PiM (PREMIS in METS) Toolbox
Description
The PREMIS in METS Toolbox was developed to support the implementation of PREMIS in the METS container format. It consists of three web-based tools: a validator, which will check a PREMIS or PREMIS in METS document for standard conformance; a converter, which given a PREMIS document will generate a METS document containing the PREMIS elements, and vice-versa; and a describer, which will generate a description of an input file using PREMIS elements.
Provider
The Florida Center for Library Automation, sponsored by the Library of Congress
Licensing and cost
The Toolbox is free and open source. No specific license information is available.
Development activity
The toolbox was created in 2009, and as of January 2012 is at Version 1.0.1. No information is available about future development.
Platform and interoperability
The Toolbox uses a web interface, and is therefore platform agnostic. The Validation tool is based on JHOVE and DROID; the Conversion tool is implemented in XSLT; and the DAITSS description service is the underlying system behind the describing function.
Functional notes
All three tools support various modes of input: a source document or file can be addressed by URL or uploaded. PREMIS and METS documents can also be typed or copied directly into Validate and Convert. The interface does not support batch processing; however, the site advertises that the tools output is clean enough to make a PERL implementation possible. There is anecdotal evidence that the site experiences somewhat frequent outages. The tools do not appear to be able to recover from inappropriate inputs.
Documentation and user support
The PREMIS-in-METS Toolbox website does not provide formal documentation, although there are brief explanations of the tools’ functions. Contact information is listed for the developer.
Usability
The tools themselves are extremely straightforward.
Expertise required
Familiarity with preservation metadata standards is essential.
Standards compliance
The Toolbox’s sole purpose is to aid curators in working with the PREMIS and METS preservation metadata standards.
Influence and take-up
No information available.
User Experiences
Development Activity