OAIS

OAIS is an ISO reference model for Open Archival Information System (OAIS)

It highlights standardization as the key method to preserving data long term, but acknowledges that emulation and migration are also key components. OAIS provides a framework for capturing information packages in a way that they may be stored (or migrated, or emulated) according to two layers of meta-data. In order to keep meta-data complexity low, any archive following OAIS is asked to implement a dependency classification system for structural, semantic, and representative meta-data.

For example, if the meta-data for an information package indicated it was in Chinese, the dependency classification would point to another information package identifying what Chinese is! You can see how this would be helpful in the case of scientific or technical aspects - Chinese is common enough, but not everyone knows what an eigenvalue is.

The text that established the entire framework can be found at [Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS)]

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