Information Technology Reference
In-Depth Information
WHY
: As discussed earlier, it is essential for the archive to define the
Designated Community for a data set in order for preservation to be tested. The
definition of the Designated Community allows the archive to be clear about
how much Representation Information is needed.
HOW
: The Designated Community for a piece of digitally encoded information
is not set in stone - it is a decision for the archive (possibly after consulting
other stakeholders). It may reasonably be asked “What's to stop the archive
making its life easy by defining the Designated Community which is easiest for
it to satisfy?” It could for example just say “The Designated Community is that
set of people who understand these bits”. The answer to the question may be
understood by asking oneself the following: “Would I trust my digital objects
to an archive which adopts such a definition of Designated Community?” It is
to be hoped that it would be fairly self-evident that the use of such a definition
would lead to a rapidly diminishing set of people who could understand the
digital objects and therefore the archive could not really be said to be doing
a good job. Therefore depositors will, if they know that the archive uses such
a definition, will not wish to entrust their valuable digital objects to such an
archive. Thus it is the “market” which keeps the archive honest. As will be clear
when we discuss audit and certification, this definition(s) the archive adopts
have to be made available. The question then arises from the point of view of
the archive:” How should I define a Designated Community?” OAIS provides
no explicit guidance on this point but this is discussed in much more detail in
Chap. 8
.
Ensure that the information to be preserved is Independently Understandable to
the Designated Community. In particular, the Designated Community should be
able to understand the information without needing special resources such as the
assistance of the experts who produced the information.
WHY
: As discussed earlier the “Independently Understandable” aspect is to
make it clear that a member of the Designated Community cannot simply pick
up the phone and ask one of the people who created the digital objects for help.
This is a practical consideration because such a phone call may be possible
when the data is deposited, but certainly will not be possible in 200 (or even 20)
year's time. This is not a one-off responsibility. It is one which must continue
into the future as the Knowledge Base of the Designated Community changes.
HOW
: The archive must have adequate Representation Information in order
to satisfy this responsibility. This means that it must be able to create, or
have access to, Representation Information, and it must be able to determine
how much is needed. These key requirements require the kinds of tools which
are discussed in subsequent chapters;
Chap. 7
describes many techniques for
creating Representation Information and describes where each technique is
