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164 Journal of Library Science in China, Vol.9, 2017

management system.
The construction of unified metadata model starts from the actual demands of electronic records
preservation by the way of modular design. By comparison the authors find that the records entity,
people (agents)entity, business entity and mandates entity of ISO 23081 metadata model can be
successively mapped to the object entity, agent entity, event entity and rights statement entity of
PREMIS metadata model. Furthermore, the records entity and the object entity can complement
each other, so do the business entity and the event entity of these two models. The metadata
model of PROMOM enriches the description of the technical environment of electronic records,
which has great significance to digital information representation. Compared with PREMIS and
PRONOM, ISO 23081 can better support the professional principles including the sustainable
management of electronic records and their metadata throughout the records life circle, multi-
level description of records and the integration of records and business. Therefore, the authors
lay the basis of architecture and terminology of the unified metadata model more on ISO 23081
while taking the advantages of the other two. The model is comprised of five entities including
records entity, technological environment entity, agent entity, business entity and mandate entity.
The records entity has multiple levels including archives collection, fond, series, file and item in
managerial dimension, whereas in technical dimension the levels cover representation, computer
file and bit stream. The technological environment entity refers to the systems and technologies
used in creating, managing, preserving and rendering electronic records. The agent entity refers
to the individuals, organizations or automated equipment taking part in creating, managing and
utilizing electronic records. The business entity refers to the business of creating, managing and
preserving electronic records. The mandates entity refers to the rules that normalize business
execution and records access. The relationships between entities are set as attributes of the entities
rather than an independent entity.
The unified metadata model for electronic records preservation constructed in this paper,
in comparison to ISO 23081, enriches the content of records entity by integrating records
preservation business with records creation business and recordkeeping business, and promotes
the ability to meet long-term preservation requirements by adding a new technological
environment entity. Compared with PREMIS, it turns the object entity into records entity and
event entity into business entity, which better reflects the characteristic of records management.
Moreover, it makes the technological environment an independent entity from object entity. As
for PRONOM, the technical components entity can be mapped to the technological environment
entity of the unified metadata model, whereas the identifiers entity, intellectual property rights
entity, documentation entity and actors entity can be mapped to the attributes of the technological
environment entity of the unified metadata model. Some of the findings in this paper need further
practical verification.