Content Packaging Approach for a Large OAIS Repository

Abstract

The Future Digital System (FDsys) is a digital archive being developed by the U.S. Government Printing Office and Harris Corporation. It will provide permanent public electronic access to authentic government publications via a web interface. The FDsys is being designed based on the Open Archival Information Systems (OAIS) reference model. The OAIS model incorporates many archiving best practices and increases the chance for developing a successful archive that will protect and preserve content over the long term. Applying the OAIS reference model requires making many engineering decisions about how to apply the model to a particular archive's mission and operations. This paper describes the specifics of how the information packaging concepts of the OAIS model are being applied to FDsys to address the archiving problems of storing complex (compound) digital objects, managing multiple renditions of the same publication, preserving publications over time, managing access rights to publications, and maintaining a record of the history of a publication within the archive. How information is packaged within a digital archive is critical to the success of the archive. This paper provides a look at the design of a large digital archive and a concrete example of how some important aspects of OAIS are being applied.