Preserving the Essence: Identifying the Significant Properties of Social Science Research Data

In the light of technological and cultural changes, a question that digital archives face is: Which characteristics of our assets must be preserved to keep them usable and authentic? The concept of significant properties, which can be thought of as the “essence” of a digital object, provides one possible answer. The GESIS Data Archive for the Social Sciences (DAS) currently determines the significant properties of the data it preserves. We describe the procedure used to determine the significant properties of our digital assets, present first results of our work, and give an outlook on work still to be done.