[Dspace-general] PDF/A

[Shane Beers]

Beth:

When I first arrived here, I was interested in attempting to  
standardize the use of PDF/A, especially for our ETD collections where  
the submissions were far more controllable.

The major hurdle is that all content of the PDF/A must be embedded  
into the document itself - this can become an impossibility if the  
person creating the PDF is someone who does not know how to correctly  
embed everything. You would be surprised (or maybe you wouldn't...)  
how fairly simple technology can confuse even PhD students.

That also creates a limitation of the content of the PDF/A's - as of  
now they can not contain things like multimedia objects. This may not  
be a real concern of yours, but it's of note.

Additionally, the conversion from regular PDFs to PDF/A is often  
impossible, as the information in the PDF was not embedded in the  
first place, and you no longer have things like the original font and  
so on.

Know that this is only my cursory findings, and not gleaned from a  
deep investigation on my part. You may wish to investigate it  
yourself. Essentially what I'm saying is - it will probably work quite  
well in an extremely structured workflow. Outside of that, you may  
have many issues to overcome!

Shane Beers
Digital Repository Services Librarian
George Mason University
sbeers at gmu.edu
http://mars.gmu.edu
703-993-3742



On Feb 8, 2008, at 6:47 AM, Beth Black wrote:

> Hello!
>
> We are investigating using PDF/A in our repository and wonder what  
> others are doing. Do you recommend or require  PDF/A?  If you  
> require, do you convert for submitters in some way?
> Any other thoughts on PDF/A?
>
> Thanks!
> Beth
>
> Beth Black
> Systems Librarian and Assistant Professor
> University  Libraries
> 610 Ackerman Road, Room 5855
> Columbus, Ohio 43202
> 614-688-5428 phone
> 614-292-7859 fax
> black.367 at osu.edu
>
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