Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
various illustrative examples and some “best practice” recommendations. It defines
a minimal set of responsibilities for an archive to be called an OAIS, and it also
defines a maximal archive to provide a broad set of useful terms and concepts.
6.1 OAIS Conformance
It is important to remember that, as noted in the introduction, OAIS serves many
functions, and two of these functions can cause some confusion when people
consider conformance to OAIS.
The terminology introduced is designed to be widely applicable. Therefore just
about any archive can describe its functions in OAIS terms, and this leads to claims
of OAIS conformance. However this is not true conformance, it is merely verify-
ing that OAIS terminology is indeed widely applicable. OAIS itself defines what
conformance involves as follows:
•
A conforming OAIS archive implementation shall support the model of informa-
tion (essentially what is described in
Sect. 3.2
and expanded upon in Sect.
6.3
of
this topic). The OAIS Reference Model does not define or require any particular
method of implementation of these concepts.
•
A conforming OAIS archive shall fulfil the responsibilities listed in Sect.
6.2
of
this topic.
A conformant OAIS archive may provide additional services to users
that are beyond those required of an OAIS.
It can also provide services to users who are not part of the Designated
Community.
It has been said, perhaps half in jest, that a chicken with its head cut off is con-
formant with OAIS. While it may be possible to use OAIS terminology to describe
such a fowl, nevertheless it should be clear that since, for example, it is doubtful
that it supports the OAIS information model, and hence it cannot be conformant to
OAIS.
Digital archives sometimes claim to be conformant with OAIS when
in fact what they mean is that they can use OAIS terminology to
describe their functions. It cannot be stressed enough that this is not
actually conformance; it just means that OAIS terminology is very
useful.
The details of how digital repositories can be assessed in practice will be dis-
cussed in
Chap. 25
, although OAIS conformance is a necessary but not sufficient
condition there because OAIS does not cover aspects such as financial stability.
