Opening Schrödingers Library: Semi-automatic QA Reduces Uncertainty in Object Transformation

Object transformation for preservation purposes is currently a hit-ormiss affair, where errors in transformation may go unnoticed for years since manual quality assurance is too resource-intensive for large collections of digital objects. We propose an approach of semi-automatic quality assurance (QA), where numerous separate automatic checks of “aspects” of the objects, combined with manual inspection, provides greater assurance that objects are transformed with little or no loss of quality. We present an example of using this approach to appraise the quality of OpenOffice’s import of Word documents.