Objects
From Digipedia
| How useful is this article to you? 1 (not useful) - 5 (very useful) |
| Current average rating: 0 |
| Please login or create an account to rate this article |
Contents |
OVERVIEW
Just as a library consists of many individual books, journals, audio-visual and other items, so a digital collection is made up of its individual objects. These may be digital images (still and moving), audio-visual material, text and so on and they may have been created from analogue originals or have been born-digital. Each object-type has its own different requirements: for example, digitisation of images requires considerations which are different from those of text, and all require a consistent approach to description and presentation.
Six principles for good objects
The framework.niso.org/node/18 NISO Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections suggests the following six good practice principles for the creation of digital objects which will be exchangable, re-usable and consistenly formatted:
- A good object exists in a format that supports its intended current and future use. Consequently, a good object is exchangeable across platforms, broadly accessible, and formatted according to a recognized standard or best practice.
- A good object is preservable. That is, the object will not raise unnecessary barriers to remaining accessible over time despite changing technologies.
- A good object is meaningful and useful outside of its local context. A good digital object should be coherent, meaningful, and usable outside of the context in which it was created. Depending on the discipline, objects with these properties may be called “portable,” “reusable,” or “interoperable.”
- A good object will be named with a persistent, globally unique identifier that can be resolved to the current address of the object.
- A good object can be authenticated. Authenticity refers to the degree of confidence a user can have in the integrity and trustworthiness of an object. Authentication is the act of determining that the object conforms to its documented origin, structure, and history, and that the object has not been corrupted or changed in an unauthorized way.
- A good object has associated metadata. A good object will have descriptive and administrative metadata, and compound objects will have structural metadata to document the relationships between components of the object and ensure proper presentation and use of the components.
The Framework accompanies each of these principles with advice and guidance on best practice and a range of sources of further information. To support principle one, there is a useful table for re-formatting non-digital cource materials setting out for each format type its target digital format and supported with commentary and references.
Sources of advice and guidance
As well as the NISO Framework, there are a number of other sources of detailed advice and guidance on handling the range of objects likely to be part of a digital project or programme.
- JISC Digital Media has a wide range of advice articles:
- The Digital Curation Centre has a range of briefing papers, how-to guides and and aCuration Reference Manual in progress.
Related Digipedia articles
Further information
Make It Digital: creating digital content
IASA guidelines on digital audio objects
National Library of Australia image capture standards
[[Role::newcomer]] [[Role::project manager]] [[Role::content manager]] [[Role::acquisitions manager]] [[Goal::managing]] [[Goal::digitising]] [[Level::medium]] [[Level::deep]]
