PDF should be used to preserve information for the future

Press release from the Digital Preservation Coalition

Good news the already popular PDF file format adopted by consumers and business alike is one of the most logical formats to preserve today’s electronic information for tomorrow.

According to the latest report released today by the Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC), Portable Document Format (PDF) is one of the best file formats to preserve electronic documents and ensure their survival for the future. This announcement will allow information officers to follow a standardised approach for preserving electronic documents.

Information management and long–term preservation are major issues facing consumers and businesses in the 21st Century. This report is one of a series where The Digital Preservation Coalition (DPC) aims to think about and address the challenges facing us.

This report reviews PDF and the newly introduced PDF/Archive (PDF/A) format as a potential solution to the problem of long–term digital preservation. It suggests adopting PDF/A for archiving electronic documents’ as the standard will help preservation and retrieval in the future. It concludes that it can only be done when combined with a comprehensive records management programme and formally established records procedures.

Betsy Fanning, author of the report and director of standards at AIIM, comments, “A standardised approach to preserving electronic documents would be a welcome development for organisations. Without this we could be walking blindly into a digital black hole.”

The National Archives works closely with the DPC with issues surrounding digital preservation and will continue to do so. Adrian Brown, head of digital preservation at The National Archives said: “This report highlights the challenges we all face in a digital age. Using PDF/A as a standard will help information officers ensure that key business data survives. But it should never be viewed as the Holy Grail. It is merely a tool in the armoury of a well thought out records management policy. “

The report is a call to action, organisations need to act now and look hard at their information policies and procedures to anticipate the demand for their content (documents and records) in the future. Everybody has different criteria, types and uses for documentation so you need to find one that works for your organisation.

If you would like to read the full report please go to the Digital Preservation Coalition website. This can be accessed here: www.dpconline.org/graphics/reports/index.html#twr0802

New book on using metadata in digital resources

Muriel Foulonneau (Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France) and Jenn Riley (Indiana University) have published a new book on using metadata for cultural resources.

According to the blurb

This book is intended to assist information professionals in improving the usability of digital objects by adequately documenting them and using tools for metadata management. It provides practical advice for libraries, archives, and museums dealing with digital collections in a wide variety of formats and from a wider variety of sources.

It will be interesting to see if it looks at some of the more recent additions to the field, such as METS and MODS.

Darwin Manuscripts Online

One of the most successful digitisation projects in Britain is Cambridge University’s The Complete Works of Charles Darwin. It has recently added private papers, including the first draft of his theory of evolution, notes from the voyage of the Beagle and recipe book by Emma Darwin.

The project has has fantastic media exposure in the UK and beyond, including a mention on prime time television. As the history page of the resource recounts, this is not without its problems.

A related project at Camrbridge is the Darwin Correspondence Project, which presents letters Darwin sent and received. There is an interesting research project in waiting to try and bring the two resources together

Workshop on Data Visualisation

Forwarded on behalf of Dr Julie Tolmie, King’s College London

The next cross-domain networking event held by this group will be the vizNET 2008 Workshop held in Loughborough 7-9 May:

http://www.viznet.ac.uk/viznet2008/

We would like to invite you, your students and your institution to showcase your research in visualisation in the Arts & Humanities and associated interdisciplinary activities by video or by poster at our event.

We also invite you to contribute your expertise and insight to day three of vizNET 2008 (9 May) in which we will explore and identify a series of Grand Challenges as perceived by the UK Visualization Community:
http://www.viznet.ac.uk/viznet2008/grandchallenges

Early registration for this event closes next Friday 18 April:
￡40 / ￡15 Students
Video/Poster submission closes in two weeks on Friday 25th April 2008.

Register now for
vizNET 2008: The 2nd Interdisciplinary Conference on Intersections of Visualization Practices and Techniques , 7th-9th May, Loughborough University

A JISC funded joint event hosted by vizNET and 3DVisA.
http://www.viznet.ac.uk/viznet2008/