PreForma Project

code4lib 2015 | Portland | Ashley Blewer

So what is PreForma?!

Empower memory institutions to gain full control over the technical properties of digital content intended for long-term preservation.

Oh, okay.

Aim of the project is to address the challenge of implementing good quality standardised file formats for preserving data content in the long term. The main objective is to give memory institutions full control of the process of the conformity tests of files to be ingested into archives.

(Yeah, I'm reading off of the slide.)

WHO ARE YOU

011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100 011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100 011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100 011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100 011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100 011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100 011101000110000101111001011011000110111101110010001000000111001101110111011010010110011001110100

WHAT ABOUT ME?

So what does that mean for YOU, as librarians? How can you benefit from this project and why am I talking about it? Well if you are an archivist or working in special collections or do any sort of digital asset management, it’s important that you have the ability to make sure those files are exactly what they say they are, and will continue to be for the long-term. The MKV wrapper is of particular note to preservationists because part of its wrapper structure includes space for attachments, so you can bundle up all associated metadata right into the preservation fie. There’s the standard metadata assets but you can add other things like pictures of the content’s original format. You can even include a decoder within the file that can be used to decode the file itself.

but for real though