File Formats

• In the early years of computing there were many competing formats for any and all types of digital data. Few of them were compatible and many of them vanished after a time or were replaced. There are many historians who were active in research in the 1990s who now have entire collections of files in formats that can no longer be read.

  This is still a problem. Admittedly most formats are compatible now or can be easily made to be compatible. That is fine for now, but what about the future? In ten years will your file be accessible to anyone including yourself?

  Take a look at this book where we go through the issues and offer some suggestions.

• File Formats and conversion Book
• Case Study #1

  In this case study we take a look at oral history, especially the types of file formats that you might wish to consider for storing interviews retained as audio and video. The book also looks at how you might wish to organise such data.

• Oral History Interviews File Formats and Organisation Book
• DMP

  Re-visit your data management plan and complete section 5: Storage and backup of data, based on the topics covered in the previous three sections.  Add as much information as you are able to at this stage before moving onto the next part of this module.  It may also be appropriate to add further information to section 2 (covering how the data will be collected) and section 6 (covering file formats for archiving)

  Remember, storing data can seem straightforward in this computing age.  However, it is important to consider how you will store the data during and after the research, how it will be backed-up, and how you will manage different versions as these evolve.