Significant characteristics

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Significant characteristics by media type

Definitions

"Significant characteristics: Those properties of a digital file which have to be known to enable the processing of the file within a specific setup." Significant Characteristics in Planets

NOTE: Within the Archivematica project, the term 'significant properties' has been superseded by 'significant characteristics'. Characteristics is a term that includes inherent file properties but also behaviours and presentation elements that are only apparent when the file is rendered. It is also more consistent with the terminology used in the eXtensible Characterization Language. However, in most instances the definitions for the two terms ('significant properties'/'significant characteristics') are synonymous:

"Significant properties: the characteristics of digital objects that must be preserved over time in order to ensure the continued accessibility, usability, and meaning of the objects, and their capacity to be accepted as evidence of what they purport to record." Significant Properties of Digital Objects, Andrew Wilson, National Archives of Australia, 2008, p. 15

"Significant Properties: Those technical characteristics agreed by the archive or by the collection manager to be most important for preserving the digital object over time." Cedars Guide to: Digital Collection Management, 2002, p. 24

"Significant properties are those aspects of a digital record that must be preserved over time in order for it to remain accessible and meaningful." Framework for the definition of significant properties, Gareth Night, 2008 (Inspect Project document), p. 3

"Transformational Information Property: An Information Property whose preservation is regarded as being necessary but not sufficient to verify that any Non-Reversible Transformation has adequately reserved information content. This could be important as contributing to evidence about Authenticity. Such Information Properties will need to be associated with specific Representation Information, including Semantic Information, to denote how they are encoded and what they mean. (The term ‘significant property’, which has various definitions in the literature, is sometimes used in a way that is consistent with its being a Transformational Information Property)." OAIS Draft Recommended Standard Pink Book, August 2009, p. 1-15