Adding Representation Information
As technology, environment and tacit knowledge change, the bits in the digital object may not be usable/understandable. Extra Representation Information can overcome such changes.
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As technology, environment and tacit knowledge change, the bits in the digital object may not be usable/understandable. Extra Representation Information can overcome such changes.
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For example the archive may add Representation Information which was not required because it has been common knowledge previously, for example the definition of a specific variant of FITS or an XML schema which is no longer available at its normal URI (schemaLocation).
If software which is commonly available becomes, or threatens to become, unavailable or unusable in some way, then the Representation Information to be added could be a software installation kit and/or a software emulator or Virtual Machine, perhaps with a machine emulator such as , or a container. Each of these may require its own Representation Information, for example a Docker container needs underlying support such as an operating system.
Details are provided, following OAIS, in:
Other Representation Informationwhich includes
Software as part of the RIN - including a description of how to preserve software, including Jupyter Notebooks, Virtual Machines and Containers.
If the additional Representation Information is essentially a replacement for the existing Representation Information, for example replacing a text file which is a placeholder saying "Need to add more details here", or perhaps a formal data description which has an improved version, then the may be used so that existing pointers to the original file will automatically pick up the new version. If, on the other hand, it is important to keep other versions of the Representation Information available simultaneously, then the versioning technique of referring to a folder which contains all the different versions of a file (the Representation Information) would be appropriate.
Representation Information may be added as "metadata" elements to the OAIS Archival Information Model Schema associated with the Data Object in one of a number of ways see Configure metadata:
using the GUI
using the API via the command line or script as CURL commands, or via a programming language such as PYTHON or JAVA.
The metadata may be a link to another Data Object, which itself may have one or more "metadata" elements in its OAIS Archival Information Model Schema, or it may be a text description.