Archiving research data¶

For archival purposes data needs to be stored in a location which provides facilities for long-term preservation of data. As well as standard data management concerns (e.g. backup, documentation) the media and the file formats will need to be appropriate for long-term use.

• refreshing the media at suitable intervals by moving data onto new media
• creating copies of the data in new formats to allow their use (e.g. converting data in closed formats to open formats, updating data to new versions of file formats).

Media¶

File Formats¶

In the future, current audio formats may become obsolete, we therefore recommend that when archiving audio files, copies of the data should be stored in an open lossless format as well as in the original format. We would currently recommend using FLAC.