US GPO AIP Independence Test CS 496A – Senior Design Team members: Antonio Castillo, Johnny Ng, Aram Weintraub, Tin-Shuk Wong Faculty advisor: Dr. Russ Abbott GPO contact: Kate Zwaard

Overview  Background US GPO FDsys Project objectives A note on deliverables  Hardware interface  File formats (AIP) METS, MODS, and PREMIS  XML parsing  Solution Strategy  Repositories  Testing  Conclusion

US GPO  The United States Government Printing Office (GPO) is in charge of producing and archiving documents for every branch of the federal government.  “The U.S Government Printing Office (GPO) provides publishing & dissemination services for the official & authentic government publications to Congress, Federal agencies, Federal depository libraries, & the American public.” (

FDsys  GPO is developing the Federal Digital System, a new content management system (CMS) designed to manage all of its digital data.  “The U.S. Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Future Digital System (FDsys) will ingest, authenticate, preserve and provide access to digital content from all three branches of the U.S. Government. FDsys, which is in public beta testing, is intended to preserve digital content free from dependence on specific hardware or software.” (project description)

Project Objectives  “The objective of this project is to test whether the AIPs in FDsys are truly independent of the surrounding content management system. The CSULA team aims to either confirm or reject the claim that, with help from resources commonly available to the digital curation community, an interested party could fully reconstruct the archive using only the content data.”

Project Objectives  “GPO will supply a set of content data from its archival storage. This data will include content files, metadata files (in XML according to the standards referenced above), and METS binding files (in XML) that describe how all of the objects are related. The CSULA team will inspect the information and, using the METS standard, determine whether the information in XML is sufficient for a user to make sense of the data and ingest it to another repository. Because the data is stored in arbitrary folders, scripts would have to be written to assemble the content packages from the locations specified in the METS file.”

Project Objectives  This project simulates FDsys breaking down due to some catastrophic attack or error.  We are attempting to categorize and reconstruct an amount of sample data from FDsys outside the context of the actual CMS. The only references we have available, other than the actual files in the archive, are publicly defined standards.  It is our hope that this project will help GPO improve the robustness of their file system.

A Note on Deliverables  This is not a typical computer science design project because our aim is not to design software. Instead, we will be conducting scripted tests on real data and forming conclusions based on the results.  Deliverables will most likely include: a written report of our findings and recommendations a reorganized version of the input data

Hardware Interface  Nothing complicated here. A desktop PC computer or notebook with USB/FireWire connection. External USB/FireWire hard drive containing AIPs exported from FDsys.

AIP  Archival Information Package Defines how digital objects and its associated metadata are packaged using XML based files.  METS (binding file)  MODS  PREMIS

METS  In order to reconstruct the archive, we will need to understand the METS files. METS is schema that provides a flexible mechanism for encoding descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata for a digital library object. The schema is written in xml format. A METS document consists of seven major sections but we will only need to understand the first five sections to recreate the archive. The last two sections are not used by the U.S. Government Printing Office’s (GPO) Future Digital System (FDsys).

METS Schema 1) METS HeaderMETS Header  The METS Header contains metadata describing the METS document itself, including such information as creator, editor, etc. 2) Descriptive MetadataDescriptive Metadata  The descriptive metadata section may point to descriptive metadata external to the METS document or contain internally embedded descriptive metadata, or both. This section is link to the MODS xml file.

METS Schema 3) Administrative MetadataAdministrative Metadata  The administrative metadata section provides information regarding how the files were created and stored, intellectual property rights, metadata regarding the original source object from which the digital library object derives, and information regarding the provenance of the files comprising the digital library object. This section is link to the PEMIS xml file.

METS Schema 4) File SectionFile Section  The file section lists all files containing content which comprise the electronic versions of the digital object. elements may be grouped within elements, to provide for subdividing the files by object version. 5) Structural MapStructural Map  The structural map is the heart of a METS document. It outlines a hierarchical structure for the digital library object, and links the elements of that structure to content files and metadata that pertain to each element.

MODS  MODS file will be used to encode descriptive metadata.  A MODS file can be used as an extension schema to METS.  MODS consist of top-elements elements that are mandatory, recommended or optional.

MODS

PREMIS  PREMIS file will be used to encode preservation metadata.  Preservation metadata consists of the following: Provenance Authenticity Preservation activity Technical environment Rights management

PREMIS  PREMIS data model includes of the following: Intellectual Entity Object Entity Event Entity Agent Entity Rights Entity*  Object, Event, and Agent Entities are described using mandatory and optional elements.

PREMIS

XML Parsing  As described above, all metadata is in the form of XML files. Hence, using code to read XML files is integral to the project.  We plan to use the Java programming language for our scripting needs. Java API for XML Processing (JAXP): the standard Java library for handling XML It provides several different possible representations for XML

Solution Strategy  Data submitted to us are AIPs, not SIPs. Repository software cannot ingest AIPs, only SIPs. We must write scripts that parse the AIPs in such a way to construct SIPs from the the arbitrary file structure, then ingest those SIPs with a repository software to create to new AIPs.

Repositories  We have also looked into third-party repository software to help parse and organize data. DSpace, Fedora Commons, EPrints  Unfortunately, so far none of them seem ideal for the task.

Testing  After parsing and organizing the data, it will be important to perform checks to ensure that the reconstruction is accurate. We may send a preliminary report to GPO for verification.  The exact testing procedure is still undefined, as we haven’t had a chance to investigate the data in depth yet. Our goals should be clearer once we understand exactly what type of data we are dealing with.

Conclusion  Our thanks to Kate, Dr. Abbott, and Dr. Pamula for their support.