PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, Version 3.0

PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata, Version 3.0. Library of congress.
June 10, 2015. [Full PDF]
The PREMIS Data Dictionary and its supporting documentation is a comprehensive, practical resource for implementing preservation metadata in digital archiving systems. The Data Dictionary is built on a data model that defines five entities: Intellectual Entities, Objects, Events, Rights, and Agents. Each semantic unit defined in the Data Dictionary is a property of one of the entities in the data model.

This new publications are:

• PREMIS Data Dictionary. Version 3.0. This is the full document which includes the PREMIS Introduction, the Data Dictionary, Special Topics, and Glossary.
• PREMIS Data Dictionary This document only has the Data Dictionary, introductory materials
• Hierarchical Listing of Semantic Units: PREMIS Data Dictionary, Version 3.0
• The Version 3.0 PREMIS Schema is not yet available

Version 3 of the Data Dictionary includes some major changes and additions to the Dictionary, which are:

• Reposition Intellectual Entity as a category of Object to enable additional description within PREMIS and linking to related PREMIS entities.
• Reposition Environments (i.e. hardware and software needed to use digital objects) so that they can be described and preserved reusing the Object entity. That is to say, they can be described as Intellectual Entities and preserved as Representation, File or Bitstream Objects.
• Add physical Objects to the scope of PREMIS so that they can be described and related to digital objects.
• Add a a new semantic unit to the Object entity: preservationLevelType (O, NR) to indicate the type of preservation functions expected to be applied to the object for the given preservation level.
• Add a new semantic unit to the Agent entity to express the version of software Agents: agentVersion (O, NR).
• Add a new semantic unit to the Event entity: eventDetailInformation (O, R)

There are major additions in the “PREMIS Data Model” and “Environment” sections.
The data model:


The entities in the PREMIS data model are:

• Object: a unit subject to digital preservation.This can now be an environment.
• Environment: technology supporting a Digital Object. Can now be as Intellectual Entity.
• Event: an action concerning an Object or Agent associated with the preservation repository.
• Agent: entity associated with Rights, Events, or an environment Object.
• Rights Statement: Rights or permissions pertaining to an Object and/or Agent.

With the advent of Intellectual Entities in PREMIS 3.0, environments have been transformed. "Before version 3.0, there was an environment container within an Object that described the environment supporting that Object. If a non-environment Object needs to refer to an environment, it is now recommended that the environment is described as an Object in its own right and the two Objects are linked with a dependency relationship."

Digital Preservation Matters.