Sustainability of Digital Formats: Planning for Library of Congress Collections

Introduction | Sustainability Factors | Content Categories | Format Descriptions | Contact

The Sustainability of Digital Formats Web site provides information about digital content formats. We welcome feedback on the content.

See The Signal: Digital Happenings at the Library of Congress blog for recent updates about our work.

Introduction

Background information and overview: What is a format? How shall we evaluate formats? What projects in other organizations are addressing these questions? Overview | Contributors | Formats, Evaluation Factors, and Relationships | Papers and Presentations | Related Resources

Sustainability Factors

What affects the ability of the Library to preserve content in a given format? These sustainability factors apply to all formats. Disclosure | Adoption | Transparency | Self-documentation | External Dependencies | Impact of Patents | Technical Protection Mechanisms

Content Categories

The evaluation of formats must take into account quality and functionality. These factors vary according to the type of content under consideration and the categories will be expanded as time passes. Still Image | Sound | Textual | Moving Image | Web Archive | Datasets | Geospatial | Email and PIM | Design and 3D | Accessibility | Aggregate | Generic | Browse All Formats

Format Descriptions

Documents with more information about specific formats. Explanation of FDD Terms/Structure | Browse Categories | Browse Alphabetical List | FDD Workplan & Recent Updates | Format Descriptions as XML | Mapping FDDs to PRONOM and Wikidata
Last updated 10/31/2023