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Showing posts from January, 2015

Reacquainting myself with OAIS

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Hands up if you have read ISO:14721:2012 (otherwise known as the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System)…..I mean properly read it…..yes, I suspected there wouldn’t be many of you. It seems like such a key document to us digital archivists – we use the terminology, the concepts within it, even the diagrams on a regular basis, but I'll be the first to confess I have never read it in full. Standards such as this become so familiar to those of us working in this field that it is possible to get a little complacent about keeping our knowledge of them up to date as they undergo review. Hats off to the Digital Preservation Coalition  (DPC) for updating their Technology Watch Report on the OAIS Reference Model last year. Published in October 2014 I admit I have only just managed to read it. Digital preservation reading material typically comes out on long train journeys and this report kept me company all the way from Birmingham to Coventry and then back home as far as S

The first meeting of Archivematica UK users (or explorers)

Last week I was happy to be able to host the first meeting of a group of UK users (or potential users) of Archivematica here in York There are several organisations within the UK that are exploring Archivematica and thinking about how they could use it within existing data management workflows to help preserve their digital holdings. I thought it would be good to get us in a room together and talking about our ideas and experiences.  Of the institutions who attended the meeting, most were at a similar stage. Perhaps we would not yet call ourselves 'Archivematica users', but having recognised its potential, we are now in the process of testing and exploring the system to evaluate exactly how we could use it and what systems it would integrate with.  Each of the nine institutions attending the meeting were able to give a short presentation with an overview of their experience with Archivematica and intended use of it. I asked each speaker to think about the following points: Wher