This publication is intended as a practical guidebook based on lessons learnt and the explanation of problems to be addressed when planning the long-term preservation of a cultural digital archive, with particular regard to the phase of verification of the conformance of file formats stored in the archive. In order to provide a useful tool, the structure of the PREFORMA Handbook is conceived as a combination of critical considerations about the steps that must be taken into account by the archive managers, together with the guidelines on how to use the PREFORMA tools for running the actual conformance checking.

The Handbook aims to provide an overview of the background of digital preservation, the problems that PREFORMA addresses with its tools, how DPManager, MediaConch and veraPDF contribute to solve these problems and, at a complementary practical level, information about the installation of the tools and the usage of the various functionalities of the software.

The publication closes with an afterword that looks at the future of digital preservation, to trigger the discussion about the new challenges, posed for example by the emergence of new formats and new content, such as 3D digitisations, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) scenarios, linked data and geo-referencing.

We expect the PREFORMA Handbook to be offered as a critical instrument to decision-makers in cultural heritage institutions, to support them in the analysis of problems and the identification of viable solutions, and as a technical reference to managers of digital archives and developers, to offer them guidance on how to use the PREFORMA tools.

Download here the PREFORMA Handbook.

The PREFORMA project is a pre-commercial procurement project supported by the European Commission in the ambit of the Seventh Framework Programme for Research and Technological Development.