JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for JISC-REPOSITORIES Archives


JISC-REPOSITORIES Archives

JISC-REPOSITORIES Archives


JISC-REPOSITORIES@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

JISC-REPOSITORIES Home

JISC-REPOSITORIES Home

JISC-REPOSITORIES  August 2009

JISC-REPOSITORIES August 2009

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

FW: [DIGLIB] New tool available: File Information Tool Set (FITS)

From:

Robert Robertson <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Robert Robertson <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Fri, 7 Aug 2009 14:52:14 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (110 lines)

This announcement about the release of a bundle of file format and metadata-related tools might be of interest to the list

-----Original Message-----
From: [log in to unmask] [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Andrea Goethals
Sent: 06 August 2009 19:40
To: [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]; [log in to unmask]
Cc: Spencer McEwen; Vitaly Zakuta
Subject: [DIGLIB] New tool available: File Information Tool Set (FITS)

File Information Tool Set (FITS):  http://fits.googlecode.com

With the increase in web archiving and other born-digital projects
that introduce new formats and genres to our digital preservation
repositories, it is becoming more important that our tools support a
wide range of file formats. In particular, our file format
identification, validation and metadata extraction tools should work
with a broad range of formats and genres. There are a number of these
file tools in existence, but none of these tools individually can both
support a wide range of formats and extract the technical metadata
necessary to fully characterize digital content.

In the fall of 2008 Harvard University Library began development on
the File Information Tool Set (FITS) in response to this need. FITS
acts as a wrapper around multiple open source file format
identification, validation and metadata extraction tools. FITS invokes
and manages the output of these tools. The native output from these
tools is converted into a common format, "FITS XML", compared to one
another and consolidated into a single XML output file. The tools
currently wrapped by FITS are:

* JHOVE
* Exiftool from Phil Harvey
* National Library of New Zealand Metadata Extractor
* DROID from the UK National Archives
* Ffident from Marco Schmidt
* File Utility

In addition, FITS includes two original tools: FileInfo and
XmlMetadata. There are a number of tools that will be evaluated for
incorporation into FITS in the future, including:

* Apache Tika
* JHOVE 2
* Aduna Aperture
* MediaInfo

FITS is written in Java and is compatible with Java 1.5 or higher.
FITS can be invoked by its command-line interface or through its Java
API.

FITS produces a "status" value for each format identification it
makes. When the status is SINGLE_RESULT, all tools that were able to
identify the format agree on the file's format. When the status is
CONFLICT, there is more than one purported format identified for the
file. Because FITS combines the output of multiple tools it has to be
able to handle conflicts among the tool's output when they don't
agree. It handles this conflict in many ways:

* Tool output is normalized before it is compared for conflicts. For
example, one tool might report for a file format that it is "PNG",
while another tool may output it as "Portable Network Graphics". In
another example, one tool might output the resolution unit as "2";
another tool might output it as "inches". These values are normalized
in the XSLT file that converts the tool's native output to FITS XML
before the FITS XML for each tool is compared to each other.
* Users configure a tool ordering preference. In cases of format
identification conflicts, the format identified by the preferred tools
will determine the format FITS reports.
* Tools can be excluded from reporting on particular formats and/or on
particular metadata elements if its output is found in testing to be
incorrect or buggy. This is very useful for incorporating a tool into
FITS because it is good at some things without having to accept known
unreliable information from the tool.
* FITS consults a configurable "format tree" to know when two reported
formats for a file are not really conflicts because one of the formats
is a more specific form of the other format. For example the format
tree documents that the OpenDocument Text format is a more specific
form of the Zip format. If a file is identified as being in both of
these formats by FITS tools it is not reported as a conflict because
technically they are both correct. Instead the more specific format,
OpenDocument Text, is reported as the format.

FITS is available to the public under the LGPL license. Harvard
University Library (HUL) plans to use FITS in production in 2010
within its ingest service, but is making an early release of it
available now for testing at http://fits.googlecode.com. Additional
tools are being written at HUL to convert FITS XML into MIX, textMD,
documentMD and other technical metadata schemas.

We invite you to download and try using FITS. Any issues using it can
be reported on the FITS website on the Issues web page
(http://code.google.com/p/fits/issues/list). For more information
please see the FITS website (http://fits.googlecode.com) or contact me
directly.

--
Andrea Goethals
Digital Preservation and Repository Services Manager
HUL - Office for Information Systems
90 Mt. Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA 02138
phone: (617) 495-3724
[log in to unmask]

--
R. John Robertson
Research Fellow/ Open Education Resources programme support officer (JISCCETIS),
Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement, University of Strathclyde
The University of Strathclyde is a charitable body, registered in Scotland, with registration number SC015263

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
July 2022
June 2022
May 2022
April 2022
March 2022
February 2022
January 2022
December 2021
November 2021
October 2021
September 2021
August 2021
July 2021
June 2021
May 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
August 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
March 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
April 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
February 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
July 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
July 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
August 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
August 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
August 2008
July 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
August 2007
July 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
December 2006
November 2006
October 2006
September 2006
August 2006
July 2006
June 2006
May 2006
April 2006
March 2006
February 2006
January 2006
November 2005
October 2005


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager