support for location, processing, access to, and transfer of digital materials. Although there are well-established standards for specific kinds of metadata used across collecting institutions - including the Metadata Encoding & Transmission Standard (METS), bibliographic metadata (MARC and MODS), and archival description metadata (EAD) – interoperability of metadata records between institutions (particularly for specialized collections) remains problematic due to the ways in which these standards are implemented and encoded locally. It is therefore difficult to create universal mappings from yet another metadata source (such as Digital Forensics XML) that can be guaranteed useful at collecting institutions. However, given an XML specification (including a Document Type Definition) and presenting users with an interface through which to build a mapping can allow a tool to rapidly and automatically extract metadata from flexible standards like DFXML and produce locally relevant metadata templates or documents. 3 Module Overview The metadata export module will depend on output produced by the primary forensic tools used by BitCurator (fiwalk, bulk extractor, The Sleuth Kit, registry export tools, sdhash, and others referenced in the secondary reporting module document) We emphasize methods that allow users to efficiently identify useful element sets in the DFXML files produced by these programs, and export them primarily via XSLT scripts that produce well- formed XML to be incorporated into newly-generated and existing metadata records. We focus on METS and EAD due to their common use and ability to incorporate blocks of technical metadata.

BitCurator: Metadata Requirements Document (version 0.7) 1 4. Module Architecture The metadata export module will take as primary input an AFF packaged image and a fiwalk- produced Digital Forensics XML (DFXML) file corresponding to the hierarchical filesystem(s) on the contained volume(s). Built-in AFFLIB utilities including affinfo will be used to export additional DFXML metadata describing the capture process Additional XMLized reports produced (as described in the secondary reporting module document) will be handled as resources permit. Where required, an element map will be used to generate the appropriate technical, administrative, and rights tags required to generate sub-metadata-document level blocks to be incorporated into existing files.

BitCurator: Metadata Requirements Document (version 0.7) 2