Page History

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• AIP is a package describing one archival object.
  • Archival object may be Item, Collection, or Community. Bitstreams are included in an Item's AIP.
  • Each AIP is logically self-contained, can be restored without rest of the archive. (So you could restore a single Item, Collection or Community)
  • AIP profile favors completeness and accuracy rather than presenting the semantics of an object in a standard format. It conforms to the quirks of DSpace's internal object model rather than attempting to produce a universally understandable representation of the object.
  • An AIP can serve as a DIP (Dissemination Information Package) or SIP (Submission Information Package), especially when transferring custody of objects to another DSpace implementation.
• In contrast to SIP or DIP, the AIP should include all available DSpace structural and administrative metadata, and basic provenance information.
• Restoration of an archive from AIPs is not perfectly complete at this time; it is intended to recover from catastrophic loss of content and metadata, not restore the exact same archive as before. Currently, some information (e.g. access controls, people, groups) would be lost, as they are not stored in the AIPs.

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AIP Structure / Format

Generally speaking, an AIP is an Zip file containing a METS manifest and all related content bitstreams.

Some examples include:

• Site AIP (Sample: aip0-site.zip)
  • METS contains basic metadata about DSpace Site and persistent IDs referencing all Top Level Communities
• Community AIP (Sample: COMMUNITY-123456789-1.zip)
  • METS contains all metadata for Community and persistent IDs referencing all members (SubCommunities or Collections). Package may also include a Logo file, if one exists.
• Collection AIP (Sample: COLLECTION@123456789-2.zip)
  • METS contains all metadata for Collection and persistent IDs referencing all members (Items). Package may also include a Logo file, if one exists.
• Item AIP (Sample: ITEM@123456789-8.zip)
  • METS contains all metadata for Item and references to all Bundles and Bitstreams. Package also includes all Bitstream files.

Notes:

• Bitstreams and Bundles are second-class archival objects; they are recorded in the context of an Item.
• BitstreamFormats are not even second-class; they are described implicitly within Item technical metadata, and reconstructed from that during restoration

What is NOT in AIPs

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DSpace Site configurations (\[dspace\]/config/ directory) or customizations are not described in AIPs

More specific details of AIP format / structure, along with examples, can be found on this page:

DSpaceAIPFormat

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Where to get the Code

There is an SVN sandbox area for this work (so that others can help out, if it interests them). If anyone has comments, suggestions or feedback on this idea, or would like to be involved in this project, definitely let me know (or add comments to this wiki page).

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