Documenting technical environments for posterity: the TOTEM registry and metadata schema

As digital scenarios become ever more convoluted under both migration and emulation, access is needed to metadata describing the technical environments used to create, render or facilitate some other action for a host of digital objects. After copious research of the state of the art within the KEEP project, Enhanced Entity Relationship models formed the basis of the analysis for eventual implementation in database or RDF format. A suite of data models was then created, and on the practical side these were implemented as a database: the Trustworthy Online Technical Environment Metadata (TOTEM) technical registry. The data models were also mapped onto the Planets OWL ontology for use with Linked data/RDF. On the metadata standards side, a metadata schema was devised which also sets out details of a separate environment entity. Finally, recommendations were put forward to the PREMIS Editorial Committee showing how a separate environment entity would function under both emulation and migration, and how links with technical registries like TOTEM and PRONOM would be made.