Principles of Born Digital Description

May not be accurate, use with caution

Overview

In general, describing born-digital material should be no different from describing physical or analog material. For some fields, however, the guidelines will differ for digital content. See the specific element under "Finding aid notes" in the page tree for guidance. The following digital preservation principles show how information packages translate to archival objects in a finding aid.

Information Packages: SIP, AIP, DIP

Following the OAIS Reference Model, digital content should be packaged for preservation and access into information packages after accessioning or processing. These information packages (i.e. bundles of information) should include:

• context describing the relationship of the information to its environment
• identifiers, or a way with which to reference the material
• fixity: a wrapper over the information to verify data integrity
• access rights, which provide terms of access, preservation, distribution, and usage

The three types of information packages in an OAIS are:

• Submission Information Package (SIP): the information transferred from the donor to the archive
• Archival Information Package (AIP): the information stored by the archive
• Dissemination Information Package (DIP): the information sent to a user (e.g. student, researcher, faculty, patron) when requested

Information Packages as Archival Objects

In general, one archival object represents one AIP and/or DIP. An archival object can be linked to one or more digital object records. For example, one archival object can be linked to:

• One digital object record with the file path to the AIP in storage
• One digital object record with a link to a file list that is accessible on the web
• One digital object with a link to the DIP that is accessible on the web

Similar to physical materials, the archival object describes the contents, not the media, although the original media formats and the steps taken to transfer and stabilize the materials, should be documented in the Processing Note.

References

• National Digital Stewardship Alliance (NDSA) Glossary
• Ashley Blewer's AV Preservation training slide deck about OAIS
• Lavoie, Brian. 2014. The Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model: Introductory Guide (2nd Edition). Digital Preservation Coalition.