Hanging on to whatever is the closest file to the "original" is usually a sensible principle to follow, if other practicalities allow. As has been pointed out already, derivatives can be lossy. I'm much more concerned about poor format migrations that are not thoroughly quality assured than I am about all out format obsolescence. This can be exacerbated if a repository only accepts certain file formats and effectively pushes the role of preservation manager onto the submitter (who is most likely neither sufficiently experienced nor well enough equipped to do a good format migration and QA job).
As regards PDF risks (which has been touched on a little in the discussion) I coincidentally kicked off a question on LIS Stack Exchange which has received some high quality answers which may be of interest:
http://libraries.stackexchange.com/questions/964/what-preservation-risks-are-associated-with-the-pdf-file-format
Paul
-----Original Message-----
From: Repositories discussion list [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Ian Stuart
Sent: 30 July 2012 09:10
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Policies on depositing MS Word files
On 27/07/12 15:25, Hugh Glaser wrote:
> And hence Word is good, as people have said, although it is important
> to specify docx (as you do): but unfortunately it seems people use
> Word 2007 or similar format, rather than docx, which seriously
> compromises forward compatibility of the data for a transient
> backwards compatibility of the software.
Whilst acknowledging that forward compatibility of document formats, and
the probably superiority of LaTex (and other ASCII-based, open,
description-based layout systems.... Scribus anyone?), we do have to
remember that the majority of people writing articles are only
interested if getting the article (book, monogram, research report,
conference report, spreadsheet, whatever) written with as little hassle
as possible.
MS Word does this: it exists on most computers, and is the system that
most people learn first.
It may be an unpleasant fact - however we have to accept that most
authors do not have a primary interest in the long-term [digital]
preservation of their work.... their first thought is not "How can I do
this in such a way as to make life easier for my local repository manager"
--
Ian Stuart.
Developer: ORI, RJ-Broker, and OpenDepot.org
Bibliographics and Multimedia Service Delivery team,
EDINA,
The University of Edinburgh.
http://edina.ac.uk/
This email was sent via the University of Edinburgh.
The University of Edinburgh is a charitable body, registered in
Scotland, with registration number SC005336.
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