Outline of modules for 2, 4 and 5 day courses

The courses are normally the length indicated, but, depending on time zones and availability of the students, may be broken into multiple partial days.

OAIS 2 day course

Module No.	Title	Details/Rationale
1	Introduction	Introduction – outline of the course including its origins and context
2	Challenges	Reasons why preservation is of interest. Your chance to raise your particular issues. Challenges of digital preservation – what are the problems and why is it difficult to do properly
3	Relationship to certification	Understand the relationship of OAIS to ISO16363 certification. A very brief look at how to judge effectiveness of preservation
4	Types of digital objects Part 1	Consideration of the variety of digital objects that you may be asked to preserve, including looking inside a selection of them. Therefore, we look at digital objects from the bit level upwards to understand the origin of the issues to be addressed when preserving them. We examine sample digital objects, including ones supplied by attendees.
4	Types of digital objects Part 2	An opportunity to look at some of your own examples of data.
5	Overview of OAIS	A review of OAIS and digital preservation fundamental concepts and vocabulary. This includes a detailed review of OAIS (ISO 14721) plus its updates.
6	OAIS Functional Model	The OAIS Functional Model is described – and its actual role in OAIS will be explained. What is it and why is it useful? What are the common mistakes?
7	OAIS Information Model	The fundamental, and often ignored, OAIS Information Model will be described. The relationship to OAIS conformance will be explained.
7	OAIS Information Model and Mandatory Responsibilities	The ideas underpinning OAIS conformance.  Discussion of examples of definitions of the Designated Community.
8	OAIS Information Model – exercises	A chance to work through some of your examples.
9	Preservation Techniques – Part 1	The fundamental techniques of digital preservation will be described – it is more than “emulate or migrate”. What techniques are out there and how to choose which to try first.
9	Preservation Techniques – Part 2	Further discussion of digital preservation, including an in depth look at your examples.
10	Claims of OAIS implementations	A number of the available software productions, commercial as well as open source, will be discussed. A look at some claims and see how to evaluate them – are they true/false or misleading?

ISO16363 for Auditors and Managers of Digital Repositories in 4 days or 5 days

Module No.	Module	Outline
1	Introduction	Introduction – outline of the course  including origins and context
2	Digital Object Management  – Types of objects and threats	One needs to understand why a repository has to do anything about digital preservation. Therefore we look at digital objects from the bit level upwards to understand the origin of the issues to be addressed when preserving them. We examine sample digital objects, including ones supplied by attendees.
3	OAIS	The fundamental concepts and vocabulary of digital preservation which are referred to again and again in the other modules. This involves a detailed review of OAIS (ISO 14721) plus its updates.
4	Outline of Auditing	An initial look at what an audit does, including competencies which auditors must have, based on section 9.2.2 of ISO 17021.
5	Basic Preservation Techniques	We will examine the basic preservation techniques and discuss where your favoured tools/techniques fit in.
6	Digital Object Management – AIPs	An AIP has in principle everything needed for long term preservation of a digital object. How can one tell whether an AIP is complete? This module covers metrics from section 4, in particular 4.2, of ISO 16363.
7	Organisational Infrastructure – Level of Documentation	Now we have an understanding of digital preservation we can examine the infrastructure needed, covering metrics 3.3 of ISO 16363
8	Infrastructure & Security Risk Management	One important issue is security – making sure we don’t lose the bits! This module covers metrics from section 5 of ISO 16363
9	Digital Object Management – Ingest	We understand what we need for preservation – the AIP – now we can see how this information must come into (be ingested into) the repository. This covers metrics in 4.1 of ISO 16363.
10	Digital Object Management – Access	The other side of ingest is ACCESS – what does ISO 16363 say about how the information be found and supplied? This is addressed in metrics 4.5 and 4.6 of ISO 16363.
11	Audit Process	Having understood all these aspects of preservation – we can look further at the audit process as specified in ISO 17021, covering section 9.1.9.5 of ISO 17021 plus additional material specifically related to digital preservation from ISO 16919.
12	Audit Planning	…and how the audit is planned, covering ISO 17021 – see sections 9.1.2 and Annex F. Also sections 9.1.8, 9.1.9. 9.4 of ISO 17021.
13	Audit Team	..and the team needed to do it, covering ISO 17021, section 7.
14	Organisational Infrastructure – evaluation of repository capacity	Then we can look at ways the capabilities of the repository can be evaluated, covering metrics 3.2, 3.4 and 3.5 of ISO 16363.
15	Organisational Infrastructure – adequacy of sustainability	Of course the repository must be sustainable – not necessarily forever – but “long enough”. This is covered in metrics 3.1 of ISO 16363.
16	Reporting on Audit	Finally a quick look at the audit report, and why it is important, as specified in ISO 17021 – see section 9.1.9 subsections 6,10,11,12

At the end of each day there will be on-line review questions covering the topics of the day, and an opportunity to discuss uncertainties.

Reading list: http://www.iso16363.org/courses/reading-list/