EPUB for archival preservation
Over the last few years, the EPUB format has gained widespread popularity in the consumer market. The KB has been approached by a number of publishers that wish to use EPUB for delivering some of their electronic publications. Surprisingly little information is available on the format’s suitability for archival preservation, apart from Library of Congress’ Sustainability of Digital Formats web pages, which contain entries on EPUB 2 and EPUB 3.
So, the KB’s Departments of Collection and Collection Care requested a more detailed investigation of EPUB’s preservation credentials. More specifically, answers were needed to the following questions:
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What are the main characteristics of EPUB?
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What functionality does EPUB provide, and is this sufficient for representing e.g. content with sophisticated layout and typography requirements?
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How well is the EPUB supported by software tools that are used in (pre-)ingest workflows?
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How suitable is EPUB for archival preservation? What are the main risks?
EPUB for archival preservation
The report EPUB for archival preservation is a first attempt at answering these questions as well as possible. It starts out with a simple example that illustrates the general structure of an EPUB file, followed by a more in-depth discussion on of specific aspects of the format. It then covers functionality-related aspects such as layout, appearance and multimedia support, and the main differences between EPUB 2 and EPUB 3.
Support by characterisation tools is important for processing EPUB files in an operational workflow, so a brief review (and some preliminary tests) of relevant identification, validation and feature extraction tools is included as well.
To assess the overall suitability of EPUB for preservation, the format was evaluated against a set of widely used criteria (mainly from The National Archives and Library of Congress). The final chapter wraps up the main conclusions, and suggests a number of recommendations.
Community input
Since it appears that not much has been published on EPUB within an archival preservation context so far, we would really appreciate to hear your thoughts on the report. Is anything important missing? Did I overlook any relevant tools? Is there anything in particular that you strongly disagree with? Please use the comment fields below to let us know!
In addition, the final chapter contains two subsections with Community Recommendations and Tool Recommendations. These are all things we can do as a community to simplify the use of EPUB in archival settings. Please consider getting involved if you feel you could make a contribution.
Link to report
EPUB for archival preservation, KB/ National Library of the Netherlands
Originally published at the Open Preservation Foundation blog
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EPUB
- Extracting text from EPUB files in Python
- ISO/IEC TS 22424 standard on EPUB3 preservation
- Valid, but not accessible: crazy fixed EPUB layouts
- The future of EPUB? A first look at the EPUB 3.1 Editor’s draft
- Policy-based assessment of EPUB with Epubcheck
- EPUB for archival preservation: an update
- EPUB for archival preservation
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preservation-risks
- Multi-image TIFFs, subfiles and image file directories
- Identification of PDF preservation risks with VeraPDF and JHOVE
- On The Significant Properties of Spreadsheets
- PDF processing and analysis with open-source tools
- ISO/IEC TS 22424 standard on EPUB3 preservation
- Does Microsoft OneDrive export large ZIP files that are corrupt?
- Why PDF/A validation matters, even if you don't have PDF/A - Part 2
- Why PDF/A validation matters, even if you don't have PDF/A
- Measuring Bigfoot
- Assessing file format risks: searching for Bigfoot?
- PDF – Inventory of long-term preservation risks
- EPUB for archival preservation
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