Digital Preservation Interoperability through Preservation Actions Registries

Abstract

This paper has been accepted for iPRES2018 and presents new work by Artefactual, Arkivum, Preservica and Jisc on how Preservation Action Registries (PAR) could be used to capture and share technical best practice for the preservation of digital objects in the form of a corpus of machine-readable recommendations. The registry’s data model defines what tools can be used for different digital object formats, what properties can be extracted or measured and what preservation actions can be taken. The model includes contextual and historical information on the reasons why recommendations are being given. The information is versioned and includes the tool parameters and software environments needed to execute different preservation actions so they are directly ‘executable’ by preservation systems. Our model makes registry content accessible through APIs using a distributed set of registries rather than a single canonical source. In this way, information can be made available from a range of sources including central registries (moderated and curated) or by exchange directly between trusted peer institutions or systems. Preservation systems such as Archivematica and Preservica are able to publish to and consume content from these registries.