Significant Properties as Contextual Metadata

Abstract

Given the desire to maintain both long-term renderability and meaningfulness of data for reuse, increasing attention is being paid to contextual metadata, also known as significant properties. Both the data reuse and digital curation literatures identify significant properties but do not appear to build on one another, in part because of different methodological approaches. In this paper we discuss the significant properties research from both literatures and call for a more integrative approach. We conclude with a discussion of our project, Dissemination Information Packages for Information Reuse (DIPIR), which features the boundary spanning we advocate between these two research communities.

KEYWORDS:

• data reuse
• digital curation
• preservation
• significant properties