AHDS Deposit Formats
Suitable formats for depositing data with the AHDS
The tables below list the suitable AHDS deposit formats. These are defined according to the criteria below.
Preferred Deposit Formats
Preferred deposit formats include formats that the AHDS recommend as best practice, our preferred preservation formats and popular formats for which there is good software support (especially export options) and we can successfully preserve the identified significant properties. Cost and likely future support for necessary software should also be taken into account.
Acceptable Deposit Formats
Formats that the AHDS can probably successfully preserve given our current software and skills.
Problematic Deposit Formats
Any formats that will be very difficult to ingest and preserve either, a) due to expense of, or difficulty of obtaining, appropriate software, b) requirements for highly specialised knowledge that the AHDS does not have in-house and cannot contract, or c) over reliance on software or hardware specific functionality that cannot be replicated in different technical environments.
Problematic Aspects
Characteristics of the information content stored in the file format that may be difficult to preserve.
Table of formats suitable for deposit with the AHDS
| Digital Resource Type | Database |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | Delimited text (tab or pipe delimited, comma delimited with quotes around textual values) with SQL setup |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | 2. Database software formats with full description of database structure (tables, fields, data types, keys and relationships): Access95+
FoxPro 2.5+
Paradox
Filemaker Pro 3.0+
Delimited text with full description of database structure (tables, fields, data types, keys and relationships) |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Filemaker Pro 2
Obsolete database software formats |
| Problematic Aspects | User interface forms, queries using custom extensions to SQL. Report templates |
| Digital Resource Type | Plain Text |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | ASCII (7 bit)
UTF-8 UNICODE
UTF-16 UNICODE |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | ISO 8859 character sets
MS-DOS codepages
MS-Windows codepages
Apple codepages
Other UNICODE encodings |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | EBCDIC |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Word Processor Document |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | Rich Text Format
Open Document Text (ODT) |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | PDF
Word
WordPerfect
StarOffice / OpenOffice |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Early versions of word processor packages.
Word processor packages for platforms other than Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Mark-up |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | XML (including XHTML) with DTD or schema
SGML (including HTML) with DTD
|
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | - |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Custom mark-up without DTD or schema |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Raster Image |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | TIFF v6+,
PNG
|
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | GIF
BMP
PCX
Photoshop*
Paintshop Pro*
CGM
PhotoCD
GeoTIFF |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Any lossy compression (e.g. JPEG)
Minority image formats (e.g. .bob)
PDF |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | CAD |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | - |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | STEP
DXF |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | - |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | GIS |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | None |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | GML (version 2 or above)
ESRI Shape Files
ESRI Export formats (.e001)
MapInfo Formats
SDTS
DXF
DWG
|
| Problematic Deposit Formats | NTF |
| Problematic Aspects | The NTF format is supported by the OSGB but they have announced their intention to move away from NTF in favour of GML2.1.2 |
| Digital Resource Type | Spreadsheets |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | Delimited text files(tab or pipe delimited, comma delimited with quotes around textual values) |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | Excel
Lotus
Quattro> |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Obsolete spreadsheet software formats |
| Problematic Aspects | Functionality of formulas, results of functions, embedded charts, complex visual layout (borders, fonts, colour, column widths etc) |
| Digital Resource Type | Executables |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | None |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | ANSI C or Java 1.2+ source code |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Compiled code
C++, C#, Visual Basic, Pascal, Ada, assembler or other common programming languages source code |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Audio |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | WAV
Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | MP3
Ogg Vorbis |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Real Audio
Modules
Other minority audio formats |
| Problematic Aspects | Streamed audio |
| Digital Resource Type | Moving Image |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | None |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | MPEG-1
MPEG-4 with common codec
AVI with common codec
MJPEG with WAV file
MPEG2 |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Streamed audio/video
Unknown codecs |
| Problematic Aspects | Sync issues |
| Digital Resource Type | Vector Graphics |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | SVG
DXF
|
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | Adobe Illustrator |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | - |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Geophysics Datafile |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | AGF |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | Contors
Geoplot |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | - |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Statistical Dataset |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | SPSS Portable
Delimited text files(tab or pipe delimited, comma delimited with quotes around textual values) with data dictionary and codebook |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | Stata
SAS |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Fixed width text files without appropriate documentation |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
| Digital Resource Type | Virtual Reality |
| Preferred Deposit Formats | None |
| Acceptable Deposit Formats | VRML |
| Problematic Deposit Formats | Proprietary virtual reality modelling software formats |
| Problematic Aspects | - |
Page last modified: August 22nd 2006 by