Rendering Matters - Report on the results of research into digital object rendering

Maintaining the ability of an organisation or user to be able to “open” or “render” a file or set of files is one of the core digital preservation challenges. The Rendering Matters Report outlines the results of research investigating whether changes are introduced to the information that is presented to users when files are rendered in different hardware and software environments. The report concludes with a set of observations about the impact of the research and provides some recommendations for future research in this area.
The primary audience for this report is the national and international digital preservation community. This includes any individuals or groups directly involved in planning for, implementing or managing of activities surrounding the preservation of digital objects.
Secondary audiences for this report include:

1. Members of the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) who manage or make decisions about the creation, curation, management and preservation of digital objects of long term value.
2. The legal community, in particular the electronic-Discovery (eDiscovery) community. The results may help to inform decisions about the role that rendering environments have in regards to the use of digital objects as evidence.
3. The wider Information Technology (IT) sector. The research documented in this report highlights the impact that the decisions that application developers have made has had on the ability to preserve information across time. The results may also be used to inform decision making regarding the use (or otherwise) of standard ways of formatting files (standard file formats) for storing information for future access and how software applications are created and maintained over time.

You should read this report if you are interested in issues related to digital preservation or information management strategies, digital object integrity or digital evidence, or simply want to see some examples of how opening files in one application can cause meaningfully different information to be presented compared to opening the files in another application.
Information supporting this report includes

• The survey tool used to document the rendering tests in LimeSurvey XML format and QueXML format.
• The dataset holding the data collected during the research in OOXML and ODS formats.
• Visual examples of rendering differences when files are rendered in different environments.
   

Comments and feedback can be directed at Euan Cochrane