Current PREMIS Maintenance Activity News
January 2007 :
The Library of Congress published a report entitled Rights in the PREMIS
Data Model. This paper looks at the various definitions of rights, the
state of rights metadata, and surveys legislative actions taking place in
many nations that will provide a legal standing for digital preservation
activities. The report suggests adding specific data elements to the PREMIS
rights entity to better accommodate information about preservation actions
permitted by law or statute and information about the copyright status of
a resource when known. With these additions, the PREMIS rights entity will
be able to support a variety of types of rights situations that are common
in the digital preservation community.
October 2006:
A call for participation was announced widely for the revision of the PREMIS
data dictionary and accompanying schemas. The revision process will be dconducted
in colllaboration with the digital preservation community. The forum for participation
will be the PREMIS Implementors' Group email discussion list ("PIG" list).
In this forum, interested parties can make suggestions for and discuss revisions
to the Data Dictionary. Progress on the revision will be reported on the PIG
list.
August 2006:
A PREMIS
Editorial Committee has been established to work with the Managing Agency
to set directions and priorities for PREMIS development in order to ensure
that sufficient resources are available to support needed initiatives and
achieve PREMIS goals.
Feb. 1, 2006:
Following publication of the award-winning PREMIS Data Dictionary for
Preservation Metadata in May 2005, the PREMIS Maintenance Activity, with
financial support provided by the Library of Congress, has commissioned two
consultancies to move the PREMIS work forward. Karen Coyle is undertaking a study
of rights issues related to the preservation of digital materials, with an
emphasis on the metadata requirements needed to document and manage these rights
in a digital preservation repository setting. Deborah Woodyard-Robinson is
compiling guidelines and recommendations for implementing the PREMIS Data Dictionary in the context of a set of common digital preservation use cases.
In other work, Brian Lavoie of OCLC is authoring a document
that will place the PREMIS Data Dictionary in the context of the OAIS Reference
Model. Rebecca Guenther of the Library of Congress is compiling a registry of institutions
currently exploring implementation of the Data Dictionary in their own repositories.
Discussions are underway with the UK Digital Curation Centre to arrange one or more DCC training events in the UK on use of the PREMIS Data
Dictionary. PREMIS organizers are also discussing how the £5000 prize
for the 2005 Digital Preservation Award might best be used to fund future
PREMIS activities that will advance the definition and use of preservation metadata.
The PREMIS Implementers' Group discussion list has more than 100 subscribers. Current
discussion is focused on how the PREMIS Data Dictionary and XML schema can be used in conjunction with METS.