Linked Open Data for Software and Code Formats

Software comprises a set of instructions that instruct a computer to perform one or more tasks. There are three general categories:

• System software includes device drivers, operating systems (OSs), scripts, compilers, disk formatters, text editors and utilities helping the computer to operate.
• Programming software is a set of tools to aid developers in writing programs.
• Application software is intended to perform certain tasks. Examples of application software include office suites, gaming applications, database systems and educational software. Application software can be a single piece of code or a collection of programs.

Software used to create government records are not considered permanent records. Software or code that is an integral part of a record, such as something required for the functionality of a dataset that is a permanent record, or that was created as part of the work of government, have the potential to be permanent records.

The significant properties of software and code records are documented in a Software and Code Preservation Plan, which can be used as test criteria for tools and processes used in format transformations.

NARA makes its Linked Open Data available in the Resource Description Framework Terse RDF Triple Language, or RDF Turtle (.ttl files). These files can be opened in any text editor. The Digital Preservation Framework as Linked Open Data includes the same elements as are available in the version of the Preservation Plans on GitHub.

These Plans are not exhaustive nor universally applicable proposed actions and recommended or endorsed tools: these represent file formats and variant versions in NARA holdings, the current NARA risk assessment, processing capabilities, and tools in use at NARA.