A common SIP specification for shared digital preservation infrastructure
Matthew Burgess
The preservation of digital cultural heritage demands innovative approaches that not only safeguard diverse digital artifacts but also promote their long-term accessibility. This talk explores a collaborative initiative undertaken by a consortium of NSW Government cultural institutions to develop a system-agnostic Submission Information Package (SIP) specification as part of a broader digital preservation pilot project. The objective was to establish a unified framework that supports interoperability across diverse organisations while accommodating unique preservation requirements and metadata standards of each institution as part of a shared digital preservation solution.

Leveraging standards such as the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS), PREservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies (PREMIS), and the Bagit File Packaging Format, the project aimed to create a common SIP specification that could integrate seamlessly with any existing or future digital preservation system infrastructure. The development process involved comprehensive stakeholder analysis, requirement gathering, iterative design, and pilot testing with datasets from participating institutions. Several revisions were made to the original specification to better align with practical challenges and feedback from participating institutions. This iterative refinement process was crucial to ensuring that the specification could effectively handle the diverse nature of digital content and metadata practices across different institutions.

The resulting SIP specification not only streamlined the ingest process but also ensured a consistent approach to metadata and digital object management across institutions. This talk offers insight into collaborative processes and technical considerations crucial for developing shared digital infrastructure.
approaches to preservation scaling up