New insights in building digital repositories benefit all information professionals.

• Author: Mooradian, Norman
• Position: Building Trustworthy Digital Repositories: Theory and Implementation - Book review

Editor: Philip C. Bantin

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Publication Date: 2016

Length: 388 pages

Price: $65

ISBN: 978-1-4422-6378-9

Source: https://rowman.com

To my knowledge, this is the first text devoted to creating trustworthy digital repositories. Its target audience is professionals in the fields of archives, library science, and records management. As defined early in the text, quoting from the 2002 Online Computer Library Center report "Trusted Digital Repositories: Attributes and Responsibilities," a trusted system is "one whose mission is to provide reliable, long term access to managed digital resources to its designated community, now and in the future."

Structured by System Functions

The book is an anthology of articles written by 43 experts from across these fields, structured according to component functions that make up a trusted system:

* Policy/management

* Ingestion

* Metadata

* Audit capabilities

* Retention

* Access

* Security

* Preservation

It ends with a section on current trends and future directions.

Each section begins with a brief theoretical piece that provides the conceptual framework for the topic and is followed by implementation articles or case studies. This breakdown into functional areas that balance theory and practice makes the book comprehensive and readable.

Distinction Between Systems

The type of system on which the book focuses is succinctly described in the theory piece in the chapter on access as one that holds archival or library materials for long periods of time by trusted bodies (libraries and archives) for the benefit of multiple, external constituencies. This is in contrast to enterprise content management solutions that manage active files (along with permanent records) in support of business objectives and compliance requirements for a limited set of internal users.

The goal of the book is to provide theoretical and practical guidance on creating digital repositories that satisfy the requirements of the Open Archival Information System model codified as ISO 14721: 2012 Space data and information transfer systems --Open archival information system (OAIS)--Reference model.

Chapters 1-2: Policy, Management

The first two chapters (Chapter 1 --"Evaluating and Selecting a Trustworthy Repository" and Chapter 2

--"Resources, Policies and Management Structures") provide a general description of trusted digital repositories (TDRs) from procurement, management, and operational perspectives. The OAIS...