The OAIS definition of DIP is:

Dissemination Information Package (DIP): An Information Package, derived from one or more AIPs, and sent by Archives to the Consumer in response to a request to the OAIS.

Other relevant definitions are:

Adhoc Order: A request that is generated by a Consumer for information the OAIS has indicated is currently available.

Consumer: The role played by those persons, or client systems, who interact with OAIS services to find preserved information of interest and to access that information in detail. This can include other OAISes, as well as internal OAIS persons or systems.

Order Agreement: An agreement between the Archive and the Consumer in which the physical details of the delivery, such as media type and format of Data, are specified.

The OAIS discussion of DIP is:

In response to a request, the OAIS provides all or a part of an AIP to a Consumer in the form of a Dissemination Information Package (DIP). The DIP may also include collections of AIPs, and it may or may not have complete PDI. The Packaging Information will necessarily be present in some form so that the Consumer can clearly distinguish the information that was requested. Depending on the dissemination media and Consumer requirements, the Packaging Information may take various forms.

The APTrust Consumer is the contributing institution (also referred to here as the depositor).

A Consumer may request (Adhoc Order) a Dissemination Information Package (DIP) at any time for one or all of the Archival Information Packages (AIP) in APTrust that were created from their own Submission Information Package (SIP). This documentation also defines the restoration request (Order Agreement). There is no direct financial cost when requesting a DIP to a Consumer. Consumers may not request DIPs for AIPs of other Consumers. The APTrust DIP is a bag in the APTrust BagIt format, like the original SIP. However, the restored bag will be created according to the latest BagIt specification and the latest APTrust BagIt profile at the time of restoration. See Notes on Restoration for more information. If these specifications and profiles have changed since the submission of the SIP, the APTrust DIP will not match the SIP exactly, but the data/content (Intellectual Objects) as defined in the BagIt specification, will remain identical.

The purpose of creating an APTrust DIP is to allow the original contributing institution to retrieve content from an AIP that the institution contributed. The process of creating an APTrust DIP does not change the AIP – the AIP remains intact in the APTrust archive.

The mechanism for creating a DIP is described on the Restoration page and in the diagram below.