PREMIS Events Through an Event-sourced Lens

Abstract

The PREMIS metadata standard is widely adopted in the digital preservation community. Repository software often include fully compliant implementations or assert some level of conformance. Within PREMIS we have four semantic units, but “Events”, the topic of this paper, are particularly interesting as they describe “actions performed within or outside the repository that affects its capability to preserve Objects over the long term.” Events can help us to observe interactions with digital objects and understand where and when something may have gone wrong with them. Events in PREMIS, however, are slightly different to events in software development paradigms, specifically event driven software development – though similar, the design of PREMIS event logs does not promote their “being complete” nor their consumption and reuse; and so, learning from logs in event driven software development, may help us to simplify the PREMIS data model; plug identified gaps in implementations; and improve the ability to migrate digital content in future repositories.