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Sharing our expertise

Sharing our expertise

Advice and guidance

Digital Preservation guidance notes provide concise, authoritative advice on specific topics related to the preservation and management of electronic records. Their intended audience is anyone involved in the creation of electronic records which may need to be preserved over the long term, and those responsible for preservation.

Guidance notes

 

Selecting file formats

This guidance note provides advice on general issues, which should be considered by the creators and managers of electronic records when selecting file formats for use.

Selecting storage media

This guidance note provides advice on general issues, which should be considered by the creators and managers of electronic records when selecting physical storage media for long-term preservation.

Care, handling and storage of removable media

Electronic storage media are susceptible to damage through mishandling or inappropriate storage conditions. This guidance note provides advice on the care, handling and storage of removable storage media.

Graphic file formats

This guidance note provides advice on general issues, which should be considered by the creators and managers of electronic records when selecting file formats for use with images. Choice of file format should be determined by the functional requirements of the record-creating process, with an awareness of long-term sustainability

Image compression

This guidance note provides advice on general issues, which should be considered by the creators and managers of electronic records when selecting file formats for use.

Planned future topics

  • Your personal digital collections
  • Website Archiving - guidance for webmasters and site owners

Technical papers

Redaction of electronic material

Redaction toolkit: Guidelines for the editing of exempt infromation from paper and electronic documents prior to release can be accessed here: Redaction toolkit

DROID automatic format identification documentation (including XML schemas)

This technical report describes an identification method developed by The National Archives, which uses automated analysis of the binary structure of a digital object, and comparison with predefined internal and external 'signatures' for specific formats. The report can be accessed here: DROID automatic format identification documentation

PRONOM Technical Registry Unique Identifiers

The PRONOM Unique Identifier (PUID) is an extensible scheme for providing persistent, unique and unambiguous identifiers for file formats.

Planned future technical papers

  • Technology Watch - Characterisation
  • Preservation Planning
  • Migration
  • Transfer - Technical considerations

We welcome feedback and suggestions for possible future topics, by email to digital-archive@nationalarchives.gov.uk

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