  This review addresses the question of what exactly should we preserve, and
how the digital preservation community and scholars address this question. The
paper first introduces the much-abused-term "significant properties," before
revealing how some scholars are of the opinion that characteristics of digital
objects to be preserved (i.e., significant properties) can be identified and
should be expressed formally, while others are not of that opinion. The digital
preservation community's attempt to expound on the general characteristics of
digital objects and significant properties will then be discussed. Finally, the
review shows that while there may be ways to identify the technical makeup or
general characteristics of a digital object, there is currently no formal and
objective methodology to help stakeholders identify and decide what the
significant properties of the objects are. This review thus helps open
questions and generates a formative recommendation based on expert opinion that
expressing an object's functions in an explicit and formal way (using didactic
guides from the archives community) could be the solution to help stakeholders
decide what characteristics/ elements exactly we should preserve.
