Monday, September 26, 2016

Selection and Appraisal in the OAIS Model

Selection and Appraisal in the OAIS Model. Ed Pinsent. DART Blog. 7 September 2016.
     The post asks if the OAIS Model accommodate the skills of selection and appraisal, then suggests that it cannot.  The Model presents an over-simplified view where in a state that is all ready to preserve, which ignores the beginning processes.There is a need to define the pre-ingest stage in OAIS, but there needs to be  a greater recognition of the archivists' Selection and Appraisal skills, can have tremendous value in digital preservation. Archivists assess the value of the content in a contextual framework, based on other records in the archive and in the context of provenance. It requires an understanding of context, provenance, record series, to help identify the potential value of content. A Series model is the "foundation for all Archival arrangement, and is the cornerstone of our profession". It is difficult to see where the record / archival series is in all this.  "The integrity and contextual meaning of a collection is being overlooked, in favour of this atomised digital-object view.

OAIS, if strictly interpreted, could bypass the Series altogether in favour of an assembly line workflow that simply processes one digital object after another."  The blog post asserts that there is a need to rediscover the value of Appraisal and Selection and its importance in the digital realm. 


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