n.information in binary form and its associated metadataDeRose 1997, 309Great progress has been made in the last decade in shifting electronic information from purely format-driven forms to more processable, flexible, structure-driven forms. Processable finding aids are one of the next logical steps as archivists strive to progress from information about the form of documents toward treating documents themselves as sophisticated information objects. At each stage, what the computer can do with data depends most importantly on the model applied to the data. A simple facsimile of a manuscript or other object is useful but it does not enable qualitatively new processing, just as a microfilm copy of a card catalog is useful but not revolutionary.Gilliland-Swetland 2000a, 11–12Digital preservation techniques have moved beyond a concern for the longevity of digital media to a concern for the preservation of the information stored in those media during recurrent migration to new software and hardware. In the process, many of the intrinsic characteristics of information objects can disappear—data structures can be modified and presentation of the object on a computer screen can be altered.Bellinger et al. 2002, 5We can generalize this insight and assert that the preservation of a digital information object does not necessarily entail maintaining all of its digital attributes. In fact, it is common to change digital attributes substantially to ensure that the essential attributes of an information object are preserved when the object is transmitted to different platforms.Besser 2003, 72digital object ¶ Data (the content or “essence” of a digital file) and the metadata describing it, regarded together as a single entity. Also known as a digital asset, an information object, or an information package. May also refer to born digital objects.Conway 2012, 568Harvey highlights the differences between preserving the artifacts of digital information (media) and preserving digital content as information objects.Gilliland 2014a, 166As already noted, at the heart of electronic records and digital recordkeeping research, as in practice, is a dual concern with the nature of the record as a specific type of information object and the nature of legal and historical evidence in a digital world.an archival recordCraig and O’Toole 2000, 124Archivists deal with “information objects,” and largely with those that are continuously produced by functions and activities in everyday life.Craig 2002, 289The nature of documents as information objects cannot fully be grasped without placing them within a series of increasingly wider contexts, of communications, competencies, and intent, which comprise their totality, much like the layers of skin in an onion—peel away these layers to get at the heart and eventually you have nothing left. But the layers, taken together, constitute the nature of the object.Caron and Brown 2013, 139From a pure information technology perspective, the functionality of save or keep is not invested with any semantic meaning around a conscious decision made either by the creator or user about the value of the information object or the resource itself. It is just part of a greater information process.Douglas and MacNeil 2014, 161The general inventory for MG 11 directed users to approach the records from a particular perspective: that of archival theory and, more specifically, through the lens of provenance. . . . It is an approach that views archives not only as carriers of information about the past, but as information objects in their own rights.
