PREMIS 3 Ontology
Ontology for PREMIS 3, the international standard for metadata to support the preservation of digital objects and ensure their long-term usability.
Action
Operation type to perform on an Object. Effectively performing this action may produce an Event.
Agent
Actor (human, machine, or software) associated with one or more Event and/or Rights statement associated with a digital object.
Bitstream
Contiguous or non-contiguous data within a file that has meaningful properties for preservation purposes.
Copyright
Copyright law.
Dependency
Relationship where one Object requires another Object to support its function, delivery, or the coherence of its content.
Environment characteristic
An assessment of the extent to which the described environment supports its purpose.
Event
Action performed within or outside the repository that affects its capability to preserve Objects over the long term.
File
Named and ordered sequence of bytes that is known to an operating system.
Fixity
Information used to verify whether an object has been altered in an undocumented or unauthorized way.
Hardware agent
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the PREMIS entity within the preservation repository.
Inhibitor
Feature of a Digital Object intended to inhibit access, copying, dissemination, or migration. Common Inhibitors are encryption and password protection.
Institutional policy
A policy decision made by an organization.
Intellectual entity
A set of content that is considered a single intellectual unit for purposes of management and description: for example, a particular book, map, photograph, database, or piece of hardware or software. An Intellectual Entity can include other Intellectual Entities; for example, a web site can include a web page; a web page can include an image. An Intellectual Entity may have one or more digital representations. An Intellectual Entity may also describe an environment, defined as technology supporting a digital object in some way (e.g. by rendering or executing it). Environments can consist of software, hardware, or a combination of both.
License
A license agreement or other legal document that grants rights.
Object
Discrete unit of information subject to digital preservation. Subclasses of Object are Intellectual Entity, Representation, File and Bitstream.
Organization
Outcome status
Overall result of the Event in terms of success, partial success, or failure.
Person
Preservation policy
Information indicating the decision or policy on the set of preservation functions to be applied to an object and the context in which the decision or policy was made. Note that in addition to subclasses declared at presLevType, SignificantProperties is also a subclass of PreservationPolicy. Implementers may also wish to create locally-defined subclasses.
Representation
Digital or physical Object instantiating or embodying an Intellectual Entity. A digital representation is the set of stored digital files and structural metadata needed to provide a complete and reasonable rendition of the Intellectual Entity. A physical representation is an item such as a manuscript, video cassette, or printed document.
Rights basis
Designation of the basis for the right or permission governing the Object.
Rights status
Information about how a RightsBasis applies to a particular object.
Rule
Statement about the Actions an Agent is permitted to undertake or prohibited from undertaking with respect to an Object.
Signature
Mathematical technique used to validate the authenticity and integrity of a message, software or digital document.
Signature encoding
Encoding used for the signature value and key information.
Significant properties
Characteristics of a particular object subjectively determined to be important to maintain through preservation actions.
Software agent
Statute
A law that grants or revokes rights, such as laws governing privacy or orphan works.
Storage location
Information needed to retrieve a physical item from its physical storage location or a file from the storage system, or to access a bitstream within a file.
Storage medium
The physical medium on which the Object is stored (e.g., magnetic tape, hard disk, CD-ROM, DVD).
act
allows
governs
has basis
Links from a RightsStatus to the RightsBasis instance that supports or documents it.
has characteristic
has dependency
has documentation
has encoding
has fixity
has identifier
has jurisdiction
has medium
has outcome
has policy
has purpose
has relationship
has rights status
has signature
inhibited by
inhibits
prohibits
stored at
end date
has citation
has composition level
has determination date
has key
has note
has original name
has outcome note
has rationale
has restriction
has size
has terms
has validation rules
has version
start date