InSPECT Significant Properties Report (WP2.2)

Significant Properties (SPs) have been in the digital preservation literature for a decade or more. There has been widespread agreement on the important role they play, but no consensus on exactly what is significant.

Investigating the Significant Properties of Electronic Content over Time (InSPECT) aimed to expand and articulate the concept of ‘significant properties’, determine sets of significant properties for a specified group of digital object types, evaluate methods for measuring these properties for a sample of relevant representation formats, investigate and test the mapping and comparison of these properties between different representation formats, and identify any issues requiring further research.

This report explored the current versions, views, and visions of the concept at the core of this proposal, the idea of ‘significant properties’, also referred to as ‘significant characteristics’ and ‘essence by collecting all discussions of the concept, analysing them and developing a clear, consistent articulation of the concept. The project will review work being undertaken within the DELOS project, and now continuing within the EU-funded PLANETS project, within NARA’s Electronic Records Archive project in the US, and at the National Archives of Australia.