Is there any best practice/guidance on where to store, in METS, metadata about digitisation/digital creation processes?

Wed, 07 Feb 2018 11:38:34 +0000

For digitised files, what is the best way to capture metadata about the digitisation process (equipment/software, settings, dates, operator names, etc) in METS? Should it be captured?

I'm not just thinking of image based digitisation, so a couple of example scenarios would be:

Digitising a newspaper to a TIFF or JP2?
"Digitising" sound content from carrier form to a WAVE file?

My thoughts were around using the <techMD> or <digiprovMD> elements, however neither seem to completely fit.

The LoC’s METS primer suggests "<techMD> records technical metadata about a component of the METS object, such as a digital content file” (http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/METSPrimerRevised.pdf#page=41). So this appears to be aimed at the technical characteristics of the files being preserved.

Just below that, in the same document (http://www.loc.gov/standards/mets/METSPrimerRevised.pdf#page=43), is says the "<digiprovMD> can be used to record preservation-related actions taken on the various files which comprise a digital object (e.g., those subsequent to the initial digitization of the files such as transformation or migrations) or, in the case of born digital materials, the files' creation”. So for digitised material, this seems to be about actions *after* digitisation, not the digitisation itself. On the contrary, for born-digital content the wording implies it can be used to capture details of content creation.

Perhaps I've missed something obvious (or used the wrong search terms), but I'm not finding much in the way of digitisation provenance capture.

Does anyone else record such info in METS, and if so, how so?

How/where to store metadata about optical media sector layout in METS/PREMIS

Mon, 05 Feb 2018 16:09:33 +0000

I'm drafting a METS/PREMIS profile for images/rips of optical media images (ISOs for data sessions; WAV or FLAC files for audio). One of the pieces of metadata I'd like to include is the output of the cd-info tool, which contains information about the sector layout of the disc. Here's an example:

https://gist.github.com/bitsgalore/9a2838481574c040f7c4b7da4ed59926

However I'm unsure how (and where) to store this info in METS. My initial idea was something like this:

Create a METS techMD element which is associated with the structmap div element that encompasses all files that were extracted from the physical disc (typically one ISO image and/or multiple audio files).
Inside this techMD element, create a PREMIS OBJECT instance with xsi:type="premis:representation" (since it describes the disc as a whole, and not an individual ISO image or audio file!)
Then use PREMIS unit 1.5.7 objectCharacteristicsExtension as a container for wrapping the iso-info output.

The problem here is that the PREMIS 3.0 data dictionary says that the objectCharacteristicsExtension unit (and also its parent unit 1.5 objectCharacteristics) is "Not Applicable" for the intellectual Entity and Representation object types!

This makes me wonder how others are handling this. Is this an oversight of PREMIS, or is there some other (possibly
better) way to do this that I've overlooked?

Any suggestions appreciated!

Digital Preservation Q&A - Recent questions tagged mets

Is there any best practice/guidance on where to store, in METS, metadata about digitisation/digital creation processes?

How/where to store metadata about optical media sector layout in METS/PREMIS