Consider distinguishing between an ‘active AIP’ and an ‘inactive AIP’

The “Develop Preservation Strategies and Standards function” under section 4.1.1.6 (Preservation Planning) includes identifying changes that would require migration of Archive holdings or new submissions, and cites updating AIPs with additional or revised Representation Information as an example. This assumes that once an AIP is created, its content and associated metadata remain relatively static and do not need to be updated or changed with any frequency. However, this is not the case for many archives--particularly for moving image archives situated within a media production context.

In these production-oriented archives with strict broadcast and/or distribution timelines, there is an emphasis on reducing the time gap between the creation of the SIP and DIP as much as possible. As a result of meeting these deadlines, some production-oriented media archives must convert their SIPs to AIPs in order to generate DIPs before the SIP is even complete.

For example, broadcasters often receive incoming media that is urgently needed on the air (e.g. footage pertaining to a breaking news story). When the footage arrives, metadata will be added in order to convert it immediately to an AIP so that an an access copy (a DIP) can be generated for broadcast. After the footage goes out on the air the archive will receive closed caption files and perhaps other related metadata that will need to be incorporated into any future DIPs that are produced. The current OAIS standard does not appropriately address a situation like this; rather, the standard is designed for a ‘write once, revise rarely (if ever)’ scenario. Yet given the fact that many production-oriented archives function in a similar manner to the example cited above, it would be helpful if the revised OAIS standard could take this into consideration and distinguish between an active and inactive AIP.