《Christoph Becker, Andreas Rauber》.pdfVIP

Journal of Universal Computer Science, vol. 14, no. 18 (2008), 2936-2952 submitted: 1/3/08, accepted: 29/9/08, appeared: 1/10/08 © J.UCS Systematic Characterisation of Objects in Digital Preservation: The eXtensible Characterisation Languages Christoph Becker, Andreas Rauber (Vienna University of Technology, Austria {becker,rauber}@ifs.tuwien.ac.at) Volker Heydegger, Jan Schnasse, Manfred Thaller (University of Cologne, Germany {herrmanv,jan.schnasse,manfred.thaller}@uni-koeln.de) Abstract: During the last decades, digital objects have become the primary medium to create, shape, and exchange information. However, in contrast to analog objects such as books that directly represent their content, digital objects are not usable without a corresponding technical environment. The fast changes in these environments and in formats and technologies mean that digital documents have a short lifespan before they become obsolete. Digital preservation, i.e. actions to ensure longevity of digital information, thus has become a pressing challenge. The dominant strategies prevailing today are migration and emulation; for each strategy, different tools are available. When converting an object to a different representation, a validation of the content is needed to verify that the transformed objects are still authentically representing the same intellectual content. This validation so far is largely done manually, which is infeasible for large collections. Preservation planning supports decision makers in reaching accountable decisions by evaluating potential strategies against well-defined requirements. Especially the evalu- ation of different migration tools for digital prese