Digital heritage

Definition
Digital heritage

"includes a great range of materials including (by no means exhaustively):


 * Electronic publications, being information that is made available for wide readership. Publications are distributed in various ways including online via the World Wide Web, or on portable carriers such as CDs, DVDs, floppy disks and various electronic book devices. Some publications manage to combine both online and portable carrier access to different parts of the publication. As well as their means of distribution, digital publications may be classified by genres, some familiar from traditional publishing formats like monographs and serials, and others less easily defined like websites and e-zines. Some publications are released as complete items, but others evolve over time, their creators taking advantage of the interactive potential of the Internet. Print publishing continues to grow, but increasingly publications are appearing in digital versions, increasingly in digital-only versions. Both commercial and non-commercial publishers produce digital publications, as do millions of other people who would not see themselves as publishers at all
 * "Semi-published" materials such as pre-print papers and theses held in e-print and other archives available for restricted use within specific communities such as universities and scholarly societies
 * Organisational and personal records of activity, transactions, correspondence, etc. A very large part of the world’s business and government records now exist in electronic record keeping systems. Email, messages to discussion lists and bulletin boards, web diaries, "blogs" and "cams" &mdash; dynamic, informal interactions enabled by digital technology &mdash; may also include important digital records amongst a tidal wave of data
 * Datasets collected to record and analyse scientific, geospatial, spatial, sociological, demographic, educational, health, environmental and other phenomena
 * Learning objects used in technology-assisted education
 * Software tools such as databases, models, simulations, and software applications
 * Unique unpublished materials that may include research reports, oral history and folklore recordings
 * Electronic "manuscripts" such as drafts of works and personal correspondence
 * Entertainment products from the film, music, broadcasting and games industries, both commercial and non-commercial
 * Digitally generated artworks and documentary photographs
 * Digital copies of images, sound, text and three-dimensional objects from non-digital originals."