[jats-list] Library of Congress releases revised version of its Recommended Formats Statement

Subject: [jats-list] Library of Congress releases revised version of its Recommended Formats Statement
From: "Bausenbach, Ardie abau@xxxxxxx" <jats-list-service@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Mon, 28 Sep 2020 16:38:01 -0000
The Library of Congress is excited to release the newest version of the
Recommended Formats Statement. Over the last several months, the team of
experts charged with maintaining, improving and ensuring the accuracy of the
Statement have been engaged in the annual process of examining the Statement
and its content categories, to ensure that it correctly reflects the technical
characteristics for best practices regarding preservation and long-term
access. The team of experts have made considerable changes to this year's
Recommended Formats Statement with expanded content categories and format
preferences (https://www.loc.gov/preservation/resources/rfs/).
This year marks the sixth anniversary of the first release of the Recommended
Formats Statement and one of the most monumental in recent years. With the
Statement now an established resource within the creative landscape, we
dedicated ourselves to exploring ways in which we can extend its reach and
make it even more useful for its many stakeholders.  Ensuring that the
Statement is both accurate and useful is dependent on knowing from the
stakeholders what needs to be updated and corrected to reflect current best
practices.
The major revisions involved in what we are calling RFS 2.0 are twofold.  The
first is a restructuring of the Statement itself, to represent developments in
how works are created in our increasingly digital world.  As a result, in this
version of the RFS are included three new categories of creative works:
Musical Scores; GIS, Geospatial and Non-GIS Cartographic; and Design and 3D.
Each category represents the remarkable and unique ways in which creation is
happening of all three types of works.  The second is the creation of a file
format evaluation matrix.  This tool provides our in-house experts a
structured way to manage their review of digital file formats as part of the
annual revision process of the RFS; and it offers external users of the
Recommended Formats transparency in how the Library evaluates digital file
formats in the RFS hierarchies.
The Library of Congress is encouraged by the value its partners and
stakeholders around the world have found in the Recommended Formats Statement;
and we hope that the work undertaken this year will make them even more
useful.  We look forward to hearing your thoughts as you work with the
Statement and taking them into consideration as we tackle the next annual
revision in 2022.

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