Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections

Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact

The Sustainability of Digital Formats Web site provides information about digital content formats. The analyses and resources presented here will increase and be updated over time. This resource was started in 2004 by Caroline R. Arms and Carl Fleischhauer. Current compilers are Kate Murray, Marcus Nappier and Liz Holdzkom. Additional assistence from Laurel Gassie, 2022 Junior Fellows Mari Allison and Dan Hockstein and 2021 Junior Fellows Jacob Kowall and Hilary Szu Yin Shiue. We welcome feedback on the content.

Introduction

Background information and overview: What is a format? How shall we evaluate formats? What projects in other organizations are addressing these questions? Overview | Formats, Evaluation Factors, and Relationships | Papers and Presentations | Related Resources

Sustainability Factors

What affects the ability of the Library to preserve content in a given format? These sustainability factors apply to all formats. Disclosure | Adoption | Transparency | Self-documentation | External Dependencies | Impact of Patents | Technical Protection Mechanisms

Content Categories

The evaluation of formats must take into account quality and functionality. These factors vary according to the type of content under consideration and the categories will be expanded as time passes. Still Image | Sound | Textual | Moving Image | Web Archive | Datasets | Geospatial | Email and PIM | Design and 3D | Aggregate | Generic | Browse All Formats

Format Descriptions

Documents with more information about specific formats. Browse categories | Browse alphabetical list | Format Descriptions as XML | Mapping FDDs to PRONOM and Wikidata
Last updated 07/ 8/2022