7 - Indira Gandhi Centre for Atomic Research

Digital Library: File Formats, Standards and Protocols
Umesha Naik and Shivalingaiah D.
Abstract
The development of the WWW and other networked digital information systems has
provided information professionals with many opportunities, while at the same time
requiring them to confront issues that they have not had occasion to explore
previously. Now the mode of conversion, storage and dissemination of information
are changing in electronic era. This paper highlights the various file formats, standards
and protocols which may act as a guideline for preservation, maintenance, storage and
access of digital materials. This paper also considers in depth the issue surrounding
the file formats, standards and protocols of the digital library materials. As with so
many issues surrounding digitization the question of choosing which file format,
standardisation and protocols to use both store and access the information is
somewhat vexed one. There is a great need for adopting various standards and best
practices to build interoperable digital libraries.
Keywords: Digital Library, File Formats, Standards, Protocols, Metadata, Z39.50,
MARC 21, Image files, Text files, Program Files, Structured files.
1. Introduction
Digital library is a collection of digital objects, including text, video and audio along with
methods for access, retrieval, selection, organisation and maintenance of the collection.
The important point is that a digital library has materials stored in a computer system in a
format that allows it to be manipulated and delivered in ways that the conventional version
of the materials cannot be. File formats vary in terms of resolution, bit-depth, colour
capabilities, and support for compression and metadata. As with all matters to do with
computers there are standards which impinge on the area of digital libraries.
The standards fall into three areas - material description, user access and system
architecture. The quality and the formats of the items may vary Lecturer considerably,
particularly where results whether they are hit lists or the final required objects, come from
a number of sources. The goal is to access relevant information seamlessly, regardless of
its type and location. A protocol is the special set of rules that end points in a
telecommunication connection use when they communicate.
2. Text and Document Files
A file that consists of text characters without any formatting information it is also known
as an ASCII file. A text file can be read by any word processor and file that contains
characters in a plain human-readable format.
2.1 Text file
The lowest common denominator of text file formats contains only ASCII characters
without any special formatting. A text is not an undifferentiated sequence of words, much
less of bytes. There are actually two forms of ASCII: standard and extended. Standard
ASCII contains codes for 128 characters (i.e. a 7 bit binary code). Ed
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