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Approaches to digital preservation can be divided into those which are concerned with keeping the data useable over time (data-centric) and those which are concerned with keeping the software and/or hardware operational (process-centric). The current consensus is for data-centric approaches. For a data-centric approach, understanding the significant properties of digital objects is crucial to successfully preserving those objects. These various properties can be categorised as content, context (metadata), appearance (for example, layout, colour), behaviour (for example, interaction, functionality), and structure (for example, pagination, sections).

There are other properties which are also important to successful preservation strategies; the most fundamental of these is the representation format in which the information object is encoded.

An organisation with curatorial responsibility cannot preserve the authenticity of digital objects over time, or across transformation processes, unless it can identify, measure, and declare the specific properties on which that authenticity depends. Nor can it maintain access to those objects, unless it can characterise their current technical representations with sufficient detail.

This JISC-funded study aims to:

* expand and articulate the concept of 'significant properties'
* determine sets of significant properties for a specified group of digital object types (raster images, emails, structured text, digital audio)
* evaluate methods for measuring these properties for a sample of representation formats
* investigate and test the mapping and comparison of these properties between different representation formats.

The Arts and Humanities Data Service and The National Archives will work as project partners and the study will run for 24 months from October 2006.

For further information on the project please contact:

Alastair Dunning; Tel: 020 7848 1972 Email: --firstname.lastname@ahds.ac.uk--.

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* Project Plan PDF document, 103KB

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