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UDFR: A Semantic Registry for Format Representation Information

Constellation C: Monday, October 31, 3:30 – 4:15PM

A deep understanding of the diverse digital formats used to represent content is fundamental to effective long-term preservation analysis, planning, and intervention. The Unified Digital Format Registry project (UDFR, https://bitbucket.org/udfr/main/wiki/Home) will provide an open source platform for an online, semantically-enabled registry of significant format representation information, building on the data modeling experience and collection activities of the existing PRONOM and GDFR registries and supporting a superset of their combined features. The UDFR project, now at its midpoint, uses a semantic wiki to manage and expose its holdings as linked data for interoperability with the semantic web. UDFR project staff have evaluated a number of potential semantic platforms for use as the core of the UDFR technology stack, finally choosing OntoWiki and the Virtuoso triple store on the basis of their comprehensive feature sets. This research update will review the progress to date – including stakeholder community building, ontology development, and technology evaluation – and describe plans for the remainder of the UDFR project activities leading towards an operational registry initially populated with an export of PRONOM and GDFR data early in 2012.

Session Resources

Dlf 2011UDFR-a-semantic-registry-for-format-representation-information-v1

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Session Leaders

Stephen Abrams is the associate director of the UC Curation Center (UC3) at the California Digital Library (CDL), with responsibilities for strategic planning, innovation, and operation of UC3’s systems, services, and projects.

Lisa Dawn Colvin is the project manager for the Unified Digital Format Registry (UDFR) project at the California Digital Library (CDL). Previous to joining the CDL, she developed naming, identification and metadata standards for the NASA Constellation Program Data Architecture (CxDA).

Abhishek Salve has been developing web applications for over 5 years. Prior to joining the California Digital Library (CDL), he developed web applications using HTML, PHP, Java Script, and MySQL technologies. His interest in web application began with his work as a PHP programmer in a startup company in India.