Digital Objects Characterization: Document Conversion and Quality Assurance

Whether we are migrating document formats to achieve interoperability or ensure long term preservation, we are faced with the issue of assessing the quality of the digital object transformation. However, comparing two digital objects is not straightforward. It raises the issue of properties that are inherent to the digital objects and those that are dependent on the environment in which the objects are created, viewed, and compared to one another. That has implications for devising methods to extract document properties, interpret observed characteristics, and apply similarity metrics. Furthermore, in order to take actions based on collected measurements, we need to define or learn the significance of individual document properties from the perspective of human perception and usage scenarios. We illustrate the complexity of these issues by presenting a method for comparing converted office documents and discussing the challenges from the technical and methodology point of view.