Digital Preservation Coalition

Media and Formats - Exemplars and Further Reading

1. Beagrie, N. and Greenstein, D. (1998). Managing Digital Collections: AHDS Policies, Standards and Practices. Consultation Draft. December 1999.
   http://www.ahds.ac.uk/about/reports-and-policies/index.htm
   Section 2.9.2 Technical Standards, provides a summary of preferred formats recommended by AHDS service providers. Further details are available in individual Guides to Good Practice.
2. DLM Forum (1997). Guidelines on Best Practice for Using Electronic Information.
   http://europa.eu.int/ISPO/dlm/documents/gdlines.pdf
   Update 19 March 2008
   No longer available - information at
   http://ec.europa.eu/archives/ISPO/dlm/
   
   Chapter 5, Short- and long-term preservation of electronic information, offers advice on data storage media (including advice on storage conditions) and file formats.The latter general advice is "Best practice is to decide on a common set of standards from the outset to make it easier to circulate information.
   
   Preferably the same formats should be used for both short-term and long-term preservation". Both storage media and file formats are grouped into families, with examples of the major types in each.
3. Frey, F. (2000). File Formats for Digital Masters.
   http://www.rlg.ac.uk/visguides/visguide5.html
   Update 09 Aug 2006
   New location http://www.rlg.org/legacy/visguides/visguide5.html
   Update 10 May 2010
   New location http://www.oclc.org/research/publications/library/visguides/visguide5.htm
   
   One of five guides commissioned by DLF and CLIR and published with RLG.This guide provides steps in how to select file formats for digital masters, selecting those based on a combination of performance and durability.
4. National Library of Australia. (1999). First Steps in Preserving Digital Publications.
   http://www.nla.gov.au/pres/epupam.html
5. PADI.This is highly recommended as providing comprehensive links to relevant resources. Relevant sections available online include: magnetic media at: http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/59.html optical disks at: http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/53.html physical formats at: http://www.nla.gov.au/padi/topics/52.html
6. TASI. Framework webpages are highly recommended as a resource and are available online at:
   http://www.tasi.ac.uk/advice/advice.html
   
   Includes general advice on selecting file formats for images.
7. van Bogart, John (1995). Magnetic Tape Storage and Handling. Council on Library and Information Resources. (ISBN 1-887334-40-8).
   http://www.clir.org/pubs/reports/pub54
8. Dale, R. (1999). File compression Strategies Discussion at ALA. RLG DigiNews February 15 1999.
   http://www.rlg.ac.uk/preserv/diginews/diginews3-1.html
   Update 09 Aug 2006
   New location http://www.rlg.org/preserv/diginews/diginews3-1.html