From The Library of Congress (via a Post by Abigail Grotke on the NDSA List):
The Library of Congress is pleased to announce the release of the 2017-2018 Recommended Formats Statement. We have been gratified to see how widely the Statement continues to be used throughout the stakeholder community.
The goal of the Recommended Formats has always been to provide useful information furthering the shared goal of ensuring the preservation of and long-term access to creative works. By providing up-to-date information about the file types, physical and technical characteristics and associated metadata which support these worthy goals, the Statement hopes to provide the building blocks upon which libraries can build their collections, now and for the future.
In seeking this year to make the Recommended Formats even more valuable to the community of users, the resident experts on the Library’s technical teams focused on two important aspects of the Statement: metadata and integration with other crucial preservation documentation.
The inherent value of metadata to preservation and access is so innate that it can occasionally be overlooked. With this edition of the Recommended Formats, we attempted to bring metadata out of the wings and more fully on to the stage, as well as adding further depth of detail to that metadata, especially with regard to Textual Works, Still Image Works and Datasets/Databases.
Complementing this, we have taken full advantage of some other key works produced at the Library of Congress, providing links between the file format descriptions in the Library’s Sustainability of Digital Formats and the Statement, as well as between the Statement and the Library’s Guide to Creating Preservable Websites. The value of each of these resources can only be magnified when used in conjunction, so providing the links will hopefully prove of great use to our stakeholders.
The Library remains committed to acquiring and preserving digital works and to providing whatever support it can to other similarly committed stakeholders. We shall continue to build our collections with their preservation and long-term access firmly in mind; and we shall continue to engage with others in the community in efforts such as the Recommended Formats Statement.
We encourage any and all feedback and comments others might have on the Statement that might make it more useful for both our needs and for the needs of anyone who might find it worthwhile in their own work. Our annual review process seeks to ensure that this work meets the needs of all stakeholders in the preservation and long-term access of creative works
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Direct to 2017-2018 Recommended Formats Statement
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