Fulldocument

Fulldocument is a term used to describe a theoretical ideal in document management and digital preservation: a single artifact that encapsulates the complete content, structure, provenance, and rendering information needed to understand, render, and reproduce the document in the future. It aims to support fidelity, reproducibility, and long-term accessibility beyond what ordinary files provide.

Definition and scope: A fulldocument comprises the primary content payload (text, graphics, data), descriptive and technical metadata, provenance information (authors, creation and modification events), structural semantics (sections, headings, semantic tags), accessibility and rendering data (fonts, style rules, alternate renderings), and preservation packaging (checksums, manifests, and packaging formats). It may also include executable components such as scripts or code necessary to reproduce dynamic content, ensuring a self-contained reference state.

Implementation and practice: Fulldocument is not a single standardized format but a design goal pursued by various digital preservation and knowledge-management efforts. In practice, projects may assemble fulldocument-like packages using technologies such as ZIP or BagIt for packaging, metadata schemas in XML or JSON, and preservation concepts from standards like METS, PREMIS, and the OAIS reference model. The aim is to enable long-term fidelity, interoperability, and reproducibility across platforms and over time, even as software and hardware evolve.

Challenges and prospects: Realizing a fulldocument requires consensus on what metadata is essential, how to balance completeness with practicality, and how to protect privacy and rights. It also faces concerns about storage overhead and interoperability if disparate domains define different notions of completeness. Still, the fulldocument concept informs best practices in archival storage, digital preservation, and comprehensive knowledge management.

See also digital preservation, OAIS, METS, PREMIS, BagIt.