Context and Its Role in the Digital Preservation of Cultural Objects

Abstract

In discussions surrounding digital preservation, contextthose properties of an object related to its creation and preservation that make the object's origins, composition, and purpose clear -has been identified as a critical aspect of preservation metadata. Understanding a cultural object's context, in as much detail as possible, is necessary to the successful future use of that object, regardless of its form. The necessity of capturing data about the creation of digital resources and the technical details of the preservation process, has generally been agreed. Capturing many other contextual aspects -such as utility, history, curation, authenticity -that would certainly contribute to successful retrieval, assessment, management, access, and use of preserved digital content, has not been adequately addressed or codified. Recording these aspects of contextual information is especially important for physical objects that are digitally preserved, and thereby removed from their original setting. This paper investigates the various discussions in the literature surrounding contextual information, and then presents a framework which makes explicit the various dimensions of context which have been identified as useful for digital preservation efforts, and offers a way to ensure the capture those aspects of an object's context that are often missed.

Context from the data reuser’s point of view

“…Yet, preserving meaning has become increasingly important as scholarly communities look to share and reuse research data to replicate and reproduce research as well as perform novel inquiries. Although researchers have proposed frameworks (Baker and Yarmey, 2009; Beaudoin, 2012a, b; Lee, 2011), engaging with data reusers to specify the context necessary to support meaning making has occurred less frequently.…”

The value and complexity of collection arrangement for evidentiary work

“…Preserving or associating information together with this larger network of relationships is what allows information to serve as evidence. The intersection of information technology and the contextual and evidentiary aspect of information is a particularly fruitful line of enquiry in fields such as: Digital Libraries—for example, the study of the types of contexts and their relevance to the information mediation process in digital libraries (Neuhold, Niederée, Stewart, Frommholz, & Mehta, ), and the study of ways to (semi‐) automatically determine various contexts of the creation and use of digital objects before ingest into a digital library system (Mayer & Rauber, ). Digital Preservation—for example, identifying the types of metadata that can be utilized within the preservation process so as to re‐contextualize material for future use (Beaudoin, ). Digital Forensics—for example, designing systems for e‐mail recovery that visualize the process by recreating the evidentiary environment and data (Tiwari, Samaddar, Singh, & Dwivedi, ). Computer Supported Cooperative Work—for example, researching the efficacy of collaborative problem‐solving in the presence or absence of complete evidence (Balakrishnan, Fussell, Kiesler, & Kittur, ). Personal Information Management—for example, highlighting the contextual factors that influence how information is organized in the workplace (Kwasnik, ; Barreau, ; Henderson, ). Artificial Intelligence—for example, designing interactive educational assessment environments that take an evidence‐based approach in order to support particular assessment claims (Zapata‐Rivera, Hansen, Shute, Underwood, & Bauer, ). Evidence‐based medicine (EBM) and evidence‐based software engineering (EBSE)—for example, designing technological solutions (text‐mining based pipelines) for accelerating the creation and updating of accurate and comprehensive medical evidence reports (Cohen et al., ). …”

Significant features of thematic research collections

“…Inherent in the concept of contextual mass is the collocation of items with contextual information imperative to scholarly use. We hypothesize that TRCs are distinguished from other kinds of collection, and indeed attain status as a scholarly genre, in part by providing layers of “intellectual context” (Beaudoin, ) on top of items, beyond basic descriptive information. Intellectual context may include:…”