Archival package

Self-describing is the operative word. A package is archival when a stranger — an archivist at ingest, a researcher decades on — can establish what it contains, how it is organized, where each file came from, and what may be done with it, without calling anyone. A drive of competently made but unlabeled files is not a package; it is a puzzle with a mortality date.

In practice a package combines the objects themselves — preservation masters and selected derivatives, drawings, data exports, documents — with several layers of description: descriptive metadata (what this is), technical metadata (formats, durations, dependencies), provenance (who made it, when, from what), fixity (checksums that prove nothing has silently changed), and the rights records governing use. A manifest binds the whole together.

The structure follows the OAIS reference model (ISO 14721), which distinguishes what a producer submits, what an archive stores, and what a future reader receives. For producing organizations the practical consequence is simple: institutions and funders increasingly expect deposit-ready packages, and readiness is decided during production — names, versions, and rights gathered as work proceeds — not assembled from memory after closing night.