Relevant Metadata To Preserve "Alien" AIP

This article describes the development of Archives Ready To Archival Information Packages (AIP) Transmission a PREMIS Based Project (ARTAT). Following the project approach, the starting phase consisted of prototyping a layer conveying preservation metadata, which can be encoded from the existing archival systems, and exchanged with other repositories. This layer called Preservation Metadata Layer (PML) uses PREMIS semantics as the common language to overcome archival systems differences, and to transmit out of its original context, relevant preservation information about content objects comprising an AIP. Since a repository, following the OAIS reference model, usually provides resources with metadata container objects, the experiment performed an analysis on commonly used container formats, in order to enable the traceability of semantics from a local to extra-local level, and the technological understandability of alien AIPs. The analysis has allowed the definition of a PML data model, laying the production of prototypes. The adoption of common semantics, like PREMIS, supports the opportunity of preserving correctly alien AIPs, coming from different technological environments, and hopefully enables the overcoming of obstacles to the interoperability among diverse archival systems.