Digital Preservation Metadata for Practitioners : Implementing PREMIS

This book begins with an introduction to fundamental issues related to digital preservation metadata before proceeding to in-depth coverage of issues concerning its practical use and implementation. It helps readers to understand which options need to be considered in specifying a digital preservation metadata profile to ensure it matches their individual content types, technical infrastructure, and organizational needs. Further, it provides practical guidance and examples, and raises important questions. It does not provide full-fledged implementation solutions, as such solutions can, by definition, only be specific to a given preservation context. As such, the book effectively bridges the gap between the formal specifications provided in a standard, such as the PREMIS Data Dictionary – a de-facto standard that defines the core metadata required by most preservation repositories – and specific implementations.

Anybody who needs to manage digital assets in any form with the intent of preserving them for an indefinite period of time will find this book a valuable resource. The PREMIS Data Dictionary provides a data model consisting of basic entities (objects, agents, events and rights) and basic properties (called “semantic units”) that describe them. The key challenge addressed is that of determining which information one needs to keep, together with one’s digital assets, so that they can be understood and used in the long-term – in other words, exactly which metadata one needs.

The book will greatly benefit beginners and current practitioners alike. It is equally targeted at digital preservation repository managers and metadata analysts who are responsible for digital preservation metadata, as it is at students in Library, Information and Archival Science degree programs or related fields. Further, it can be used at the conception stage of a digital preservation system or for self-auditing an existing system.

Angela Dappert works at the British Library and serves on the PREMIS Editorial Committee. She has been involved with the modeling of digital preservation metadata for over a decade. She has worked on persistent identification for researchers and research output, data carrier stabilization, digital asset registration, preservation planning and characterization, eJournal ingest, and digital metadata standards. She has consulted on digital life-cycle management issues for a wide range of institutions.

Rebecca Squire Guenther worked in US national libraries for 35 years, primarily on library technology standards related to digital libraries. She spent most of her professional life at the Library of Congress developing national and international standards related to metadata, including MARC, MODS, PREMIS, METS, BIBFRAME and ISO language codes. She has served on numerous standards and implementation committees, several as chair, including the  PREMIS Editorial Committee and the original PREMIS Working Group. She is an adjunct professor in NYU's Moving Image Archiving and Preservation Program and consults on metadata issues for various cultural heritage organizations.

Sébastien Peyrard has been working for 8 years at the National Library of France (BnF) where he is currently head of metadata engineering services. He has worked in various metadata related projects such as the implementation of preservation metadata in SPAR, the institution digital preservation repository, and the data.bnf.fr linked data project. He is also responsible for maintaining the ARK persistent identifier implementation at BnF. He served on the METS Editorial Board from 2011 to 2013 and on the PREMIS Editorial Committee from 2011 to 2015.