Ready for Review: OCFL 0.1 (Alpha)

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Andrew Woods

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Oct 18, 2018, 4:30:48 PM10/18/18
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Hello All,

Think of it as an opportunity to participate in shaping the definition of the persistence layout for digital information, focused on long-term preservation. Many of us have a deep concern and responsibility for the preservation of slices of our shared digital, cultural heritage.

The Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) specification describes an application-independent approach to the storage of digital information in a structured, transparent, and predictable manner. It is designed to promote standardized long-term object management practices within digital repositories.

Through a series of community conversations [1] starting in December of 2017, the OCFL 0.1 alpha specification release is now ready for your detailed review and feedback!
https://ocfl.io/0.1/spec/

Please review the (short) specification and provide your feedback either as discussion on the ocfl-community [2] mailing list or as GitHub issues [3].

We will be discussing/incorporating the feedback during next month's community call [4] (November 14th @11am ET).

In addition to feedback on the content of the specification, you are encouraged to join the November community call to share interest in implementing OCFL locally.

More detail and implementation notes can be found at https://ocfl.io .

Best regards,
Andrew Woods, on behalf of the OCFL editorial group

Schaefer, Sibyl

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Nov 7, 2018, 3:03:45 AM11/7/18
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Hi OCFL Editorial Group-


This is really excellent work! Thank you all for taking the initiative and pulling this spec together. It is sorely needed and I would be surprised if it didn't become just as critical a tool as BagIt is. 

I have a few comments:
  • Need: I was surprised that versioning wasn't mentioned in the Need statement, given that it is one of the key aspects of the spec and of its predecessor, Moab. It also is perhaps one of the most distinguishing differences from BagIt. I think this ends up underselling the spec a bit since having a standard way of structuring version directories is a key reason to adopt it. 
  • 5.1 Minimal OCFL Object: It seems the json inventory in the Minimal OCFL Object (section 5.1) may have a typo. If I'm understanding the structure correctly, the data under v2 should be folded under the data in v1, since there is no v2. 
  • 5.3 BagIt as an OCFL Object: When resolving bags from OCFL objects, it appears that the inventory.json files are not included in the resulting bag. The inventory has potentially useful version information in it and it seems like you'd want that as a tag file in some form.

Thanks again for your work on this.


Sibyl




From: ocfl-co...@googlegroups.com <ocfl-co...@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Andrew Woods <awo...@duraspace.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 18, 2018 1:30:36 PM
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Subject: [ocfl-community] Ready for Review: OCFL 0.1 (Alpha)
 
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Andrew Hankinson

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Nov 7, 2018, 5:22:40 AM11/7/18
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Thank you, Sibyl! I have taken your comments and added them as GitHub issues so we can track them. I'm happy to continue the conversation on the list, though.

1. Versioning in Need section: https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues/264, proposed addition in https://github.com/OCFL/spec/pull/269
2. Minimal OCFL Object typo: Already fixed in the current draft (See: https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues/250)
3. Bagit as OCFL: Discussion started here: https://github.com/OCFL/spec/issues/266

Cheers,
-Andrew

> On 6 Nov 2018, at 18:54, Schaefer, Sibyl <ssch...@ucsd.edu> wrote:
>
> Hi OCFL Editorial Group-
>
> This is really excellent work! Thank you all for taking the initiative and pulling this spec together. It is sorely needed and I would be surprised if it didn't become just as critical a tool as BagIt is.
>
> I have a few comments:
> • Need: I was surprised that versioning wasn't mentioned in the Need statement, given that it is one of the key aspects of the spec and of its predecessor, Moab. It also is perhaps one of the most distinguishing differences from BagIt. I think this ends up underselling the spec a bit since having a standard way of structuring version directories is a key reason to adopt it.
> • 5.1 Minimal OCFL Object: It seems the json inventory in the Minimal OCFL Object (section 5.1) may have a typo. If I'm understanding the structure correctly, the data under v2 should be folded under the data in v1, since there is no v2.
> • 5.3 BagIt as an OCFL Object: When resolving bags from OCFL objects, it appears that the inventory.json files are not included in the resulting bag. The inventory has potentially useful version information in it and it seems like you'd want that as a tag file in some form.
>
> Thanks again for your work on this.
>
>
> Sibyl
>
>
>
> To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/ocfl-community/BL0PR04MB4610E6108C0337D5D1382B6ADFCB0%40BL0PR04MB4610.namprd04.prod.outlook.com.

Simeon Warner

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Nov 7, 2018, 9:44:16 AM11/7/18
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Yes, thanks Sibyl! The omission of versioning in the needs section is
particularly glaring.

Cheers,
Simeon

Andrew Woods

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Feb 18, 2019, 4:27:55 PM2/18/19
to ocfl-co...@googlegroups.com, ocfl-editors
Hello All,

Although we are still in the process of working towards a Beta release of the OCFL specification, we wanted to make the iterative changes available in the form of a stable 0.2 Alpha release:

As always, if you have any comments or feedback, please post to the ocfl-community [1] mailing list or create GitHub issues [2].

More detail and implementation notes can be found at https://ocfl.io .

Best regards,
Andrew Woods, on behalf of the OCFL editorial group
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