File Format Registries

Andreas Aschenbrenner

Abstract:
Cooperation has always been essential in the digital preservation community regarding knowledge exchange and collaboration in research activities. As initiatives increasingly turn to implementation, cooperation also gains practical significance. Initiatives embark on collaboratively building services that are required by various preservation systems.
This presentation addresses file format registries. The preservation community jointly calls for a register that identifies and documents file formats, to come to terms with the myriad of different file formats. Activities towards building a file format registry are emerging, as already some preservation initiatives rely on such a future service in their current approaches.