Archiving Digital Materials

The Archives’s collection development policy is based on content, not format. We do not collect materials based on whether it is physical or digital. Please refer to our collection development policy for more information about the content we collect.

There may be, however, some additional format considerations when gathering and preparing digital materials for archiving.

Preferred formats

To increase the likelihood that files will remain readable in the future, institutions tend to recommend more sustainable file formats, especially those with open specifications, of high quality, and in relatively wide use. Especially in cases where one has used a proprietary format of narrower or more specialized use, or where files can’t be read without specialty software or hardware, if it is possible to convert files to one of the more sustainable file types, that will likely improve odds of future accessibility. Some institutions also recommend depositing data in both its original format and an equivalent sustainable format. That said, institutions vary in specific recommendations and find need to revisit them fairly frequently. Below is a fairly short table (borrowed from Trinity University Libraries and Smithsonian Libraries) that may prove useful.

While the landscape continually changes, the preferred file formats for file types listed below have become standard enough to currently feel comfortable about their accessibility in the future.