Library of Congress Recommended Format Specifications: Encouraging Preservation Without Discouraging Creation

The Library of Congress has a fundamental commitment to acquiring, preserving and making accessible in the long term the creative output of the nation and the world. The Library has devised the Recommended Format Specifications to enable it to identify what formats will most easily lend themselves to preservation and long‐ term access, especially with regard to digital formats. The Library is doing this to provide guidance to its staff in their work of acquiring content for its collection, but we also seek to share this with other stakeholders, from the creative community to vendors to other libraries, each of which has a need and interest in preservation and access. To ensure ongoing accuracy and relevancy, the Library of Congress will be reviewing and revising the specifications on an annual basis and welcomes feedback and input from all interested parties. Why the Library of Congress Developed the Recommended Format Specifications Throughout its history, the Library of Congress has been committed to a goal best described in its mission statement “to further the progress of knowledge and creativity for the benefit of the American people.” At its core, the Library's ability to advance the nation's progress has depended upon its collection, which in turn embodies the knowledge and creativity of the many authors, composers, journalists, artists, and scientists whose work is contained there. The quality of the collection reflects the Library's care in selecting materials and the effort it invests in preserving them and making them accessible to the American people for the long term. To build such a substantial and wide‐ranging collection and to ensure that it will be available for successive generations, the Library relies upon a wealth of expertise. In order to maximize the scope and scale of the content in the collection, the Library calls upon the knowledge in languages, subject matter and trends in publishing and content creation provided by the specialists who identify and acquire material for the Library’s collection. 1 United States Copyright Office. (2012). Best edition of published copyrighted works for the collections of the Library of Congress. Retrieved from http://www.copyright.gov/circs/circ07b.pdf But knowledge of the technical characteristics of the production of creative works is required as well. In the past, the lasting power of the collections depended exclusively upon the endurance of such materials as the paper, ink, and binding of a book; the acetate or paper coated with gelatin in a photograph; or the shellac, vinyl, and coated polyester that comprise a sound recording. Although these materials remain in use today, creators and publishers have also begun to employ a wide array of intangible digital formats, as well as continuing to change and adapt the physical formats in which they work. The Library needs to be able to identify the formats that are suitable for large‐scale acquisition and preservation for long‐term access if it is to continue to build its collection and ensure that it lasts into the future. To do this in the past, the Library of Congress has relied upon the specifications included in the copyright regulation known as the Best Edition Statement.1 This has offered clear guidance to Library of Congress staff on the hierarchy of preference between certain physical characteristics in creative works. For example, it states clearly that when it comes to printed textual matter, “hard cover rather than soft cover.” The detail in the Best Edition Statement Copyright of this contribution remains in the name of the author(s). http://dx.doi.org/10.5703/1288284315583 Collection Development 261 has been extremely useful for the Library for decades; however, it has some serious drawbacks. Since it is a regulation, the Best Edition Statement is not revised or updated frequently and there are preferences within it that no longer keep up with changes which have taken place in the creation of tangible media, such as the decline of the use of diskettes. Even more importantly, the Best Edition Statement does not address digital content at all, with the sole exception of online serials. For an institution with the broad goals and remit of the Library of Congress, having guidance that fails to address at least half of all formats in use will not work. Specifications are required that cover the whole range of content it intends to collect and that means digital content at least as much as analog. In response to this need, in 2011 the Library began a process that would lead to the development of the Recommended Format Specifications (www.loc.gov/preservation /resources/rfs/index.html). The Library began its work by examining the Best Edition Statement, which enabled it to work closely and collaboratively with its colleagues in the Copyright Office (http://www.copyright.gov/) and take advantage of their input and unique expertise. Yet it was not merely the Best Edition Statement that provided a base from which to carry out the group’s work. For digital formats, the working group took full advantage of the work done by Library of Congress staff with regard to its work on digital format sustainability (http://www .digitalpreservation.gov/formats/index.shtml) to provide it with a starting point.2 Between these two established fields of endeavor and sources of expertise, the Library had a strong basis on which to build the Recommended Format Specifications. Parameters of the Recommended Format Specifications Before discussing the specific aims the Recommended Format Specifications attempt to address, it is best to make clear what they do not 2 Library of Congress. (2014). Sustainability of digital formats: Planning for Library of Congress collections. Retrieved from http://www.digitalpreservation.gov/formats/index.shtml attempt to do. The specifications which the Library is now publishing do not replace or supersede the Best Edition Statement, which provides guidance to publishers and creators in fulfilling their obligations with regard to the registration or deposit of their works under the terms of the Copyright Law. It seeks to complement that work, building upon the knowledge gained from working with the Best Edition Statement and providing a broader set of recommendations, aimed at providing guidance and clarity in a creative world, which is rich with both potential and problems and which affords numerous competing options for content format or container. Likewise, the creation and publication of the Recommended Format Specifications is not intended to serve as an answer to all the questions raised in preserving and providing long‐ term access to creative content. They do not provide instructions for receiving this material into repositories, managing that content or undertaking the many ongoing tasks which will be necessary to maintain this content so that it may be used well into the future. Tackling each of those aspects is a project in and of itself as each form of content has a unique set of facets and nuances. These specifications provide guidance on identifying sets of formats which are not drawn so narrowly as to discourage creators from working within them, but will instead encourage creators to use them to produce works in formats which will make preserving them and making them accessible simpler. Following these specifications helps make it realistic to build, grow and save creative output for our individual and collective benefit for generations to come. Developing the Recommended Format Specifications In 2011, a working group comprised of stakeholders from across the Library was established to examine the existing Best Edition Statement and determine a structure upon which the Library could model its own specifications. The