Page History

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Background

Audit Trail is for: 

• System actions occurring within DSpace (machine-recorded)

• Tracking what happened, when, and by whom, while an item resides inside the repository

Provenance is for: 

• Major history or chain-of-custody information that should travel outside of DSpace

• Information that may pre-date or post-date DSpace storage

• Metadata that should “outlive the system” if the item is exported to another repository

Concerns

Risk of Duplication & Confusion:

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Working Definition Moving Forward:

• Keep major curated, historically important object changes in provenance.

• Keep day-to-day system events in the audit trail.

Examples of what may belong where:

Flexibility for Sites

Both systems may remain configurable so administrators can choose:

• provenance only

• audit trail only

• or both, depending on institutional requirements

Next Actions

• Tim Donohue will create a ticket outlining the working rules for what belongs in each system. 

• Community may consult with external curation experts (e.g., DCAT) for professional guidance on what archival standards recommend.

Pull Requests and Implementation Notes

• Some functionality (metadata changes, bitstream changes) is already tracked in the audit trail, while others (e.g., item collection transfer, certain policy changes) would need additions.

• PR authors may be asked to reframe their contributions to use the audit trail framework instead of provenance, where appropriate. 

• Where overlapping work already exists, PRs should be cross-linked to avoid isolated development.

GitHub Cleanup – Automatically Marking Stale Issues

• Tim Donohue proposed enabling GitHub automation to:

  • Flag inactive PRs after long periods

  • Automatically close them after 2 weeks if no action is taken

• High-priority items would never be automatically closed

• Some PRs and tickets have been open for nearly 10 years, and this system would help with backlog grooming

• Briefly looked over and discussed https://github.com/DSpace/DSpace/pull/11550

Key Decisions & Agreements

Consensus Emerging

• Audit trail and provenance should not completely duplicate each other.

• Audit trail should track technical changes within DSpace.

• Provenance should focus on essential, long-term descriptive history.

Expected Actions

• Create explicit written guidance on what belongs where.

• Align overlapping PRs and possibly rework some to use the audit trail.

• Configure systems so sites can choose provenance, audit trail, or both.

• Possibly consult with digital curation experts before finalizing policy.

• Introduce GitHub automation for aging PRs (experimental).