Poster - iPRES 2012 - Digital Curation Institute, iSchool, Toronto

PDF/A is a version of Portable Document Format backed by ISO standard that is designed for archiving and preservation of electronic documents. Many electronic documents exist in PDF format. Due to its popularity, the ability to convert an existing PDF into a conforming PDF/A file is as important, if not more, as being able to produce documents in PDF/A format in digital preservation. In recognition of this fact and encouraged by growing interest from its affiliates, the Florida Digital Archive (FDA) conducted an evaluation of several of the PDF to PDF/A converter applications, the result of which is reported in this paper. There is room for interpretation in the ISO standards concerning PDF/A, which can be manifest in the development of software. In selecting a PDF to PDF/A converter product, reliability of the outcome in terms of PDF/A compliance must be established along with functionality. The goal of this paper is not to rank or promote the software evaluated, but rather to document the FDA’s evaluation process and present the results in such a way that they provide insight into challenges and potential drawbacks during similar evaluation or implementation.

iPRES, iSchool, Toronto, Canada, Portable Document Format, digital documents, digital preservation, converters

application/pdf

"iPres 2012 - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects." Editors: Reagan Moore, Kevin Ashley, Seamus Ross

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"iPres 2012 - Proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Preservation of Digital Objects." Editors: Reagan Moore, Kevin Ashley, Seamus Ross

140 St. George Street, Toronto, ON M5S3G6

Digital Curation Institute, iSchool University of Toronto

https://ipres.ischool.utoronto.ca/sites/ipres.ischool.utoronto.ca/files/iPres%202012%20Conference%20Proceedings%20Final.pdf