Package Formats for Preserved Digital Material

This paper presents an investigation of the best suitable package formats for long term digital preservation. The choice of a package format for preservation is crucial for future access, thus a thorough analysis of choice is important. The investigation presented here covers setting up requirements for package formats used for long term preserved digital material, and using these requirements as the basis for analysing a range of package formats. The result of the concrete investigation is that the WARC format is the package format best suited for the listed requirements. Fulfilling the listed requirements will ensure mitigating a number of risks of information loss. Thus WARC is the best choice for a package format in cases where these same risks are judged most important. Similar analysis will need to be carried out in cases where the requirements differ from the ones described here, e.g. if there are specific forensic or direct access to files.