Workbook on Digital Private Papers > Introduction > Introduction to OAIS
Introduction to OAIS
OAIS in practice: Compliance & certification
How does your institution rate?
As the OAIS Reference Model gains significance, institutions which have managed digital media for decades may wish to see how they measure up. Such an exercise is useful for ongoing planning, for raising an institution's profile within the archive community and ensuring that the same degree of professional care is applied to digital archives as to their analogue equivalents. Two institutions in the UK have undertaken this exercise: The National Archive's 'Digital Archive' and the National Digital Archive of Datasets (NDAD). The result of this OAIS compliance investigation has been written up into a useful report.
A model for digital repository software
OAIS also serves as a framework for developers of digital repository software; such repositories include DSpace and Fedora, which Paradigm has tested. The impact of the OAIS model is apparent in the existing versions of DSpace and Fedora, and in the current development priorities of the two communities.
Certification
There is currently no formal certification mechanism for digital repositories, though some assessment of digital archiving competency is available through existing mechanisms, such as the inspection service provided by the Advisory Service at The National Archives based on its Standard for Record Repositories document. There is ongoing debate in the digital preservation community about the merits of a formal certification process; many are concerned about the cost and unconvinced of the value, and most are unsure how certification will work in practice. Despite these uncertainties, certification initiatives are already emerging. Combining the strengths of the OAIS model with the RLG/OCLC's Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities (2002), a RLG and NARA task force published an audit checklist for digital repository certification in 2005; an updated checklist entitled Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist was published in February 2007. There is also a certification process for German repositories administered by the Deutsche Initiative für Netzwerk Information (DINI). The DRAMBORA (Digital Repository Audit Method Based on Risk Assessment) toolkit has also been published by the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and Digital Preservation Europe (DPE).
