| ATRIBUTES
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DECRIPTION OF ATTRIBUTES
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| Subject
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Identify the subject of the material. What is it about?
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| Format
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Format assessment of a group of items should both include information on their material characteristics (i.e., are the items physical or digital?) and specify their form (i.e., text, photographs, pieces of clothes, microfilms, etc.). Hence, in terms of its format, an item group could be described as “digital documents,” “photographs on paper,” etc.
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| Type
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Under this category, we answer the question, What are these items? What types of documents, photographs, or objects are they? For example, document types include personal or official letters, reports on a project or an event, filled-in questionnaires, interviews, etc. Photographic items can include, for example, crime scene photographs or photographs of victims, photographs from a workshop, etc.
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| Quantity
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Here we need to note the number of physical objects or digital files contained in the given item group. In case it is not possible at this point to determine the exact number of items, an approximate number should be entered.
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| Size
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This attribute needs to be assessed for digital item groups only by noting the size of the given item group on a digital disk.
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| Condition
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This attribute is more relevant for physical item groups, as they must be assessed regarding their overall condition and any observable damage or degradation. In the table, the physical item groups can then be categorized as being in “good condition,” “damaged/degrading,” “poor condition,” or “requiring urgent preservation action.”
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| Location
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With this attribute, we provide a reference to the location of each item group. For this we need to mark with numbers all physical and digital units in which the material is currently stored. This can include boxes or shelves with physical material, as well as hard disks or DVDs with digital item groups. Once each of these “material containers” is marked with a number, that number becomes the mark of the location of all item groups stored in that particular physical or digital place.
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