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Standards Compliance for Digital Preservation

The digital preservation community has a growing body of documents that define accepted standards and practices for digital preservation. ICPSR is committed to conforming to prevailing standards and practices of the digital preservation community and to being as transparent as possible about the ways in which we are complying. This page documents our ongoing efforts in the area of standards compliance.

Description: The trusted digital repositories document was developed by a panel of experts convened by OCLC/RLG. It provides a comprehensive description of the organizational context for digital preservation.

ICPSR conformance: The ICPSR Digital Preservation Policy Framework uses the attributes of a trusted digital repository, as defined in this document, as an organizing structure. The policy framework makes explicit how ICPSR addresses each attribute. The Trusted Digital Repositories document informs the development of the digital preservation function at ICPSR.

Description: The OAIS reference model was developed by a working group convened by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States. The final version was released in 2002, OAIS was accepted as an ISO standard in 2003, and it is undergoing a revision in 2007. OAIS conceptualizes and defines the functions, roles, and content of a digital archive.

ICPSR conformance: ICPSR is committed to developing our digital preservation systems and practices in conformance to the OAIS Reference model standard. One example is a brief statement about OAIS requirements in Digital Preservation Requirements Applied to ICPSR, which focuses on the Submission Information Package (SIP), the Archival Information Package (AIP), and the Dissemination Information Package (DIP).

Description: The TRAC document was originally developed by the RLG-NARA Digital Repository Certification Task Force. The Center for Research Libraries received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to investigate the means for audit and certification of digital archives and to complete a series of test audits to inform the investigation. TRAC is the starting point for an ISO standards development project on audit and certification of digital archives.

ICPSR conformance: ICPSR served as a test site for developing the CRL research project and is committed to periodic self-assessment and audit, when the mechanism for audit within the community becomes available.

Description: The PREMIS data dictionary and associated documents were developed by a working group convened by OCLC and RLG. The maintenance activity for the data dictionary and follow-on developments is hosted by the Library of Congress.

ICPSR conformance: ICPSR is including the PREMIS data dictionary in its review of requisite preservation metadata and we will document our steps to respond to the PREMIS data dictionary and findings.

© 2007 Regents of the University of Michigan. ICPSR is part of the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan.