Bridging information management and preservation: A reference model

Abstract

The idea of the Preserve-or-Forget (PoF) approach introduced in this book is to follow a forgetful, focused approach to digital preservation, which is inspired by human forgetting and remembering. Its goal is to ease the adoption of preservation technology especially in the personal and organizational context and to ensure that important content is kept safe, useful, and understandable in the long run. For this purpose, it stresses the smooth interaction between information management and preservation management. Leveraging the PoF approach, in this chapter we introduce a reference model, which will be referred to in the following as PoF Reference Model. The model pays special attention to the functionality which bridges between Information Management System (Active System) and Digital Preservation System (DPS), such as the selection of content for preservation and the transfer of content between the systems. The model aims to encapsulate the core ideas of the PoF approach, which considers Active System and DPS as a joint ecosystem into a re-usable model, and is inspired by the core principles of this approach: synergetic preservation, managed forgetting, and contextualized remembering. The design of the PoF Reference Model was driven by the identification of five required characteristics for such a reference model: it has to be integrative, value-driven, brain-inspired, forgetful, and evolution-aware. The PoF Reference Model consists of a functional part (Functional Model) and of an associated Information Model. The Functional Model is made up of three layers: Core Layer, Remember and Forget Layer, and Evolution Layer. For each layer, we discuss the main functional entities and the representative workflows, also relating them to existing standards and practices in digital preservation. The functionality required to mediate between the Active System and the DPS has been encapsulated into the PoF Middleware, which has been designed and implemented as part of the ForgetIT project. The Information Model describes the preservation entities and their relationships, also discussing the interoperability with existing digital preservation standards.