JPEG2000 at LC

It is indeed welcome news (Digital Koans and the Jester) that the Library of Congress and Xerox are teaming up on j2k implementation, and even more welcome that it's in context of NDIIPP and preservation.

This is a key part of the announcement for me:

Xerox scientists will develop the parameters for converting TIFF files to JPEG 2000 and will build and test the system, then turn over the specifications and best practices to the Library of Congress. The specific outcome will be development of JPEG 2000 profiles, which describe how to use JPEG 2000 most effectively to represent photographic content as well as content digitized from maps. The Library plans to make the results available on a public Web site.

We all know that we could have jp2 files that are smaller than our TIFF masters. We all know that we could move from TIFF to jp2 as an archival format. We've all researched codecs and delivery applications so we can cut down on the number of deliverable files we generate. That's real progress. What we haven't done is figure out how best to migrate our legacy files and move forward. I look forward to seeing the outcomes of this project.