Implementing Event and Agent Metadata for Digital Preservation

Abstract

Event metadata is structured (human and machine readable) information that documents actions or activities that have happened and which relate to one or more objects that an organization is tasked with preserving. It is crucial to enabling the people, processes, and technologies involved in preserving digital objects to successfully preserve those objects. Event metadata is the glue that joins metadata about objects that are managed by an organization, to metadata about the people, systems, or software that interact with those objects while they are being managed. Events are defined in PREMIS as follows:

[An event is] an action that involves or impacts at least one Object or Agent associated with or known by the preservation repository. [1]

Event metadata is necessary for ensuring that there is evidence of interactions between digital objects and agents within digital preservation systems. This evidence can be used for many purposes including ensuring success in security and trustworthiness audits and in proving the provenance and authenticity of digital content preserved by an organization. Decisions about where and how to store event metadata are often dependent on the environment in which the preservation is being undertaken. While it can be important to store at least one copy of any event metadata alongside the data it pertains to, this can be avoided if the metadata storage systems have equally rigorous bit-preservation processes governing them. Tough decisions often need to be made by organizations implementing the capture of event metadata in order to ensure they don’t succumb to costly “metadata bloat.” Therefore, organizations need to consider what metadata is important to the long-term preservation of their content before they begin capturing and preserving unnecessary additional metadata.