Preservation and Sustainability

Simple steps and Criteria

1.       Save the files in a common format.  The 16-bit uncompressed TIFF format is ideal and should remain readable for a long period of time.

2.      Save your files on media that is durable, in common use, and not to be affected by particular company going out of business or changing its technology.  CDs, DVDs and removable hard drives are ideal.  For long-term sustainability evaluate the collection to observe possible deterioration and create duplicates on a regular schedule.

3.      The best practice against loss of data is making copies, at least two of each file and keep a copy off-site.

4.      Create a readable catalog of what is stored in the archives, such as a photographic database program.  Extract all the catalog information and save it as a simple text file or word document or convert it into an Acrobat PDF file.

Consider the following as ideal formats:
For image media use

TIFF (uncompressed)
JPEG2000 (lossless) (*.jp2)
PNG (*.png)

(Ctein, 2010, p. 399-400)