Following on from the digital repository workshops at OGF, Mark and Tobias have been involved in setting up a research group on Digital Repositories at OGF.
The goal of the Digital Repositories Research Group (DR-RG) is to analyze how digital repositories can be built on top of federated storage infrastructure, focusing on the exploitation of existing data-related standards and the identification of need for new or revised data-related standards.
The group is building on the results of three workshops organized by OGF-Europe, DReSNET and OMII-UK (at OGF23, the 4th International Digital Curation Conference, and OGF25) where interactions between the Digital Repositories and the OGF communities started. At these workshops the need for a focused analysis was established and there was general agreement to form an OGF group.
The RG may study any aspects of building digital repositories on top of federated storage infrastructures but the initial focus will be on two specific areas:
Metadata handling is key to digital repositories and metadata interchange is the key to federated repositories. The RG will collect and analyze different use-cases in the various communities to identify common architectures and build a basis for potential future standardization efforts in metadata handling. Note that this differs from metadata definitions, which are domain-specific and beyond the scope of this group.
The architectures of typical digital repositories will be analyzed to identify communalities. Emphasis will be given to federated repositories. This will serve as basis for identifying the potential for exploitation of existing standards as well as the need for new or revised standards.
Where appropriate, the RG will use the ISO Open Archival Information System (OAIS) reference model for specifying archive systems as a basis for architecture analysis.
The group charter can be found here: http://www.ogf.org/gf/group_info/charter.php?review&group=dr-rg
Sign up for its email list here: http://www.ogf.org/mailman/listinfo/dr-rg
