Parcels of information that move from a computer to a digital object behave in the same way as ants would do.

Authenticity: Is the digital object what it purports to be?

Preservation activity: What has been done to preserve the digital object?

Technical environment: What is needed to render, interact with and use the digital object?

These digital objects are useful and scarce and therefore valuable.

It is a structured digital object, including a standard representation, identification and metadata.

Increasingly, digital objects are being added to these records.

Together with the original data it is possible to reconstruct the meaning of each particular digital object.

Given rapid changes in technology, most mediums for digital objects quickly decay or become obsolete.

In 2010, the project accomplished its objective of giving access to over 10 million digital objects.