OAIS: a cage or a guide?

OAIS: a cage or a guide? Barbara Sierman. Digital Preservation Seeds. December 3, 2016.    
     Post about the OAIS standard and asking if it is a restriction or a guide. OAIS, the functional model, the data model and metrics in OAIS and the related standards like the audit and certification standard. "OAIS is out there for 20 years and we cannot imagine where digital preservation would be, without this standard." It is helpful for discussing preservation by naming the related functions and meta data groups. But it lacks a link to implementation and application for daily activities. OAIS is a lot of common sense put into a standard. The audit and certification standard, ISO 16363, is meant to explain how compliance can be achieved, a more practical approach.

Many organisations are using this standard to answer to the question "Am I doing it right?" People working with digital preservation want to know the approach that others are using, the issues that they have solved. The preservation community needs to "evaluate regularly whether the standards they are using are still relevant in the changing environment" and a continuous debate is required to do this. In addition, we need evidence that practical implementations that follow OAIS are the best way to do digital preservation. Proof of what worked and what did not work is needed in order to adapt standards, and the DPC OAIS community wiki has been set up to gather thoughts related to the practical implementation of OAIS and to provide practical information about the preservation standards,

Digital Preservation Matters.