[Dspace-general] Supported Formats, PDF

[Scott Yeadon]

Hi Jeremy,

>Date: Mon, 8 May 2006 15:41:25 -0700 
>From: "Shellhase, Jeremy" <jcs at lib-mail.humboldt.edu>
>Subject: [Dspace-general] Supported Formats, PDF
>To: Dspace-general at mit.edu
>Message-ID:
>	<5962A745B310D411B610009027DCF40E025BE9C1 at lib-mail.humboldt.edu>
>Content-Type: text/plain
>
>Hello All,
>
>I had a few quick questions for anyone running a Dspace repository.  
>1) Have you decided to declare Adobe PDF a "supported" format?
>  
>
Yes, but all that means in our current policy is that the repository 
managers will undertake (in consultation with collection owners) 
migration of bitstreams of this format to a new format should it become 
obsolete or there is a risk it may become obsolete.

>1.a.) If you have, has anyone undertaken any "functional preservation" on
>this or actually any other format?
>  
>
No. We are developing ways of assisting authors/content generators to 
create their materials in such a way that popular and archive-quality 
formats are used (for example, use of template sets so that documents 
can be archived in XML rather than a native/proprietary word processing 
package, acceptable formats for images, etc). This work is only in its 
infancy here at the moment. We haven't really looked at funtional 
preservation/emulation in any detail, to what extent functional 
preservation can be supported long-term is something that could be 
debated and discussed ad infinitum...a neat example has been developed 
by the National Library of Australia which converts databases to XML and 
attempts to emulate some basic functionality. This though requires 
negotiation with the db owner and requires some work per database. See 
http://www.nla.gov.au/xinq/ for more details.

>1.b.) What was or will be the signal(s) that "functional preservation" is
>indicated for a particular format, like Adobe PDF.
>
>Thanks in advance. Feel free to respond off-list or on.
>
>Regards,
>
>Jeremy
>
>Jeremy C. Shellhase
>Systems Librarian
>Humboldt State University Library
>Arcata, [Northern]California USA
>jcs7001 at humboldt.edu
>
>
>
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>End of Dspace-general Digest, Vol 34, Issue 4
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