Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository: Meeting the Needs of Research Resources An RLG-OCLC Report DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT RLG Mountain View, CA August 2001 Adobe and Acrobat Reader are trademarks of Adobe Systems Incorporated in the US and/or other countries. Copyright © 2001 The Research Libraries Group, Inc. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY..................................................................................................................................................... 1 1 INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................................................... 3 INTENDED AUDIENCE............................................................................................................................................................ 4 TERMINOLOGY ...................................................................................................................................................................... 4 2 ATTRIBUTES OF TRUSTED DIGITAL REPOSITORIES .......................................................................................... 5 WHAT IS A DIGITAL REPOSITORY? ........................................................................................................................................ 5 RELIABILITY AND TRUSTED DIGITAL REPOSITORIES.............................................................................................................. 6 TRUSTED DIGITAL REPOSITORIES: A PROPOSED DEFINITION .............................................................................................. 11 ATTRIBUTES OF A TRUSTED DIGITAL REPOSITORY: A PROPOSED FRAMEWORK ................................................................. 12 CERTIFICATION OF TRUSTED DIGITAL REPOSITORIES .......................................................................................................... 14 3 RESPONSIBILITY AND DIGITAL PRESERVATION............................................................................................... 18 THE SCOPE OF COLLECTIONS .............................................................................................................................................. 18 PRESERVATION AND LIFECYCLE MANAGEMENT ................................................................................................................. 18 THE WIDE RANGE OF STAKEHOLDERS ................................................................................................................................19 OWNERSHIP OF MATERIAL AND OTHER LEGAL ISSUES........................................................................................................ 19 COST IMPLICATIONS............................................................................................................................................................ 20 4 DEEP INFRASTRUCTURE AND OAIS........................................................................................................................ 22 THE NEED FOR DEEP INFRASTRUCTURE.............................................................................................................................. 22 THE OPEN ARCHIVAL INFORMATION SYSTEM REFERENCE MODEL..................................................................................... 23 ADOPTION OF OAIS BY LIBRARIES AND ARCHIVES............................................................................................................. 24 5 RESPONSIBILITIES OF A TRUSTED DIGITAL REPOSITORY ............................................................................ 25 REPOSITORY RESPONSIBILITIES ........................................................................................................................................... 26 SUMMARY........................................................................................................................................................................... 34 6 RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................................................. 35 SELECTED RESOURCES .................................................................................................................................................. 37 PROJECTS............................................................................................................................................................................ 37 PUBLICATIONS..................................................................................................................................................................... 37 APPENDIX A: OAIS TECHNICAL OVERVIEWS.......................................................................................................... 39 THE OAIS INFORMATION MODEL AND DIGITAL PRESERVATION METADATA ..................................................................... 39 THE OAIS FUNCTIONAL MODEL......................................................................................................................................... 42 APPENDIX B: DEFINITIONS OF TERMS ...................................................................................................................... 48 APPENDIX C: ROSTER OF THE RLG/OCLC WORKING GROUP........................................................................... 52 DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT Executive Summary In 1994, the joint RLG-Commission on Preservation & Access Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information began exploring the nature of a reliable repository for preserving digital materials. One of the recommendations of the 1996 CPA/RLG report was for the establishment of a certification program for digital archives or repositories.1 Since then, key initiatives in digital preservation have advanced thinking and provided the necessary experience to begin to articulate the attributes of a trusted repository for digital research resources. In March 2000, RLG and OCLC began work on establishing these attributes, building on the soon to be international standard of the Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) Reference Model. RLG and OCLC recognized that, despite emerging OAIS-related initiatives in Europe and Australia, consensus on the characteristics of a sustainable digital repository for large-scale, heterogeneous collections held by research repositories (e.g. research libraries and archives) was still needed. The Digital Archive Attributes Working Group, convened in 2000, was charged with “defining the characteristics of reliable archiving services for heterogeneous research collections.” Kelly Russell, former manager of the Cedars Project, drafted an initial document and the working group and invited experts contributed helpful, thoughtful suggestions. These were incorporated into this draft report, which aims to provide a framework for the implementation of reliable digital repositories. Building on work done since 1996, it focuses on the issues surrounding the long-term preservation of digital materials. In this report, long-term preservation means two distinct but equally important functions: long-term maintenance of a bytestream and continuing access to its contents through time and changing technology. Given current understanding of how responsibility for long-term preservation will be assumed by research repositories, discussions and recommendations are based on a distributed model where different functions (e.g. deposit, storage, or access) can be provided across federated organizations. The CPA/RLG report recommended “a dialogue among the appropriate organizations and individuals on the standards, criteria and mechanisms needed to certify repositories of digital information as archives.”2 This report answers that directive and: • proposes a definition of a trusted digital repository (for community response/agreement); • identifies the primary attributes of a trusted digital repository; • articulates a framework for the development of a certification program; • identifies the responsibilities of an OAIS-compliant digital repository; and • makes several recommendations for follow-on work. Interested parties are encouraged to read this report and contribute to the effort to build community consensus on the attributes of trusted repositories for digital research resources. Please send your comments to Robin Dale at [email protected] by October 8, 2001. Robin Dale, RLG Meg Bellinger, Preservation Resources, OCLC 1 John Garrett and Donald Waters, Preserving Digital Information: Report of the Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information (Commission on Preservation and Access and RLG, 1996) www.rlg.org/ArchTF/index.html. 2 Ibid. Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository 1 DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT Attributes of a Trusted Digital Repository 2 DRAFT FOR PUBLIC COMMENT 1 Introduction In 1994, the joint Commission on Preservation & Access/RLG Task Force on Archiving of Digital Information began work to describe and explore the nature of a reliable repository for digital materials. The major findings of the CPA/RLG report included these key points: • Long-term preservation of digital information on a scale adequate for the demands of future research and scholarship will require a deep infrastructure capable of supporting a distributed system of digital archives. • A critical component of the digital archiving infrastructure is the existence of a sufficient number of trusted organizations capable of storing, migrating and providing access to digital collections. • A process