Investigating the Significant Properties of Electronic Content Over Time (INSPECT)
The purpose of INSPECT is to develop and expound the concept of “significant properties” (or characteristics) of digital objects, and to analyse a range of digital objects in order to develop a generalised methodology for determining the significant properties of digital object types.
Significant properties are those aspects of the digital object which must be preserved over time in order for the digital object to remain accessible and meaningful. The various properties of a digital object may be categorised as content, context (metadata), appearance (eg. layout, colour), behaviour (eg. interaction, functionality), and structure (eg. pagination, sections). Deciding which aspects of each of these categories must be preserved over time is essential to proper preservation planning but is an essential investigation which has not yet been undertaken. There is a critical need to initiate this work in order to establish best practice approaches to preserving digital objects.
The project is led by the Arts and Humanities Data Service (AHDS) in association with The National Archives (TNA).