informationcontaining

Informationcontaining is a concept used in information science and archival studies to describe any artifact whose primary function is to store, convey, or preserve information. While often written as information-containing, the concatenated form informationcontaining appears in some indexing and terminology discussions and is occasionally encountered in informal use. The term emphasizes the information-bearing role of a medium rather than its other functions.

An informationcontaining object can be physical, such as printed documents, photographs, microfilms, or magnetic tapes, or digital, such as files, databases, emails, or cloud records. Key characteristics include content (the data or knowledge stored), medium (the material form), and encoding (the method used to represent information). Access to the information typically requires an appropriate reader or software, and the quality of access depends on fidelity, integrity, and provenance over time.

In practice, informationcontaining materials are managed through disciplines like information governance, archival appraisal, and digital preservation. Metadata accompanies these objects to document context, origin, and discoverability, while privacy and security considerations govern how they are stored, shared, or disposed of. The concept also supports analytical work in research and forensics, where reconstructing events or validating claims depends on the examination of informationcontaining artifacts.

Examples span everyday items such as books and emails to scientific datasets and genomic sequences. Recognizing informationcontaining properties helps distinguish content-bearing media from devices that merely process data, highlighting their value for accountability, long-term access, and historical understanding.