Saturday, October 14, 2017

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 2: Media Types and File Formats

Personal Digital Archiving Guide Part 2: Media Types and File Formats.  Scott David Witmer. Bits and Pieces. August 15, 2017.
     This helpful follow-up post focuses on “born-digital” files created on the computer, and the "characteristics of digital file formats that you should consider when deciding how to preserve your digital materials".  For information on digitizing, it links to guides and handouts, including scanning, recommendations, audio conversion, video conversion, storage, and others.

"The best time to think about preservation is before you create your files." Making decisions early, including organization and metadata, will make it easier to preserve digital files over time.  The post reviews:
  • The trade off between Quality vs. Size of digital files
  • Lossless versus lossy compression
  • File Formats by Media Type
  • Formats for Text, Image, email, audio, video
 Metadata is also important. Be consistent and descriptive when naming or grouping files.

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