PREFORMA works on one of the main challenges that memory institutions (archives, museums, libraries, etc.) are facing nowadays: the long-term preservation of digital data. In particular, the project will offer memory institutions an open source conformance checker that controls if a file complies with standard specifications and with the acceptance criteria of the memory institution, thus giving them full control of the process of conformity testing of files to be created, migrated and ingested into archives.
This software development is carried out in a collaborative environment with memory institutions and experts. We would like to invite you now to participate in this process.
How can I participate?
Your memory institution can be involved in the testing phase of the software under development, by checking the process of the conformity tests with your own files and by considering your requirements for the technical iterations.
What would we need from you?
We won’t need much of your time. We need to receive some test files as example of the media files to be checked. PREFORMA is working on conformance checkers for texts, still images and audio-visual records. So you can provide test files in one or more of the following categories and standards:
- texts (PDF/A),
- still images (Uncompressed TIFF),
- audio-visual records (MKV container format, FFV1 video and moving image codecs and LPCM uncompressed audio).
The test files will be treated as confidential and will not be distributed outside the PREFORMA Consortium. A selection of files will be also required as demonstration files to be released and distributed to the wider public for the purposes of demonstrating the PREFORMA conformance checkers. If you can make your files publicly available as demonstrators, do please let us know.
Would you like to be involved in defining the policies to be checked?
Welcome on board! We’re involving memory institutions from many countries that are contributing to the refinement of our open source tools with their expertise, use cases and specific requirements. We would like to hear your opinion on aspects such as:
- Does your institution have any defined process/protocol/methodology in validating preservation file formats?
- Does your institution have any defined policy with further restrictions and technical specifications regarding the standards of the mentioned file formats?
- Which are the problematic cases that you are facing or that you may envisage while checking the correctness and standard compliance of the files that are stored in your archives?
You’ll find further information at the project website: http://www.preforma-project.
It will be a pleasure to count on your cooperation with the PREFORMA Project. Your participation will be highlighted on the project website, and your institution could be one of the pioneer institutions to test and implement the new open source tools.
Are you interested in participating in this process?
The PREFORMA team is available to solve any question you should have and help you with this cooperation.
Please contact Claudio Prandoni (prandoni@promoter.it), Erwin Verbruggen (everbruggen@beeldengeluid.nl) and Magnus Geber (Magnus.Geber@riksarkivet.se) to confirm your participation.
We’ll be glad to contact you and fix an appointment to facilitate the process.