CASPAR
The Preservation DataStores is being designed as an infrastructure component of a large-scale EU integrated project called CASPAR (Cultural, Artistic and Scientific knowledge for Preservation, Access and Retrieval), which focuses on the long-term preservation of scientific, artistic, and cultural data. CASPAR is based on the OAIS standard, which targets the preservation of knowledge rather than the preservation of bits.
CASPAR has a stack of software components, including components to:
- Generate and access preservation objects
- Capture, manage and re-construct designated community knowledge
- Extract, index and maintain the metadata
- Provide directory services
- Store the data in the archival storage, which is the ultimate place of the data.
The following figure illustrates a schematic view of the CASPAR system with the Preservation DataStores at the bottom serving as the storage layer.
CASPAR System
The CASPAR project consortium includes an interesting mix of 17 universities, commercial partners, and international agencies (including the European Space Agency and UNESCO). IBM is the largest IT partner in the project. The project coordinator is the government-sponsored STFC lab in the UK.