Standards Watch

Electronic document file format for long-term preservation–Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4

Cindy Hepfer, ALA Voting Representative to NISO, reports to us that there is an ongoing systematic review of the published standard, ISO 19005-1, Document management: Electronic document file format for long-term preservation–Part 1: Use of PDF 1.4 (PDF/A-1). She points out that the intent for ISO 19005 was to have a “family” of standards, allowing the creation of future parts, which can provide compatibility with future versions of the underlying PDF specification without rendering Part 1 of the document, or applications based on PDF Version 1.4, obsolete. Currently there are two other parts in development: ISO 19005-2 which will be based upon ISO 32000-1 (PDF 1.7) as well as ISO 19005-3 which will address electronic documents containing dynamic media (movies, sounds, 3D, etc.). This is not a NISO standard, but one that is being balloted by ISO. ALA is not voting on the standard itself but rather is providing feedback…