Stanford Digital Repository
SDR “Preferred” Formats
To be determined
Video
WAVE (LPCM)
Audio
PDF (any version)
Page-Viewer
TIFF 5.0 and above (uncompressed)
Image
XML 1.0
Marked-up text
UTF-8
ASCII
Plain text
Like many institutional repositories, Stanford also settled on the concept of a “preferred” status to focus our commitment to (and our depositors’ expectations of) the most thorough preservation services on a small number of formats. We hope this will result in more predictability in our workflow and increased efficiency of our preservation activities. Note that not all formats with a Format Score of zero automatically earn the “preferred” status; here we consider what Fleischhauer and Arm refer to as quality & functionality factors to help us choose. Similarly, assigning “preferred” status does not require a Format Score of zero; a format that is both highly suited to a specific purpose in our institutional context and free of risk factors does not always exist.