PAWN: A Novel Ingestion Workflow Technology for Digital Preservation

Mike Smorul
University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Study

We describe the workflow aspects of the PAWN (Producer – Archive Workflow Network) environment developed to enable secure and distributed ingestion of digital objects into a persistent archive. PAWN was designed to capture the core elements required for long term preservation of digital objects as identified by previous research in the digital library and archiving communities. In fact, PAWN is closely related to the Ingest Process as defined by the Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model.

The PAWN ingestion flow can be viewed as consisting of two major phases. The first phase involves the staging and assembly of data and related information to create the necessary pieces of a submission information packet, as agreed upon by the producer and the archive. The second phase consists of verification of metadata, bitstreams and preservation information at the archive, followed by storage into a persistent archive.

As PAWN is web service based, we make extensive use of XML to describe core preservation requirements and metadata elements of digital objects. The METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standards) schema is used to encapsulate content, structure, context, and preservation metadata while other XML schema are used to describe submission and descriptive requirements. PAWN is currently being used to ingest significant collections into a pilot persistent archive developed through a collaboration between the San Diego Supercomputer Center, the University of Maryland, and the National Archives and Records Administration.