Langzeitformat
Langzeitformat is a concept in digital preservation that refers to formats intended to ensure long-term readability and interpretability of digital objects, despite changes in software, hardware, or organizational contexts. It denotes formats designed for longevity rather than casual interchange, emphasizing openness, well-documented specifications, and self-describing data.
Common design goals of Langzeitformate include platform independence, minimal reliance on proprietary technology, stable encoding, and
Organizations manage Langzeitformate through a lifecycle approach: selecting candidate formats based on preservation use cases, performing
Common examples used for long-term preservation include PDF/A for archival documents, TIFF and PNG for images,
See also: digital preservation, open formats, format registries, emulation, data curation.