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cpwillett edited this page Feb 7, 2014 · 16 revisions

About JHOVE2

JHOVE2 is open source software for format-aware characterization of digital objects. JHOVE2 analyzes digital objects with these questions:

  • What is it? (Identification)
  • What about it? (Feature extraction)
  • What is it, really? (Validation)
  • So what? (Assessment)
See our FAQ for more information.

The original JHOVE characterization framework is widely used by international digital library programs and preservation repositories. During the course of its extensive use over the past four years, however, a number of limitations imposed by idiosyncrasies of design and implementation have been identified. With funding from the Library of Congress under its National Digital Information Infrastructure and Preservation Program (NDIIPP), the California Digital Library, Portico, and Stanford University are collaborating on a two year project to develop and deploy a next-generation architecture providing enhanced performance, streamlined APIs, and significant new features. The JHOVE2 project generalizes the concept of format characterization to include identification, validation, feature extraction, and policy-based assessment. The target of this characterization is not a simple digital file, but a (potentially) complex digital object that may be instantiated in multiple files.