Welcome to the OAIS Community Wiki

The Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS)(version 3) (or if this does not work please download from here), also known as ISO 14721:2025 is a fundamental standard in digital preservation.

The purpose of this wiki is to provide information about OAIS and collect from users their questions about OAIS and information about their experiences using and implementing the standard.

The wiki is readable by all. In order to contribute please Register (see sidebar), wait for your registration to be approved, then login and make your contribution.

Essential Digital Preservation - free book

• Essential Digital Preservation part 1: Why read this book? Why is preserving digitally encoded information important - but difficult.
• Essential Digital Preservation part 2: The fundamental ideas about preserving digitally encoded information
• other parts coming soon

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Community Contributions

OAIS Cases Studies	OAIS Related Implementations	OAIS Related Software
Relationship to other Standards	Roadmap for the development of related standards	Questions about OAIS
Test your understanding of OAIS	OAIS Terminology Cross Reference using SKOS	Questions about OAIS Conformance
	Discussions of changes from v2 to v3 of OAIS	Suggestions for OAIS V4

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Purpose and scope of OAIS

OAIS is an Archive system consisting of hardware, software, information, and policy-based processes and procedures put in place and operated by an organization and its staff. The organization has accepted the responsibility to preserve information and make it available for a Designated Community. The organization may be part of a larger organization. The system meets a set of mandatory responsibilities that allow an OAIS Archive to be distinguished from other uses of the term ‘archive’. The set of mandatory responsibilities an OAIS Archive must perform are defined in 3.2. The term ‘Open’ in OAIS is used to imply that this Recommended Practice, as well as future related Recommended Practices and standards, are developed in open forums, and it does not imply that access to the Archive is unrestricted. The information being maintained has been deemed to need Long Term Preservation, even if the OAIS itself is not permanent. Long Term is long enough to be concerned with the impacts of changing technologies, as well as support for new media and data formats, or with a changing Knowledge Base of the Designated Community or changes within the Designated Community or its definition. Long Term may extend indefinitely. In this Reference Model there is a particular focus on digital information, both as the primary forms of information held and as supporting information for both digitally and physically preserved materials. Therefore, the model accommodates information that is inherently non-digital (e.g., a physical sample), but the modelling and preservation of such information is not addressed in detail. This Reference Model:

• provides a framework for the understanding and increased awareness of archival concepts needed for Long Term digital information preservation and access;
• provides the concepts needed by non-archival organizations to be effective participants in the preservation process;
• provides a framework, including terminology and concepts, for describing and comparing architectures and operations of existing and future Archives;
• provides a framework for describing and comparing different Long Term Preservation strategies and techniques;
• provides a basis for comparing the data models of digital information preserved by Archives and for discussing how the data models and the underlying information may change over time;
• provides a framework that may be expanded by other efforts to cover Long Term Preservation of information that is NOT in digital form (e.g., physical media and physical samples);
• expands consensus on the elements and processes for Long Term digital information preservation and access, and promotes a larger market which vendors can support;
• guides the identification and production of OAIS-related standards.

The reference model addresses a full range of archival information preservation functions including ingest, archival storage, data management, access, and dissemination. It also addresses the migration of digital information to new media and forms, the information models used to represent the information, the role of software in information preservation, and the exchange of digital information among Archives. It identifies both internal and external interfaces to the Archive functions, and it identifies a number of high-level services at these interfaces. It provides various illustrative examples and some ‘best practice’ recommendations. It defines a minimal set of responsibilities for an Archive to be called an OAIS, and it also defines a maximal Archive to provide a broad set of useful terms and concepts.

Applicability

The OAIS model in this document may be applicable to any Archive. It is specifically applicable to organizations, which may themselves be part of larger organizations, with the responsibility of making information available for the Long Term (as defined in 1.6.2 of OAIS). This includes organizations with other responsibilities, such as receiving, processing and distribution in response to programmatic needs.

Organizations may require their information, from the start, to be re-processable to enable the results created by others to be reproduced, interoperable with other information, and re-used in new ways. Such organizations will find this document relevant because of the requirement that, to be preserved, the information must be understandable and usable.

This model is also of interest to those organizations and individuals who create information that may need Long Term Preservation and those that may need to acquire information from such Archives.

The model, including the functional and information modelling concepts, is relevant to the comparison and design of facilities which hold information, on a temporary basis, for two reasons:

• When taking into consideration the rapid pace of technology changes or possible changes in a Designated Community, there is the likelihood that facilities, thought to be holding information on a temporary basis, will in fact find that some or much of their information holdings will need Long Term Preservation attention.
• Although some facilities holding information may themselves be temporary, some or all of their information may need to be preserved indefinitely. Such facilities need to be active participants in the Long Term Preservation effort.

Standards developers are expected to use this model in conjunction with related standards and community documents as a basis for further standardization in this area. Many related standards are possible and some have already been developed. Annex B includes links to websites containing references to a selection of related standards.

This reference model does not specify a design or an implementation. Actual implementations may group or break out functionality differently.

Audit and Certification

Repositories may be audited against the ISO 16363 standard (Requirements for Bodies Providing Audit and Certification of Candidate Trustworthy Digital Repositories) (or if that has a problem please download from here). Details of ISO accreditted audit may be found at the PTAB website http://www.iso16363.org

See OriginalMainWeb