Description (en)
Properties of digital objects play a central role in digital
preservation. All key preservation services are linked via
a common understanding of the properties which describe
the digital objects in a repository's care. Unfortunately,
different services deal with properties on
sometimes different levels of description. While, for example,
a preservation characterization service may extract
the fontSize of a string, the preservation planning
service may require the preservation of the text’s formatting.
Additionally, a value for the same property may be
obtained in various ways, sometimes resulting in different
observed values. Furthermore, properties are not always
equally applicable across different file formats.
This report investigates where in these three situations
relationships between properties need to be defined
to overcome possible misalignments.
The analysis was based on observations gained during
a case study of the nature of the properties that are captured
in different institutions’ preservation requirements
and those of use in Planets preservation services.