On the other hand, some materials are much more difficult to characterise, and expectations

about how they will be re-presented for use, especially to an open-ended community of
potential users, may be so hard to define in advance that it becomes almost impossible.

Approaches to this issue are developing as more people encounter the problems of describing,
storing and planning to re-present digital objects in growing collections over long periods of
time.

While more sophisticated methods of defining and describing essential elements are evolving,
the following questions may provide some help in the selection process. (It will be seen that
this is really part of the appraisal process that records managers go through in order to
understand the records they are considering for selection.)

For whom should this material be kept? Do they have specific expectations about what
they will be able to do with the material when it is re-presented?
Why are the materials worth keeping? What gives them the value that warrants the
trouble of preserving them? Is that value associated with:
Evidence
Information
Artistic or aesthetic factors
Significant innovation
Historic or cultural association
What a user can make the material do, or do with the material
Culturally significant characteristics?
Is the value tied to the way the material looks? (Would it be lost or significantly
degraded if the material looked different?)
Is the value tied to the way the object works? (Would it be lost if particular functions
were removed? Or if particular functions happened at a different speed or required
different keystrokes?)
Is the value tied to the context of the material? (Would it be lost if links embedded in
the material did not work? Or if a user could no longer see evidence that connected the
material with its original context?)
Is it possible to distinguish between elements within each of these areas? For example,
would advertising banners be considered an essential part of the way the material
looked? Would some navigation elements or display functions be needed but not
others?
If it is difficult to define what needs to be maintained, it may be easier to consider the
impact of an element not being maintained, and to look for functions or elements that
are definitely not needed.

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