Stanford Digital Repository
Automating the File Assessment Process
•JHOVE – file analysis and technical metadata creation
•“Digital Formats: Factors for Sustainability, Functionality, and Quality”
•Fleischhauer and Arms, Library of Congress
•Presented at DLF Fall Forum 2003
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Two key developments since original work on file assessment and development of questionnaire:

Carl Fleischhauer and Caroline Arms of LC Office of Strategic Initiatives presented their framework for evaluating formats under the title “Digital File Formats: Factors for Sustainability, Functionality, and Quality”

And the tool known as JHOVE was born.

Assume that many of you are familiar with JHOVE’s capabilities; in the interest of time, I won’t go into great detail. Suffice it to say,
It greatly simplifies process of identifying formats and exposing technical characteristics.

Fleischhauer and Arms work was something of a revelation, because it effectively generalizes and categorizes much of the information we were trying to capture, at a more detailed file level, in our original questionnaire.

We built on this work, adopting most of it, and developed a matrix for the analysis of predominant formats. It is this matrix that now serves as the basis underlying the SDR preservation assessment tool and associated format risk policies. The tool is encoded in XML and implemented in a program written in JAVA which is used during repository ingestion to produce a Submission Information Package.