This Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) specification describes an application-independent approach to the storage of digital information in a structured, transparent, and predictable manner. It is designed to promote long-term object management best practices within digital repositories.
Specifically, the benefits of the OCFL include:
- Completeness, so that a repository can be rebuilt from the files it stores
- Parsability, both by humans and machines, to ensure content can be understood in the absence of original software
- Robustness against errors, corruption, and migration between storage technologies
- Versioning, so repositories can make changes to objects allowing their history to persist
- Storage diversity, to ensure content can be stored on diverse storage infrastructures including conventional filesystems and cloud object stores
- 2024-11-07: Version 1.1.1 Update Announcement
- 2024-10-24: OCFL Editors Workshop at iPres
- 2023-08-01: Community Listening Sessions for Version 2 Announcement
- 2022-10-07: Version 1.1 Release Announcement
- 2020-07-07: Version 1.0 Release Announcement
- OCFL Specification v1.1
- OCFL Implementation Notes v1.1
- OCFL Specification v1.1 Change Log
- OCFL Validation Codes v1.1
Citable copies of the specification, extensions and fixtures can be found on the Zenodo OCFL Community site.
- OCFL Community Group at https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/ocfl-community
- Slack: Self-register at https://code4lib.org/slack (channel
#ocflin thecode4libworkspace) - OCFL Community Meetings
- OCFL Use Cases
- OCFL Specification github
- OCFL Specification Issues
- Validators (in the OCFL Wiki)