The Digital Object

• The digital object encapsulates all essential information about the “document” to be disseminated and preserved

• The digital object is the basic unit of preservation

• Essential information in the object:

  • Byte streams in both presentation and canonical (non-proprietary, infrastructure independent forms)
  • Metadata, both descriptive and administrative in a METS wrapper
  • Persistent IDs, digital signatures, and migration metadata
  • Software for dynamic behavior (disseminators)