Digital Preservation Policy: Resources

Acronyms and Definitions

Archival Information Package (AIP): An (OAIS) Information Package consisting of the Content Information and the associated Preservation Description Information which is preserved within an Open Archival Information System.

Access: The permission to locate and retrieve information for use within legally established restrictions of privacy, confidentiality, and security clearance.

Authenticity: A quality of a digital resource to be judged trustworthy and genuine based on internal and external evidence. (Yale)

Bit rot: the tendency of digital information to degrade or become unusable over time.

Born-digital: Information created in electronic format. Born-digital information is distinguished from information that was created in another format and digitized through scanning or digital photography, creating a digital surrogate. A document created using a word processor may be described as born-digital.

Data Object (OAIS): Either a Physical Object or a Digital Object.

Digital asset: digital content that has value based on the administrative, legal, fiscal, evidential, or historical information it contains. Digital assets can consist of born-digital or digitized content.

Digital (electronic) content: Data or information that has been captured and fixed for storage and manipulation in an automated system and that requires the use of the system to render it intelligible by a person. This definition encompasses records and publications.

Digital Library of Georgia, http://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/?Welcome

Digitization: The process of transforming analog material into digital (electronic) form, especially for storage and use in a computer. Also referred to as scanning or imaging.

Digital Preservation: The managed activities necessary for ensuring both the long-term maintenance of a byte stream and continued accessibility of its contents. [RLG-OCLC: “Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities”]

Dissemination Information Package (DIP): The (OAIS) Information Package derived from one or more Archival Information Packages (AIPs) received by the Consumer (end user) in response to a request to the Open Archival Information System.

Fixity: The quality of being stable and resisting change. Mechanisms such as checksums or cyclical redundancy checks can record a fixity value for a digital object, and can be used as a basis of later comparison to ensure that the digital object has not been altered.

Fixity Information: The information which documents the authentication mechanisms and provides authentication keys to ensure that the Content Information object has not been altered in an undocumented manner. An example is a checksum or a Cyclical Redundancy Check code for a file.

Information Object (OAIS): A Data Object together with its Representation Information.

Library’s Member Institutions:  Clark Atlanta University, The Interdenominational Theological Center, Morehouse College, Spelman College

Life Cycle: The framework for understanding the sequential or cyclical sequence of activities that digital assets undergo during their existence. (Yale) North Carolina Digital Preservation Policy

Acronyms and Definitions

Metadata: Information that describes significant aspects of a resource. Preservation metadata are required to describe, manage, and preserve digital resources over time and will assist in ensuring essential contextual, administrative, historical, and technical information are preserved along with the digital resource. (Yale)

National Digital Stewardship Alliance: A Library of Congress initiative that provides leadership, guidelines and best practices for digital preservation for cultural heritage organizations.  http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/ndsa/NDSAtoDLF.html

Open Archival Information System (OAIS): An archive, consisting of an organization of people and systems that has accepted the responsibility to preserve information and make it available for a Designated Community. It meets a set of responsibilities, as defined in 3.1, that allows an OAIS archive to be distinguished from other uses of the term archive. The term Open in OAIS is used to imply that this Recommendation and future related Recommendations and standards are developed in open forums, and it does not imply that access to the archive is unrestricted. http://www.iso.org/iso/catalogue_detail.htm?csnumber=57284

Permanent value: The ongoing usefulness or significance of records, based on the administrative, legal, fiscal, evidential, or historical information they contain that justifies their continued preservation.

Preservation (and digital preservation): The process of protecting materials from deterioration or damage. Digital preservation typically centers on the choice of interim storage media, the life expectancy of a digital imaging system, and the expectation to migrate the digital files to future systems while maintaining both the full functionality and the integrity of the original digital system.

Preservation: A series of active managed activities and processes involved in the physical and intellectual protection of administrative, legal, fiscal, evidential, historical information and cultural materials. Preservation encompasses a host of policies, procedures, and processes that together sustain access or prevent further deterioration to the materials chosen to save. (Yale)

Provenance: The source and ownership history of a (digital) resource. (Yale)

Representation Information (OAIS): The information that maps a Data Object into more meaningful concepts. An example is the ASCII definition that describes how a sequence of bits (i.e. a Data Object) is mapped into a symbol.

Repository: An organization that intends to maintain information for access and use.

Submission Information Package (SIP): An (OAIS) Information Package that is delivered by the Producer/Contributor for use in the construction of one or more Archival Information Packages (AIPs).

Trusted Digital Repository: A repository whose mission is to provide reliable, long-term access to managed digital resources to its designated community, now and in the future. A critical component is the ability to prove reliability and trustworthiness over time. [RLG-OCLC: “Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities”] https://www.crl.edu/sites/default/files/d6/attachments/pages/trac_0.pdf