Requirements for Digital Preservation Systems: A Bottom-Up Approach

TL;DR

This paper presents a bottom-up approach to defining requirements for digital preservation systems, complementing existing top-down standards by analyzing real-world practices and threats to long-term information accessibility.

Contribution

It introduces a bottom-up set of requirements based on observations of current systems and threat analysis, offering an alternative perspective to top-down standards.

Findings

Existing systems handle long-term access in diverse ways

Threat analysis reveals key vulnerabilities in digital preservation

Disclosures can improve transparency and compliance

Abstract

The field of digital preservation is being defined by a set of standards developed top-down, starting with an abstract reference model (OAIS) and gradually adding more specific detail. Systems claiming conformance to these standards are entering production use. Work is underway to certify that systems conform to requirements derived from OAIS. We complement these requirements derived top-down by presenting an alternate, bottom-up view of the field. The fundamental goal of these systems is to ensure that the information they contain remains accessible for the long term. We develop a parallel set of requirements based on observations of how existing systems handle this task, and on an analysis of the threats to achieving the goal. On this basis we suggest disclosures that systems should provide as to how they satisfy their goals.