Hi Andrea ~

At Portico, each archival unit may have multiple content units (and each content unit may or may not be ACTIVE).

An e-journal article would be an archival unit.  We may have several versions of the e-journal article (this is different from different versions of specific files within the article).  We would address this problem by making the original content unit inactive, so that it could not be accessed by end users.  We would create a new content unit that contained the original metadata, plus an explanation of the retraction.  Most of our publishers, send us retractions in this way -- it comes as an update with modified metadata to explain the retraction and usually the original PDF, just stamped with the word "retraction" on every page.

If we were under a court order to actually delete the content (as opposed to just inactivate it), we would still leave an archival unit behind with the original metadata and an explanation, if at all legally possible.

~ Amy

-----Original Message-----
From: The NDSA Standards working group list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Goethals, Andrea
Sent: Tuesday, March 18, 2014 11:21 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [NDSA-STANDARDS] documenting events not associated with content

Hi all,

Since we have 'Practices' in our name I thought I'd ask you all how you handle something that we need to address in our repository. For various reasons we have the need to support 'expungements' where we delete a particular set of content and its metadata. We document other significant events in PREMIS metadata embedded in object descriptors, but after this action there won't be any metadata for this content to record the event.

I'd like to keep some kind of record that the expungement happened though but am not aware of any 'standard' or common ways of recording high-level repository events outside of PREMIS events associated with content. Do any of you have a method for doing this or know of any used in other preservation repositories?

thanks,
Andrea

_________________________________________
Andrea Goethals
Digital Preservation and Repository Services Manager Harvard Library [log in to unmask]
(617) 495-3724


############################

To unsubscribe from the NDSA-STANDARDS list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://list.digitalpreservation.gov/scripts/wa-DIGITAL.exe?SUBED1=NDSA-STANDARDS&A=1

############################

To unsubscribe from the NDSA-STANDARDS list:
write to: mailto:[log in to unmask]
or click the following link:
http://list.digitalpreservation.gov/scripts/wa-DIGITAL.exe?SUBED1=NDSA-STANDARDS&A=1