PRESERVING VISUAL APPEARANCE OF EGOVERNMENT  WEB FORMS USING METADATA  DRIVEN IMITATION
This paper summarizes work done in a PhD study on
metadata driven imitation for preservation of visual
appearance of web forms and/or receipts used in
eGovernment services. The research done suggests that
metadata, and e.g. a background image, can be used to
describe the visual appearance of documents, and that
this also facilitates having the data separated from the
visual appearance. This separation provides the ability
to present the material to the users in different ways,
depending on their needs and requirements, while
retaining the ability to present the object in its original
look. The original look is seen as the most versatile way
of presenting the material, giving the most fruitful base
of interpretation and understanding, but if the users
where familiar with the material, they liked the ability to
have the material presented in simplified ways, where
many of the sometimes "distracting" visual attributes
where removed. In general, preserving the visual
appearance and keeping the data separated from the
form, was seen as useful and beneficial to both the users
and the preservation professionals. As always in digital
preservation contexts, documentation of this process
and the relation between the metadata describing the
visual appearance
["Nilsson, Jörgen"]
[]