Assessment of UKDA and TNA Compliance with OAIS and METS Standards

The National Archives tackles digital compliance

26 September 2005

The National Archives have reached another milestone in digital preservation testing and compliance. In conjunction with the UK Data Archive, The National Archives have released a report comparing their preservation practices to the leading internationally recognised standard for digital archives. This provides a model for other organisations to test the compliance of their own systems.

Using the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model the two organisations were able to compare their preservation practices within a common framework: an opportunity that was particularly timely because, in January 2005, the UKDA was appointed as a legal place of deposit for National Archive documents.

The OAIS reference model (ISO 14721) is the major international standard addressing the structure and operations of digital archive facilities. The Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) is a schema for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata regarding objects within a digital library.

The assessment was carried out by the UKDA, The National Archives and the Estonian Business Archive, with a funding award from the Joint Information Systems Committee - under its Institutional Digital Preservation and Asset Management Programme.

The report is available here: http://www.data-archive.ac.uk/news/publications.asp

Paper copies are available from The National Archives and from the UK Data Archive. Contact digital-archive@nationalarchives.gov.uk, or publicity@esds.ac.uk. For further information on Digital Preservation at The National Archives, please see: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/preservation/digital.htm.