This post details the exciting transformation of the Historical Media Publications Collection, a challenging digital collection of historical media industry magazines spanning the late 19th to mid-20th century. Expanding online presentation from dense bound volumes into searchable, issue-level resources, this collaborative project improved discoverability and usability of this collection and set a foundation for working with other serialized content though innovative new workflows and next-generation content management.
The Library of Congress has published the updated 2025-2026 Recommended Formats Statement. Updates have been made to preferred and accepted formats across multiple content categories, and are captured in a Change Log.
This post is the most recent in a series about file format research for the Sustainability of Digital Formats site at the Library of Congress, including several new format descriptions as well as community collaborations.
The Library of Congress has published the 2024-2025 Recommended Formats Statement. Updates, all captured in a Change Log, include support for digital accessibility features as a criterion for evaluating digital formats, an FAQ to address user feedback and adjustments to preferred and accepted formats across multiple content categories.
The Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) AudioVisual Working Group has returned to a schedule of two hybrid meetings a year, in addition to virtual working subgroup meetings as needed. In the past year, these meetings have include trips to the National Audio-Visual Conservation Center and to the Smithsonian Library and Archives’ new Audiovisual Media Preservation Initiative (AVMPI) digitization and processing space. This working group has also published new guidelines: Guidelines for IRENE System Products for Long Term Retention: Deliverable Packages for Imaged Audio Systems and Guidelines for Embedding Metadata in WebVTT Files. Recent work also included open-source software development and maintenance for BWF MetaEdit, FFmpeg, and vrecord. More exciting projects for 2024 are coming.
Technologist Ashley Blewer is using the format description document XML files to gather data across all FDDs. She has pulled this data into data visualization tools which allow us to see what categories our FDDs fall into and how many FDDs are being updated (by category, each year). These visualizations help the formats team to identify issues and streamline internal review and update processes.
The Federal Agencies Digital Guidelines Initiative (FADGI) AudioVisual Working Group partnered with a consultant and accessibility firm on a project to enhance accessibility in open-source desktop applications for the digital preservation community. This blog post provides information on the applications tested, the issues found, and the technical guidelines and community recommendations to come out of this research.
This post is part of the semi-annual blog series on file format research for the Sustainability of Digital Formats site at the Library of Congress, and provides updates on new and updated file format description documents.
The digital preservation landscape is ever-evolving, and the Library of Congress has recently made a significant update to its Recommended Formats Statement (RFS), to upgrade FFV1 (version 3) in Matroska (.mkv) container from an "Acceptable Format" to one of five "Preferred Formats" for the preservation and long-term access of video materials, reflecting its ongoing commitment to staying at the forefront of audiovisual preservation.
