Practical challenges
Retrieval and identification
The singing
sands on the edge of Mingshashan
Photo: Oliver Wild
Imagine coming across a collection of digital objects - say, the images from a database - in decades to come. Finding any particular object - an image, a piece of text, a sound recording - could be like searching for a grain of sand in a sand dune. Equally, how would one identify any random grain?
Actual cultural objects themselves embody information that can identify them. A painting for example - art historians can tell the date, the subject and the artist from its iconography and through scientific examination of its materials. Digital cultural objects are just collections of digital bits.
- Metadata are catalogue information about digital assets. Without the metadata for a digital object we can’t find what we want, and we won’t know it is there, nor what it is should we come across it by chance.
What to do?
Digital assets have to be catalogued at the time they are created; otherwise we don’t even know that they exist. Before embarking on a substantial digitisation project the metadata scheme must be carefully worked out. Normally this will be based on the Dublin Core.
The process of cataloguing the digital cultural objects as they are created may well be the slowest part of the project. This mirrors experience of adding to collections of actual objects, where 'metadata', information about the provenance and significance of the object, is becoming ever more important.
Practical challenges
Preservation policiesRetrieval and identification
Technical obsolescence
Physical deterioration
Authenticity
Long term realities
Intrinsic valueOwnership factors
Social / political factors
Environment factors
Any answers?
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