Digital preservation file format

The conversion to these formats is known as migration. These formats were chosen because of their documented acceptance by the archival and digital preservation communities.

Factors leading to this acceptance include format longevity and maturity, adaptation in relevant professional communities, incorporated information standards, and long-term accessibility of any required viewing software. For instance, uncompressed TIFFs are considered a good preservation format for born-digital and digitized still images because of its maturity, wide adaptation in various communities, thorough documentation, and the format is accessible in many software applications.

Preservation of digital items at the Archives employs a strategy of migration of official electronic records when needed following transfer. For example, 3. SIA ingests electronic records as soon as they are received by the Digital Services team, when possible.

The Archives does not actively preserve software or hardware. The original source files are retained in their native formats as well. Several digital preservation managers referred to Archivematica's ongoing file format policy registry and associated migration paths as the policies they intended to adopt at their own institutions.

In many cases, bit-level preservation services are offered to obviate the need to make hard decisions about unappealing file formats. For example, the RealAudio format appears 35 times in all identified format policies, but is promised exclusively Moderate Confidence, or bit-level support, without a single High Confidence rating.

This is not to be read as an endorsement of RealAudio as a preservation file format so much as an acknowledgment that RealAudio files exist within many academic libraries' designated communities of users, and that 35 repositories have taken it upon themselves to preserve them as-is.

Bit-level support, however, is not necessarily a vote of confidence for the preservation characteristics of a file format. Especially in the case of institutional repositories, the provision of a storage service for all commonly encountered file types is more often than not a recognition that file format use frequently extends well beyond a short-list of preferred archival formats.

In this respect, bit-level support for everything that comes into a given repository implies a compromise with a social reality rather than a hard-line application of digital preservation format assessment methodologies.

It is instructive to view these trends in light of recent research from the world of large-scale, long-term web archiving. Jackson presents a file format analysis of 2. Despite the web's importance as an indicator of file formats trusted for sharing access to digital information, it also conceals an entire world of digital content production from view.

To remain with image formats, few photographers or graphic designers begin their work in the GIF, PNG, or JPEG format, even if these are what they eventually use for the web distribution of their images. Such production file formats are likely to be found in collections of electronic records, not to mention a broad variety of other file formats saved on donors' hard drives, as libraries and archives begin to increase the acquisition of born digital materials.

This is not dissimilar to the challenges libraries and their collaborators in information technology face as they articulate strategies to effectively steward scientific data and the broad variety of files produced throughout the research process in different disciplines. The way that managers of these emergent services craft their own file format policies will certainly have a significant influence on the future of digital preservation planning. These looming frontiers notwithstanding, traditional notions of file format recommendations in libraries are beginning to receive scrutiny and challenge.

De Vorsey and McKinney, in writing of the digital collections stewarded by the National Library of New Zealand, take issue with efforts to anoint certain file formats as "archival. As a result, they advocate shifting the focus from file formats per se, and instead matching file profiles against application profiles to determine an institution's ability to provide access to content:.

Our experience with New Zealand's documentary heritage is that files contain multifarious properties. These are based on the world of possibilities that the format standard describes, but can also include non-standard properties.

The range of possibilities and relationships between them is such that it is quite meaningless to purely measure a file's adherence to a format standard De Vorsey and McKinney, , Such developments would suggest that the already challenging prospect of file format policymaking for research library collections is about to become even more daunting.

At present, ARL member file format policies largely reflect a high level of confidence with a limited number of file formats used in library digitization programs and the web transmission of scholarly communication. Outside of these file formats, however, policies indicate a much lower level of confidence in their respective repositories' abilities to provide adequate preservation services for file formats in the categories of application, computer program, geospatial, and presentation, and, to a lesser extent, audio, tabular data, and video.

As libraries and archives begin to set their sights on collections of heterogeneous files such as born-digital electronic records and research data, this is expected to spur on further evolution not only in the file formats that appear in digital preservation policies, but in the way file format policies are articulated and implemented. The authors wish to acknowledge the Research and Publication Committee of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, which provided support for the completion of this research.

Recommended Practice Issue 1. ArXiv e-print Digital Imaging for Libraries and Archives. Ithaca, N. Long-term preservation of acceptable formats may require additional resources from DUL. It is less certain, though still likely, that these formats will be able to be preserved over time. University offices and depositors may transfer or deposit materials into DUL systems in tehse formats if needed, particularly if there is not a feasible way to migrate material to a Recommended format prior to transfer.

These formats cannot be permanently preserved without significant additional resources from DUL, and thus are not recommended. Many of these formats also require proprietary software to render and preserve material. For these preservation types, we can ensure bit-level preservation , but we cannot guarantee future use.

The Libraries work with faculty and staff throughout the University to identify and permanently preserve records, data, documents, and other information assets. We are attempting to contact authors whose theses are affected. Your name. Your email We require your email address in order to let you know the outcome of your request. Bodleian Card Number optional.

Request details Provide a statement outlining the basis of your request for the information of the author. Item Description Keywords: Library Science. Digital Preservation. One strand of the project was the development of an all-staff training programme aimed at embedding knowledge about digital preservation across both organisations.

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