However, common spreadsheet file formats are not ideal for sharing, preserving, and reusing data they’re not easily machine readable and may be difficult or impossible to read if the specific software tools used to create them are significantly upgraded or outmoded. Tabular data, or data in tables or spreadsheets, is by far the most common format for presenting, analyzing, and storing data. Still images: TIFF, JPEG 2000, PDF, PNG, GIF, BMPįor more complete guidance on best practices and appropriate formats for long-term preservation and future accessibility, see the Library of Congress’ Sustainability of Digital Formats web site, the LOC’s page on Recommended Format Specifications for preservation, and Hook et al’s recommendations in Best Practices for Preparing Environmental Data Sets to Share and Archive.Geospatial raster data: GeoTIFF/TIFF, NetCDF, HDF-EOS. ![]() Geospatial vector data: SHP, GeoJSON, KML, DBF, NetCDF.If your program or organization has used these or other proprietary DBMS tools, it is essential to plan for exporting your data in a stable, well-documented, and non-proprietary format.īelow is a summary of the suggested tabular, image, and GIS data file formats suitable for long-term archiving. Likewise, database management systems (DBMS) like MS Access, Filemaker Pro, and others, can be a very effective way to store and query data, but the raw formats tend to change over time (even a few years). Microsoft Excel, as an example, is a useful tool for data manipulations and data visualization, but versions of Excel files may become obsolete and may not be easily readable over the longer term. In choosing a file format, data collectors should select a format that is useable, open, and that will likely be readable well into the future.
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