title: It Takes a Whole Village to Define a Preservation Strategy: Formalizing Policies on Data Formats Normalization at the National Library of France
creators: Bertrand Caron Alix Bruys Thomas Ledoux Jordan de La Houssaye
abstract: After publishing its policy on data formats for digital preservation, the National library of France (BnF) had to formalize its method to deal with collected data that did not meet its requirements.  This paper describes several significant examples that led BnF from preconceptions to pragmatic decisions upon normalization and preservation strategies for content that could not be ingested as is.  Collective intelligence was highly required; this paper is also intended as an attempt to identify which conditions made it possible to emerge between experts, collection managers and process managers.<br />Described cases tackle issues with PDFs with protection, 48 bits images, PSD files, PDF transformation to JPEG and Final Cut Pro projects.  These cases helped define empirically a method, still a work in progress, that is briefly presented in the last part of the paper.<br />
keywords: normalization formats preservation strategy collaboration