[jats-list] Library of Congress Recommended Format Specifications

["Bausenbach, Ardie abau@xxxxxxx" <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

{Please excuse cross-posting}

The Library of Congress announces the availability of its Recommended Format
Specifications, a document describing the hierarchies of the physical and
technical characteristics of creative formats, both analog and digital, which
will best maximize the chances for preservation and continued accessibility of
creative content.  Creators and publishers have also begun to employ a wide
array of intangible digital formats, as well as continuing to change and adapt
the physical formats in which they work.  The Library needs to be able to
identify the formats which are suitable for large-scale acquisition and
preservation for long-term access if it is to continue to build its collection
and ensure that it lasts into the future.

The Library was able to identify six basic categories of creative output,
which represent significant parts of the publishing, information, and media
industries, especially those that are rapidly adopting digital production and
are central to building the Library's collections:  Textual Works and Musical
Compositions; Still Image Works; Audio Works; Moving Image Works; Software and
Electronic Gaming and Learning; and Datasets/Databases.  Technical teams, made
up of experts came from across the institution bringing specialized knowledge
in technical aspects of preservation, ongoing access needs and developments in
the marketplace and in the publishing world, were established to identify
recommended formats for each of these categories and to establish hierarchies
of preference among the formats within them.

The Library will be revisiting these specifications on an annual basis.  The
creation and publication of these recommended format specifications is not
intended to serve as an answer to all the questions raised in preserving and
providing long-term access to creative content.  They do not provide
instructions for receiving this material into repositories, managing that
content or undertaking the many ongoing tasks which will be necessary to
maintain this content so that it may be used well into the future.

The Recommended Format Specifications are available at
http://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/.  For more information, please
contact Ted Westervelt [thwe@xxxxxxx<mailto:thwe@xxxxxxx>].


Ardie Bausenbach
ILS Program Office
Library of Congress
101 Independence Ave., SE
Washington, DC 20540
abau@xxxxxxx<mailto:abau@xxxxxxx>