OCFL Workshop
Neil Jefferies
This Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) specification describes an application-independent approach to the storage of digital information in a scalable, structured, transparent, and predictable manner. It is designed to promote long-term object management best practices within digital repositories. OCFL v1 was released in 2020 with a minor update to v1.1 in 2022 containing clarifications and corrections. OCFL is currently supported by the Fedora Commons Repository Platform, the InvenioRDM Platform that underlies Zenodo, LibNova products and a number of other digital preservation-oriented systems.   

This session will be divided into three sections:

Design Philosophy - The session will begin with a presentation on the history of OCFL and how the design process analysed community-provided use cases and requirements to derive a set of key objectives for OCFL. The objectives will then be examined in more detail.

Implementing OCFL v1 - The presentation will be followed by a more discursive session where we will go through the OCFL v1.1 specification and accompanying Implementation Notes, and discuss how it is implemented in practice. In particular, we will look at how OCFL aims to be self-documenting and the use of the extension mechanism to expand OCFL functionality and documentability without compromising the core specification. We will also look at the available tests, fixtures and code libraries that are available to support implementers, with the opportunity for hands-on exploration.

Towards v2 - The process towards a v2 release of the specification is already underway. The session will finish with a discussion of the use cases being considered for inclusion in v2 as a result of community engagements over the past 18 months and progress by the OCFL Editorial team to date, with a view to encouraging more participation and contributions.
standards and models from document to data