Digital preservation efforts are distributed throughout many units at the Library of Congress and includes programs related to digital content packaging and ingest, monitoring and reporting of digital storage, sustainable digital file formats, metadata and more.
- Reports and Events
- Sustainability of Digital Formats website provides in-depth descriptions of over 440 formats sorted into content categories including: still image, sound, textual, moving image, Web archive, datasets, geospatial and generic formats with more to come. Important features of the format descriptions includes documenting relationships between formats and factors to consider when evaluating formats including sustainability factors and quality and functionality factors.
- Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) Established in 2007, FADGI is a collaborative effort of 20 federal agencies to articulate common sustainable practices and guidelines for digitized and born digital historical, archival and cultural content. Two working groups study issues specific to two major areas, Still Image and Audio-Visual.
- Recommended Formats Statement identifies hierarchies of the physical and technical characteristics of creative formats, both analog and digital, which will best meet the needs of all concerned, maximizing the chances for survival and continued accessibility of creative content well into the future.
Tools and Open Source Software
- BagIt File Packaging Format
specification documentation from IETF for the hierarchical file packaging format
for storage and transfer of arbitrary digital content.
- Bagger open source application that packages data files according to the BagIt specification.
- BagIt-Python open source Python library and command line utility for working with BagIt style packages.
- BWF MetaEdit open source tools developed by FADGI which permits embedding, validating, and exporting of metadata in Broadcast WAVE Format (BWF) files.
- PREMIS Data Dictionary for Preservation Metadata is the international standard for metadata to support the preservation of digital objects and ensure their long-term usability.
specification documentation from IETF for the hierarchical file packaging format
for storage and transfer of arbitrary digital content.
