  Various efforts aimed at representing digital assets have emerged from
several communities over the last years, including the Metadata Encoding and
Transmission Standard (METS), the IMS Content Packaging (IMS-CP) XML Binding
and the XML Formatted Data Units (XFDU). The MPEG-21 Digital Item Declaration
(MPEG-21 DID) is another approach that can be used for the representation of
digital assets in XML. This paper will explore the potential of the MPEG-21 DID
in a Digital Preservation context, by looking at the core building blocks of
the OAIS Information Model and the way in which they map to the MPEG-21 DID
abstract model and the MPEG-21 DIDL XML syntax.
