Developing Preservation Metadata for Use in Grid-Based Preservation Systems

Establishing metadata requirements is a key challenge for any attempt to implement a digital preservation repository. The repository’s capacity to provide costeffective, trustworthy services largely derives from the metadata it uses. This paper describes the metadata posited to support services the Chronopolis preservation system will offer at the conclusion of its first year of development. Chronopolis Overview The Chronopolis Digital Preservation Framework [1] is a collaborative partnership between the San Diego Supercomputer Center (SDSC), the University of California, San Diego, Libraries; (UCSDL), The National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and The University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies (UMIACS) to establish a digital preservation system within a grid-based network. During the 2008-09 fiscal year, The Library of Congress' National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP)[2] awarded funding to the Chronopolis Consortium to build a demonstration preservation data grid containing up to 50 terabytes of heterogeneous data at each Chronopolis node (SDSC, NCAR, UMIACS). The long term goal is to develop a trustworthy digital preservation system offering a spectrum of reliable services to data producers. Short term goals for the first and current development phase include: • build system infrastructure at three sites (physical machines, software installation, security, software configuration) • transfer data from depositors • replicate acquired data across three sites • develop preservation services utilizing advantages of grid-based networks • define metadata required to satisfy services