File Formats for Transfer to the State Archives of North Carolina
This is the companion guidance to File Formats Guidelines for In-House Preservation and Long-Term Retention. To determine which records should be transferred, please consult your records retention and disposition schedules and contact your records analyst for more information.
The following table represents the digital formats that the State Archives of North Carolina accepts for transfer of digital public records. These guidelines organize formats into three categories:
Recommended for transfer: You may transfer records in these formats to the State Archives. File formats that meet the minimum requirements for transfer and long-term retention. In most cases, these are the formats in which the State Archives will maintain files.
Acceptable for transfer under certain circumstances: You need to request permission to transfer records to the State Archives in these formats. These file formats that do not meet the minimum requirements for transfer and long-term retention.
Not recommended for long-term retention: File formats that are not appropriate for long-term retention. Files saved in these formats should not be relied on to last more than five years. Electronic records whose retention periods are over five years should not be stored in these formats.
For more information about file formats for preservation:
| Type of record | Recommended for transfer | Acceptable for transfer under certain circumstances | Not acceptable for transfer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Audio | Broadcast WAVE Format LPCM (.wav); WAVE Format LPCM (.wav) | AIFF (uncompressed) (.aif, .aiff); Standard MIDI (.mid, .midi); Windows® Media Audio WMA (. wma); MPEG3 (.mp3);MP4 AAC (.m4a); | Audio CD (Compact Disc Digital Audio system, CDDA, CD-DA); DVD-Audio; QuickTime® MP4 AAC Protected (.m4p, .m4b); QuickTime® MP3, iTunes (.mp3); RealAudio® (.rm, .ra); Shorten® (.shn); RIFF-RMID (.rmi); Extended MIDI (.xmi); Module Music Formats, Mods (.mod); SUN Audio, uncompressed (.au); Ogg FLAC (.ogg); |
| Databases | Software Independent Archiving of Relational Databases (SIARD); Delimited Flat File (Plain Text) with DDL; | Microsoft® Access® (.accdb); Microsoft® Access® (.mdb); dBase Format (.dbf); | |
| Digital Video | AVI, full frame (uncompressed), WAVE PCM audio (.avi); | AVI, containing H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (lossy)1 (.avi); MPEG-4, containing H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (lossy) (.mp4); MPEG-2, containing H.262/MPEG-2 (lossy) (.mp2); MOV, containing H.264/MPEG-4 AVC (lossy) (.mov); ASF, containing WMV (lossy) (.wmv); MXF, containing Motion JPG 20002 (lossless) (.mxf); Ogg, containing Theora (lossy) (.ogg); | DVD-Video; VOB (VIDEO_TS, AUDIO_TS); Blu-ray Disc™ HCAM®; Digital VHS (D-VHS) DVCam®; |
| The State Archives and DIT are collaborating on collection of Capstone accounts in accordance with the Functional Schedule ; Microsoft Outlook Personal Storage Table (.pst); | MBOX, MIME (.mbx, .mbox); Individual email messages saved in any of the following formats: Email Message, MIME (.eml, .txt), with email header Plain Text (.txt), with email header; Rich Text (.rtf), with email header; PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A), with email header; HTML (.html), with email header; Microsoft® Outlook® Message (.msg), with email header; | Individual email messages saved in any of the following formats: Apple® Mail (.emlx), with or without email header Plain Text (.txt) without email header; Rich Text (.rtf) without email header; PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A), without email header; PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A), without email header; PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A), without email header; PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A), without email header; PDF, with or without email header HTML (.html) without email header; | |
| Geospatial Vector Data | The State Archives collects geospatial vector layers that have been superseded in the North Carolina GIS clearinghouse, NC OneMap, as shapefiles containing seven files with the same filename prefix and the following extensions: Main file (.shp), Index file (.shx), Database file (.dbf), Projection file (.prj ), Shapefile spatial index file (.sbn), Shapefile spatial index file (.sbx), Geospatial metadata file (.shp.xml); | ||
| Plain text documents | Plain Text (.txt); US-ASCII or UTF-8 encoding Comma-separated file (.csv); US-ASCII or UTF-8 encoding; Tab-delimited file (.txt); US-ASCII or UTF-8 encoding; | Other delimited text files (space-delimited, colon-delimited, etc.) where the delimiting character is not present in the data | |
| Presentations | OpenDocument Presentation (.odp); PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A) for presentations without animation; | Microsoft® PowerPoint® Presentation (.ppt); Microsoft® Open XML PowerPoint Presentation (.pptx); | |
| Raster Images | TIFF (.tif, .tiff) uncompressed; JPG 2000 (.jp2); | JPEG (.jpg, .jpeg); PNG (.png); PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A); GIF (.gif); | RAW (.raw, various); Adobe® Photoshop® (.psd); Kodak PhotoCD; Encapsulated PostScript (.eps); FlashPix™ (.fpx); PDF (.pdf) |
| Spreadsheets | OpenDocument Spreadsheet (.ods); Comma-separated file (.csv); Tab-delimited file (.txt); PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A); | Microsoft® Excel® Spreadsheet (.xls); Microsoft® Excel® Open XML Spreadsheet (.xlsx); Other delimited text files (space-delimited, colon- delimited, etc.) where the delimiting character is not present in the data | |
| Structural markup text documents | XML (.xml) with DTD/Schema; SGML with DTD/Schema | XML without DTD/Schema; SGML without DTD/Schema; | |
| Vector Images | Scalable Vector Graphics 1.1 (.svg); AutoCad Drawing Interchange Format (.dxf) PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A); | Adobe Illustrator (.ai); Corel®Draw CDR (.cdr); Micrografx Draw DRW (.dwr); Windows Metafile WMF (.wmf, .emf); Standard for the Exchange of Product Model Data STEP (.stp); Computer Graphics Metafile DXF (.dxf); AutoCAD Drawing Format (.dwg); | |
| Websites / Social Media | The State Archives and State Library are collecting state agency webpages and other online content through an automated web-crawling tool (Archive-IT). They are collecting social media through another tool (CivicPlus). | ||
| Word Processing documents | PDF/A-1a (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 compliant PDF/A); OpenDocument Text (.odt); | PDF/A-1b (.pdf) (ISO 19005-1 minimally compliant; PDF/A); Microsoft® Word Document (.doc); Microsoft® Open XML Document (.docx); Rich Text Format (.rtf) | Corel® WordPerfect® (.wpd); Lotus® WordPro (.lwp); PDF (.pdf) |