UNCLASSIFIED
Martin
I am not sure that Australia can claim its "own" format for the long
term preservation of digital records, but I can tell you what the
National Archives of Australia does in this area.
We believe that converting files to openly specified, freely
available[1], community developed file formats, where there are a number
of software implementations from different vendors available give us the
best chance of preserving digital records into the future. For example,
most graphics formats are converted to png (portable network graphics)
format; Audio files are converted to FLAC (Free Lossless Audio Codec)
format; and the typical 'office' documents - word processing,
spreadsheet and presentations - are converted to Open Document Format.
The Office Open XML specification is openly specified and freely
available, but we do not consider that it was community developed (in
the same way as the Open Document Format was) or that there are
sufficient numbers of software implementations from different vendors
available at the moment. We also decided on the use of Open Document
Format well before Office Open XML became an ISO standard, and the cost
and inconvenience of changing formats was a factor in deciding not to
adopt it. Of course, we are always keeping an eye on developments.
Where files are already in suitable openly specified formats (and PDF is
acceptable), obviously we do not have to convert them. We realise that
most people use software that saves into proprietary formats, so we are
willing to accept files in any format and do the conversion ourselves.
We also do the conversion on ingest, where as some other jurisdictions
have adopted a 'wait and see' approach to doing any format conversion.
In response to some of the replies about converting everything to
microform. It does not seem logical (to me, at least) to convert
digital documents to another format, only to have to convert it back to
digital to distribute it to users (or to encourage further use of the
information). Then again, some people print out their word processed
documents only to have someone later scan it for capture to a digital
recordkeeping system, so sometimes logic does not always come out on
top. Also, some file formats are not suitable for conversion to
microform. We hold an extensive collection of audio and video - possibly
the largest collection in Australia. Try converting that to microfilm
:). The loss of information when converting to microform may also be an
unacceptable risk.
Converting to a "common" format has the advantage of only having to deal
with a smaller number of file formats in the future, when it is time to
migrate to a newer format.
We have developed Xena - a Free and Open Source Software tool to do the
conversions for us. Details (and the software) are available at
http://xena.sourceforge.net/. All of our software in our preservation
platform is also freely available at sourceforge.net. It is designed to
run on Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X and all flavours of Linux.
We also keep files in our digital archive on spinning disks. This
enables us to continually check the checksums of the files to detect
corruption. It is also much easier to upgrade a RAID array at regular
intervals than it would be to copy the contents of smaller capacity
media such as DVDs and CDs. As someone who spent a couple of weeks
copying files from 750 CDs, I feel that anyone considering optical media
for storage should seriously rethink that.
So, to sum up - We believe that any file format is suitable for long
term preservation as long as it is openly specified, freely available,
developed by a community of users and has multiple software vendors
supporting it.
Hope this information is useful.
John
John Lovejoy
[log in to unmask]
Manager, Digital Records Support
Records Operations and Preservation
National Archives of Australia
[1] in this context, freely available means free for anyone to obtain a
copy, not necessarily at no charge.
-----Original Message-----
From: Records Management Program [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On
Behalf Of Tuip, Martin
Sent: Tuesday, November 16, 2010 5:11 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [RM] PDF/A: A Viable Addition to the Preservation Toolkit
<speaking on my own credit here and not my employer>
While the PDF/A file is the ISO format, doesn't Australia have their
own, Microsoft pushing XML and other software vendors also suggest other
formats ? Particularly from a long term view it would be of humanities
best interest to agree on a standard somehow that will be consistent
(although that doesn't solve the problem that the physical storage like
DVD and other media will deteriorate).
Without proper planning .. this could become a reality
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Dark_Age
Martin Tuip
Senior Technical Product Marketing Manager
Iron Mountain Digital
UNCLASSIFIED
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