title: PREMIS: Implementation and Preservation Metadata: Presentation - iPRES 2005 - Göttingen
creators: Robin L. Dale
abstract: PREservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies working group, or PREMIS, has been an activity jointly sponsored by OCLC and RLG, focusing on issues associated with implementing preservation metadata in digital archiving systems. It was established to develop a common, implementable core set of metadata elements for digital preservation, since most published specifications for preservation-related metadata are either implementation-specific or broadly theoretical. Comprised of nearly 30 international experts representing national and university libraries, museums, archives, government agencies, and the private sector, PREMIS was charged to define a set of semantic units that are implementation-independent, practically-oriented, and likely to be needed by most preservation repositories as well as to identify and evaluate alternative strategies for encoding, storing, managing, and exchanging the core elements within a digital archiving system.
  As part of the PREMIS work, existing preservation repositories were surveyed about their architectural models and metadata practices. The result, documented in the report Implementing Preservation Repositories for Digital Materials: Current Practice and Emerging Trends in the Cultural Heritage Community, summarized survey responses which addressed the mission, policy, economic, and technical aspects of digital repositories, as well as current practices for creating, managing, and maintaining preservation metadata within the repository environment. Analysis of the survey responses suggests that the digital preservation community is beginning to coalesce around several emerging trends and best practices in the use and management of preservation metadata.
  In May 2005, the PREMIS working group released its final deliverable: the final report. The semantic units that support long term preservation are represented in a data dictionary with implementation details and in METS-compatible XML schemas. Examples of the metadata elements applied against a range of digital objects are also a component of the report. A glossary of terms and concepts, a data model, and a typology of relationships developed during the course of the work further supplements PREMIS’s contributions to the cultural heritage community. The presentation will discuss the work of PREMIS, the resulting reports and preservation metadata tools, as well as the ongoing PREMIS maintenance activities.
keywords: göttingen