Standardisation
Many technical standards have yet to crystallise in the relatively new field of digital preservation. nestor provides an overview of existing standards, bundles together standardisation activities and proposes new activities where required. User interests are represented at the national and international levels via the partnership with the DIN organisation.
Overview of current standards in digital preservation
- Persistent identifiers
- Metadata
- File formats: Identification / Registry
- Audit & Certification
- Reference models
- Records Management
National standardisation
To date, the nestor working groups have initiated three standardisation projects. These are currently being adapted by DIN for adoption as national standards:
- nestor criteria - Catalogue of Criteria for Trusted Repositories Version II
- Catalogue of Criteria for Assessing the Trustworthiness of PI Systems
- Wege ins Archiv ("Into the Archive") - A guide for ingesting information into the digital repository
The national standardisation takes place in the working group Records Management and Preservation of Digital Information Objects (NABD 15) in the DIN Standardisation Committee for Libraries and Documentation (NABD). The working group and nestor collaborate closely. The two former nestor working groups "Trusted Repositories" and "Standards for metadata, transfer of objects to digital repositories and object access" have been assimilated as discrete working groups into the Committee for Record Management and Preservation of Digital Information Objects in which their standardisation projects are being expanded into national standards. Further standardisation topics can similarly be handled in nestor working groups and be prepared for national standardisation.