PREMIS
The de facto international standard for preservation metadata — the technical, provenance, fixity, and rights information needed to keep digital objects usable and trustworthy over time.
PREMIS (Preservation Metadata: Implementation Strategies) is the de facto international standard for preservation metadata, maintained by the Library of Congress. It defines a data model around core entities — objects, events, agents, and rights — that lets a repository consistently record what a digital object is and everything that has happened to it.
Preservation metadata goes beyond descriptive metadata: it captures technical characteristics (format and dependencies), provenance and events (ingest, migration, fixity checks — the chain of custody), fixity values, and rights. This is what makes long-term preservation provable — letting an archive demonstrate years later that a record is authentic and unaltered and explain what’s needed to use it. PREMIS is widely implemented in digital preservation systems and complements the OAIS reference model.