Ethical considerations have long played a central role in the profession of conservation. The Code of Ethics for the American Institute for Conservation of Historic and Artistic Works covers a range of vital concerns for the practice of conservation treatment—the alteration of an historic or artistic work for the purpose of stabilization and increase longevity. Documenting conservation treatment is essential for professional accountability and for the larger sphere of conservation as an academic discipline. When a conservator records the research, plan, execution, and completion of physical treatment of rare and valuable artifacts they are preserving the justification for the decisions made and producing information that can be used by others in the development of better scientific and skillful approaches for preserving artifactual evidence.

When the treatment documentation activity begins to include digital documentation, a number of concerns arise. Primary among concerns surrounding digital treatment documentation is that of permanence. The permanence of the physical alteration to an artistic or historic work by a conservator is equal to that of preserving the actual artifact. The perceived impermanence of digital information within the preservation and conservation community results from the traditional viewpoint that information is only as permanent as the medium on which it is carried. The preservation of digital information, which can be viewed as entirely independent of a physical media medium when considered as a bit stream that can be transmitted via electric impulses, is wholly dependent on active manipulation of that digital information. Digital information can be best perceived as an organic entity that relates to itself and other information entities. It Its preservation relies upon keeping it its being kept “alive.” To succeed at this requires that this process be somehow automated. The maintenance of thousands of digital information entities cannot be accomplished through individual attention. Determining what a digital artistic or historic work requires for preservation at the time of creation is fundamental the digital archives. The intent is that the digital object will be placed in the repository and its preservation will be automatic.

Permanence in digital information is attainable and the conservation community is wise to advocate analog versions of treatment documentation, but the ability to digitally record the same information can result in a useful network of information that can benefit the field. Preservation and Conservation, however, covers a diverse range of activities from object conservation to architecture, to paintings, to books, paper, and digital information. This range of activities will require that the issues of metadata being considered carefully in context of each area. This paper will not attempt to cover all of the areas of specialty in detail but will try to provide a more general and theoretical look at metadata in relation to preservation and conservation with specific examples for further insight.