Format policies

Main Page > Documentation > Format-specific preservation plans

Format-specific preservation planning for Archivematica is based on analyses of the Significant properties of the format.

Normalization is one preservation strategy that can be implemented using Archivematica. Archivematica uses the National Archives of Australia's Xena (XML Electronic Normalising for Archives) software to convert certain file formats to xml-based formats on ingest. A full list of the file types Xena can normalize is available at http://xena.sourceforge.net/help.php?page=normformats.html.

However, some formats cannot be normalized by Xena. Also, it may be desirable to adopt format-specific preservation plans for certain types of files based on institutional requirements and preferences.

Follow the links below for further discussion of these issues for each file format.

Format	Also known as	File extension(s)	Normalization tool
Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform	Adobe XMP	.xmp
Adobe Illustrator drawing	Adobe AI	.ai
Advanced Stream Redirector file	Microsoft ASX Playlist	.asx
Microsoft Windows Bitmap Image file		.bmp
Cascading Stylesheet		.css
Comma Separated Values file		.csv
Document type definition		.dtd
Encapsulated PostScript		.eps
Extensible Markup Language		.xml
Extensible Stylesheet Language		.xsl
Graphics Interchange Format		.gif
Hypertext Markup Language		.html
	.ico
JavaScript file	JavaScript programming files JScript files	.js
Joint Photographic Experts Group	JPEG	.jpg
Microsoft Excel Workbook	Microsoft Excel Binary Interchange File Format (BIFF)	.xls	Xena
Microsoft Office Word	MS-WORD	.doc	Xena
Moving Picture Experts Group file	MPEG	.mpg
Nikon Electronic Format	Nikon Image Format Nikon Digital SLR Camera Raw Image File	.nef
Portable Document Format		.pdf	Xena
Portable Network Graphics		.png	Xena
Quicktime (video)		.mov
Real Media Metafile		.ram
Rich Text Format		.rtf	Xena
Scalable Vector Graphics		.svg	Xena
Shockwave Flash file		.swf
Tagged Image File Format		.tiff, .tif	Xena
Windows Media Player		.wmv
Visual Basic Scripting file	C Source Code Microsoft Active Scripting languege VBScript	.vbs
ZIP file	Zip archive file	.zip