Technology & Tools Flashcards

Which descriptive metadata standard, developed by Dublin Core Metadata Initiative, uses 15 core elements and is often applied to digital collections for interoperability?

Answer: Dublin Core

Dublin Core is a simple, widely adopted metadata standard with 15 elements (e.g., Title, Creator, Date) designed to facilitate cross-system resource discovery.

In a digital preservation context, what is a 'dark archive'?

Answer: An archive with no public access that stores content solely for preservation

A dark archive preserves digital content with no public access, providing a secure safety net that can be activated if primary access copies are lost.

METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard) is used primarily to:

Answer: Encode descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata for digital objects in a single XML document

METS is an XML schema that acts as a wrapper, bundling descriptive, administrative, and structural metadata together with content files for digital object exchange.

What is the primary purpose of the WARC (Web ARChive) file format in web archiving?

Answer: Storing web crawl data including HTTP headers, request/response content, and associated metadata in a single file

WARC is the ISO-standardized container format for web archive data, packaging captured web content along with contextual metadata in a single file.

Which of the following best describes the concept of 'significant properties' in digital preservation?

Answer: The characteristics of a digital object that must be maintained for it to remain authentic and meaningful

Significant properties are the essential characteristics—such as structure, content, rendering behavior, or interactivity—that must be preserved for a digital object to retain its integrity and usefulness.

An archivist is processing a large accession of born-digital records from a donor's old hard drive. Which tool would best help identify and document the file types present in the accession?

Answer: DROID (Digital Record Object Identification)

DROID is a tool developed by The National Archives (UK) that automatically identifies file formats using signature files, producing a report of all file types in a collection.

Which of the following storage arrangements best reflects the 3-2-1 backup rule for digital preservation?

Answer: Three total copies, on two different media types, with one copy stored offsite

The 3-2-1 rule specifies three copies of data, stored on two different media types, with at least one copy kept offsite to guard against local disasters.