PREMIS Conformance Brian Lavoie Research Scientist OCLC PREMIS Implementation Fair San Francisco, CA October 7, 2009

PREMIS Conformance  Experience in implementation, managing, and using PREMIS semantic units growing Corresponding need to cultivate deeper understanding of what it means to be “PREMIS conformant”  Need new conformance statement that is more detailed and more actionable Detailed: precise definition of what conformance means in light of emerging use cases; Actionable: of practical use as resource for assessing conformance of a given PREMIS implementation  Subgroup within PREMIS Editorial Committee formed Brian Lavoie, Rebecca Guenther, Priscilla Caplan, Angela Dappert, Sally Vermaaten, Yair Brama

Current conformance principles (v1.0 & v2.0)  “PREMIS conformance requires a preservation repository to follow the specifications outlined in the Data Dictionary.” Specific guidelines dealing with name collision, schema overlap, “mandatoryness”, data constraints, exchange, …  Distills down into four basic conformance principles: WEAK PRINCIPLE OF USE: If you use a PREMIS semantic unit, you must follow the requirements and constraints prescribed in the Dictionary for that semantic unit to be conformant. STRONG PRINCIPLE OF USE: If you implement the PREMIS Data Dictionary, you must implement the mandatory semantic units to be conformant. WEAK PRINCIPLE OF EXCHANGE: If you exchange a PREMIS semantic unit with another entity, the semantic unit must adhere to the specifications prescribed in the Dictionary to be conformant. STRONG PRINCIPLE OF EXCHANGE: If you exchange a complete set of preservation metadata with another entity, the metadata must include all mandatory PREMIS semantic units to be conformant.

Conformance: a new look  Develop new PREMIS conformance statement: Dictionary & schema likely to be stable for foreseeable future Critical mass of implementation experiences to identify practical needs & requirements  Goals: Conformance statement that resembles “checklist” Primary for repository self-assessment Oriented toward small set of key PREMIS conformance use cases  Editorial Committee subgroup Draft/analyze use cases Produce draft conformance statement Submit to Editorial Committee for review and comment

Use cases for conformance  Inter-repository exchange e.g., TIPR project  Repository certification e.g., TRAC  Registries e.g., PRONOM, United Digital Format Registry  Automated workflows/reusable tools e.g., SIP/AIP processing  Vendor support e.g., Ex Libris Rosetta

Issues, etc.  Scope: does conformance include guidelines for schema validation, use of controlled vocabularies, etc.?  Mandatory semantic units: clearer notion of what mandatory elements in the PREMIS Data Dictionary represent (or equivalently, what “mandatory” means)  Multiple levels of conformance: Across different degrees of DD implementation: if repository uses only a small number of semantic units, this would support a minimal rather than optimal conformance. Across use cases: different use case requirements may lead to different notions of conformance.  Current status: Use cases drafted; analysis and synthesis underway Conformance statement ready for public release by end of fall