Breaking Bag(It)

Introduction

This activity revolves around the Open Archival Information System (OAIS), information packages, and the Library of Congress BagIt Specification.

In this activity:

  • You will first act as the “producer” (as defined by the OAIS model) and take steps to prepare a Submission Information Package (SIP).
  • For this exercise, your SIP will be implemented using the BagIt specification. Think of your BagIt bag as a concrete example of a SIP (note, SIP and bag, for this activity, will be used interchangeably)
  • Once you’ve prepped your SIP (bag), you will hand it over to me for processing. I will create:
    1. A valid BagIt-conforming SIP (good bag).
    2. A deliberately altered, broken SIP (bad bag).

Your goal will be to troubleshoot and document what went wrong with the bad bag.

Steps

1. Upload bag contents

  • Open the Breaking Bag Google Drive folder and within it, create a new folder titled your first name, underscore, and last name (e.g., mary_kidd).
  • Within your personal folder, create a subfolder within it and title it original_files.
  • Upload at least five files of your choice to your original_files folder. These can be any files you want (please avoid large files like audio/video files, if possible!)

2. Bag Creation

  • Once you have created your folders and uploaded files into it, let me know (if we are in class, let me know verbally; otherwise, if this happens outside of class, send me an email).
  • I will use the bagit-python script on my computer to transform your folder into a BagIt-compliant Submission Information Package (SIP).
  • I will upload two versions of your newly-minted SIPs/bags to your Google Drive folder, to allow you to compare a valid SIP/bag with an intentionally corrupted one:
    1. Your good SIP/bag – named yourfirstname_yourlastname_good_bag
    2. Your broken SIP/bag – named yourfirstname_yourlastname_bad_bag

3. Review Each Bag

  • I will notify you (either verbally in class, or by email) that your SIPs/bags are ready. Once this happens, open both the good and bad SIPs/bags. Your task is to examine the contents of each and try to identify how they are broken.
  • Some changes may be obvious, while others may be subtle. You may need to look at certain files within the SIP/bag, like the manifest, to determine what went wrong.

4. Submit your activity summary in Brightspace

In the Assignments section of Brightspace, please prepare and attach a document with your answers to the following questions:

  • What do you think I altered?
  • What did you examine to figure this out? What clues did you find that told you something went wrong?
  • Optional: If you couldn’t find exactly what went wrong, were there any differences, in general, between the two SIP/bags, that you noticed? What were they?
  • From a broader perspective, what rules or policies might a repository put in place to ensure data submitted to it is in tact?

5. Discuss your findings in class

Come prepared for Week 3’s class to spend 2-3 minutes discussing your experience investigating what went wrong. I will also reveal to you what I altered, so you can compare your findings with my doings!