Kyle,

I think I can answer your question, but I would need to know a little bit
more about what you're doing before attempting to help: how are you
packaging up your objects, how are you storing the content, and how are you
generating checksums.  Even more specific than that:

   - How is your content packaged?
   - Are you talking about the SIPs or the AIPs or both?
   - Is your content in an instance of Fedora, a unix file structure, or
   something else?
   - Are you generating checksums on the whole package, parts of it, both?

Without more specific information though, the solution I would lean toward
is decouple the content files from the metadata and checksum each
separately (because right now it doesn't sound like your system is doing
that).

Rosy


On Fri, Jan 23, 2015 at 2:35 PM, Kyle Banerjee <[log in to unmask]>
wrote:

> Howdy all,
>
> I've been toying with the idea of embedding DOI's in all our digital assets
> and possibly inserting/updating other metadata as well. However, doing this
> would alter checksums created using normal methods.
>
> Is there a practical/easy way to checksum only the objects themselves
> without the metadata? If the metadata in a tiff or other kind of file is
> modified, it does nothing to the actual object. Since providing more
> complete metadata within objects makes them more usable/identifiable and
> might simplify migrations down the road, it seems like this wouldn't be a
> bad way to go.
>
> Thanks,
>
> kyle
>