Metadata driven presentation of records

This paper discusses an approach to preserve presentation by using metadata to describe the ‘look' of digital documents in order to make them appear in a trustworthy way. The reason for making them appear in a trustworthy way is that documents often get record status, for example in a governmental agency. The concept of Records Continuum together with work conducted by Heslop, Davis and Wilson at National Archives of Australia regarding preservation of digital records, is some sources of inspiration for the approach suggested in this paper, together with discussions around significant properties and imitative copies. This paper focuses on discussing how metadata driven presentation of web-based forms can be a suitable way to preserve logical and physical structure of such forms, and in particular reason around a model suggested for this kind of preservation (Nilsson 2006). This is all part on an ongoing work and at the moment the focus lies on objects that are created digitally (i.e. does not have an analogue original). This paper only considers individual documents/forms/records and not records in the meaning of several digital objects that all are part of one record. The results, which are based on interviews with individuals in the archival community, point at that the suggested approach, despite some problems, could be a suitable way to handle the access to imitative copies of digital objects, but that this alone is not enough for achieving trust in the object.Godkänd; 2006; Bibliografisk uppgift: Electronic version published at conference web site. Subsequently modified for inclusion in printed proceedings.; 20071004 (jorgen_n