Digital Library and Content Standards

HathiTrust is committed to transparency in all of its operations, including its work to comply with digital preservation standards and review processes. Representatives of the Digital Curation Centre (DCC) and DigitalPreservationEurope (DPE) reviewed the repository using the DRAMBORA framework in the fall of 2008. The report was published as:

Seamus Ross, Andrew McHugh, Perla Innocenti, Raivo Ruusalepp: Investigation of the potential application of the DRAMBORA toolkit in the context of digital libraries to support the assessment of the repository aspects of digital libraries, Glasgow: DELOS NoE, August 2008, ISBN: 2-912335-41-8.

HathiTrust conformance with other accepted standards for digital preservation are outlined below:

Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist (March 2007)

Description: The TRAC document was originally developed by the RLG-NARA Digital Repository Certification Task Force. The Center for Research Libraries received funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation to investigate the means for audit and certification of digital archives and to complete a series of test audits to inform the investigation. TRAC is the starting point for an ISO standards development project on audit and certification of digital archives. 

HathiTrust conformance: HathiTrust has completed a response to the required elements in the “Trustworthy Repositories Audit & Certification (TRAC): Criteria and Checklist.” The repository was certified by the Center for Research Libraries for compliance with TRAC in March 2011. The audit report is available on the CRL website.

HathiTrust Response to TRAC: Criteria & Checklist

HathiTrust Response to TRAC: Criteria & Checklist – Word Doc

Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model (2002) 

Description: The OAIS reference model was developed by a working group convened by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the United States. The final version was released in 2002, OAIS was accepted as an ISO standard in 2003, and it is undergoing a revision in 2007. OAIS conceptualizes and defines the functions, roles, and content of a digital archive. 

HathiTrust conformance: HathiTrust is committed to developing our digital preservation systems and practices in conformance to the OAIS Reference model standard. Some examples include our responses to criteria B1.2 and B1.7 of the TRAC document, which focus on the Submission Information Package (SIP), and B 4.2 of the TRAC document, which focuses on the Archival Information Package (AIP).

Preservation Metadata Implementation Strategies (PREMIS) (2005) 

Description: The PREMIS data dictionary and associated documents were developed by a working group convened by OCLC and RLG. The maintenance activity for the data dictionary and follow-on developments is hosted by the Library of Congress.

HathiTrust conformance: HathiTrust documents dates of preservation actions and the mandatory semantic units in the METS files for each volume in conformance with the PREMIS Data Dictionary version 1.0. Information about, and examples of HathiTrust’s use of PREMIS and METS is available in the Digital Object Specifications portion of the site.