Object Driven Approach Implementation Strategy 3

Procedures for managing objects separately

An agency should maintain a register or list of the URIs that have been made available on its public website and capture the data objects made available from these URIs. The relationship or association between the data objects and the URIs should be documented and maintained in a separate metadata store. The information about each URI and data object that should be captured includes:

· The absolute URI;

· The data object;

· The mime type of the data object;

· The start and end time of the association; and

· Possible relationships to other records that document the administrative processes by which the resource was authored and published.

This information enables the agency to accurately track web resources at any point in time. Although it is possible to read the metadata and then view each object individually, this method of archiving does not enable reconstruction of the website because the data objects have been separated from other components of the website.

Responsibilities

The main responsibilities to assign include:

· Determining if this is an appropriate option and whether it should be supplemented by other record management strategies;

· Creating and managing the metadata store, including determining what metadata should be collected to document the relationship between each URI and data object (a relational database could be used to manage the metadata);

· Maintaining the data object store over time; and,

· Identifying preservation implications to ensure that web resources are accessible over time for as long as required (eg. storage media and migration requirements).

Appendix C