Current Page Location. Tips for Authors and Creators of Digital Content: Using your Institution's Repository: Using Version Control Software:

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1 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice Tips for Authors and Creators of Digital Content: Keep a record of which versions you have made publicly available and where. Use a numbering system that denotes major revisions. Make explicit the author, title, date last changed and version status on all versions of work. This can be done; descriptively within the object, for example, on a title page, title slide, first frame of film and so on. by using a clear, updated and relevant filename for every different version. by filling in available 'Properties' details or 'ID tags' (full guidance below). VIF highly recommends that all creators of text documents read the VERSIONS Project Toolkit which contains further practical advice for authors and content creators. Using your Institution's Repository: Your repository will be able to help. They will have useful guidance and tips and may have policies that you should refer to, so contact them in the first instance. For example, they might prefer text articles to be submitted in Word rather than PDF's. Give repository staff all information you can about: What version you are depositing - is it a draft, a published version, an abstract and so on. If you've deposited any other related versions either here or anywhere else. If a co-author/creator has deposited the same or a different version anywhere else. If you have moved institutions, let your new institution know if you have deposited material elsewhere previously, especially if you are depositing old work in a new repository. This will help repository managers make sure that all versions of your work that could appear in more than one place can be identified easily as the same thing, and prevent confusing duplication. Using Version Control Software: Many content creators now use computer software to help manage versions of the work they produce. If you create large volumes of work, such applications could be very beneficial to you, and also help organising your versions ready for dissemination using repositories. The most popular programs are: Subversion - Git - CVS This software is open source, available for free, and can be installed with user friendly graphical frontends (for example: SVNTortoise - The software can be used flexibly, allowing you to branch off different versions and later merge again.

2 How to use Different Software and File Formats to Embed Version Information: There are different ways to include version information in an object. The best or easiest method for you will depend on personal preference and the type of format that the object is. The following guidance should be helpful for content creators in deciding the best way to include version information in their documents and files: All objects should have a clear, updated and consistent filename with relevant version information in a filename. A title page or sheet can be used general text documents, PDF, PowerPoint, LaTex and even in Excel files. It can be more difficult to insert a title page equivalent into Multimedia objects like images, audio, video and datasets. They are increasingly being deposited in digital repositories, but often lack any versioning information 'within' themselves, which is why the use of properties fields is important. Filling in these tags puts more information at the fingertips of the creator, the librarian, repository manager and crucially the researcher. Examples of and guides to how to make the best of common file types and software packages are given in the links below. Microsoft Office has been focussed on as it is the most commonly used. Office for Macs behaves in the same fashion as it is Windows equivalent. Text Multimedia General Text including Word Title Page File > Properties PDF Title Page File > Properties LaTex TeX Images Includes JPEG, TIFF etc PowerPoint Title Page File > Properties Audio Includes MP3, WAV, AAC etc Video Includes WMV, AVI etc Data Data, including Excel Title Sheet File > Properties

4 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice > General Text and Word Title Pages in Text Documents: When creating a text document, it is important that certain pieces of information are contained in the document so people can identify it. Is is common and natural practise for the title of the work and the name of the author(s) to appear at the top or on a title page. VIF recommends expanding this information to include at date last edited to the title page. The VERSIONS Toolkit (external PDF) also supports this: It is a good idea to type the date yourself on the front page of any draft or version you are working on and to be consistent about updating this date when you save a new version. The date you add should be the date you last worked on the manuscript. For readers this is one of the most important elements in helping them to check they have the version they wish to read. Note - Word sometimes offers to insert today's date, so that it automatically updates whenever a file is worked on. Care should be taken to make sure that this only happens when appropriate, for example, if it is always important to know when a document has been printed, and not at other times, for example, when the date on the digital object is important and that valuable information is not automatically lost on opening. The VERSIONS advice also suggests adding a note describing the version status of the document: "Adding a note to the front page of versions of your paper is a way to convey useful information about the version in a concise form that can be easily understood by human readers. If you do this while revising your paper, you may find it easier to differentiate between versions after an interval of time. It is a good idea at least to add such notes to any version you intend to disseminate." Word: File > Properties: VIF also recommends making full usage usage of the properties fields provided in Microsoft Word (or alternative in other word processing packages). To access the properties, click File, then select Properties. Here is a screenshot example:

6 Website > Framework > Content Creation Advice > PDF (Portable Document Format) Title Pages in PDFs: Ideally, when converting a document to PDF (portable document format), the version identification methods already implemented in the original text document can be incorporated into the newly created PDF. For example, a document with a title page, with page numbers adjusted, will still display the correct page numbers when converted to PDF format. Also, information from the properties fields from a document will map over into a PDF's properties fields. Please see below how these fields are transferred across. In addition to the information that maps across, PDF has wider scope for including metadata in the file's properties. Properties within a PDF PDF provides a great deal of opportunity for metadata to be contained as part of a document. In Adobe Acrobat, by going to File > Document Properties (ctrl+d), a host of fields for metadata about a document can be found. This is a screenshot of the first box you are presented with (from Adobe Acrobat Professional Version 7.0.8): Clicking Additional Metadata brings up this box:

7 How properties map from Word 2003: File > Properties: Some fields will map over directly, such as title and subject. This is the properties page from the original Word document that the PDF above was created from:

8 The fields that aren't understood by PDF are mapped over as custom fields. Back in Acrobat, from the first properties box, clicking the Custom tab, you can see these custom fields:

9 Recommendations All information contained in a Word document's properties will be mapped over to PDF, but some will be more prominent than others. VIF recommends that PDF properties are used as fully as possible as they provide an excellent opportunity to embed version information into a document. This will be a great help to future researchers and repository staff.

10 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice > LaTeX Title Information in LaTex: There are various options for putting version information into a LaTex document, depending on the page style that you choose to compose the document content in. The page styles are listed at In line with the recommendations VIF has made for other text documents, the framework suggests a front page or title sheet that contains all relevant version information will make version identification much clearer. To set this in LaTex, use: \maketitle This command generates a title page - except in the 'article' style, where the title normally goes at the top of the first page. THis command should go after the following standard commands: \author \date \thanks \title The \thanks command produces a footnote to the title. \thanks{text} For example: \title{article of Version Identification \thanks{final Verison}} \author{d. Puplett\thanks{on behalf of VIF project}} Comments: You can insert comments into the LaTeX input (*.tex) file. Anything following a percent sign (%) until the end of the line is ignored by the LaTeX processor. This command could be used by an author to keep personal track of version as they are created, without this information necessarily being made openly available. This could help an author keep track until they are ready to disseminate, at which point we would recommend putting version information in the 'thanks' command. To add a hidden comment, use the % symbol, which ends a line without generating a space; an end-of-line in LaTeX input is normally equivalent to a space. Thus, for example, it allows one to split a word over lines without inserting a break. For example; 'this is the %finished% version identification framework' would produce 'this is the version identification framework' Follow-Up: For more on using LaTeX, please see here: Last updated 21/1/08 Copyright 2008 LSE

11 Home > Framework> Content Creation Advice > Images Versioning in Image Formats: For an excellent overview of the issues around using tags to embed information (including version information) into images, please see here: where TASI (The Technical Advisory Service for Images) cover all of the present options for how content creators can using tagging to identify their images..jpeg/.jpg and.tiff As outlined in the page linked to above, EXIF ( is a common format used for jpeg and tiff formats to store information with an image file. It is easy to edit the information in images by downloading a small plug-in for windows: Microsoft Photo Info 1.0 (external link). Below is a screenshot of the descriptive fields available in this editor: The framework recommends using the 'Description' field to write a free text description of the version status. Recommendations: Filename is a particularly useful and reliable opportunity to make a version comment with images, as embedding information in image files is non-standard and may not be easily accessed by all. With images it is particularly important to pass on version information to a repository when depositing such files with them. Last updated 21/1/08 Copyright 2008 LSE

12 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice > PowerPoint Title Pages in PowerPoint: PowerPoint presentations commonly have a title page with Title and Author information. It is also very easy to unobtrusively include on this slide date and other version information, such as where the presentation was given, the audience, or what version of work the presentation refers and so on. This is important if your slides may become publically available on your own website or in a repository along side other related pieces of work, so that it can be identified within the context of the body of work it comes from. File > Properties: The properties fields available in PowerPoint are the same as those available in Word and Excel. Here is a blank example: Recommendations: The project recommends using these properties fields whenever possible, to make sure that the object itself contains enough information about itself to always be identifiable. Last updated 21/1/08 Copyright 2008 LSE

13 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice > Audio Versioning in Audio Formats: Audio recordings can be recorded in many formats, and each has a unique way of including identification information (including version) as part of the file. Sometimes used is.wav, an uncompressed format containing raw sound information, and therefore usually a large file size. Much more common is mp3, a compressed format that retains good sound quality but offers much smaller file sizes. There are also many alternatives to these common formats, including Apple's AAC and FLAC. There is plenty of information about all of the above formats and others available on the web, but please see below for an overview of how to get the most out of these formats and help identify versions of your work..mp3: The ID3 Tag is by far the most common way to identify an mp3 file. The program used to encode or record the mp3 will most likely allow you to add ID information to a file. A common way to do this is using itunes. Here is a list of all available fields in an ID3 tag. VIF recommends using the Comments field to describe the version status of an audio recording..wav: Wav is the most limited of the popular file formats, as it has no inbuilt support for properties or id tagging. Because of this limitation, it is important if this format is used to record separately version information about the recording, so that if it is deposited into a repository, the repository staff are able to record this information into the repository metadata for the object..aac / m4a: itunes allows a user to add some details to audio files, and for Apple's own compression file.aac (displayed as.m4a) users can right click on a file and choose 'Get info' to display metadata. Users can add version information into the Comments box. However, this information is only visible within itunes and is not universal like the mp3 id3 tag. wma: Windows Media Audio (wma) is a popular, compressed format created by Microsoft. It has its own tagging system, accessible by examining the files' properties. Here, we recommend using the Comments field to record version status:

14 Flac: Flac is a lossless compression format (see glossary for definition), which is smaller in file size than wav but still retains full sound quality. It is becoming increasingly common. It again has its own tagging system, which uses an open standard, meaning any sort of textual tag can be given to the object. A list of commonly used tags can be found here: VIF recommends using VERSION and/or DESCRIPTION to record the version status of the recording. Last updated 03/03/08 Copyright 2008 LSE

15 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice > Video Versioning in Video Formats: The storage and dissemination of video has become massively complex in the digital age. There a large range of file formats available for digital video to be encoded to, all with different specifications and uses. For example, when uploading video to a file-sharing application like YouTube, the video is re-encoded into a compressed version that reduces the strain on the host servers and will load quickly for the end user. However, this version is of lower quality than most other video formats. Also, conversion of video will detract from it's quality over time, so it is important to keep track of the digital lineage of the object. Here are some examples of popular video formats:.wmv.mp4.avi.mov Recommendations: The simplest way to record version status as part of this sort of object would be to do it visually at the start of the video, with an information screen or in the titles. As VIF consistently recommends, author, title, date last modified and some form of description are ideal pieces of information to help identify the version of an object. Whichever file format you use, we suggest investigating and making use of properties fields. Additionally for video, if the video fits into a larger body of research outputs, this should be recorded or described at this opportunity. This is also a fast moving area, with developments on the digital use of video coming all the time. VIF recommends consulting the The Technical Advisory Service for Images, TASI - for the latest developments. Notes: Work is taking place on developing greater integration of repositories and video, such as: NJVid - A State-wide Video-on-Demand Repository: Last updated 21/1/08 Copyright 2008 LSE

16 Home > Framework > Content Creation Advice > Data and Excel Introduction to Data and Excel: Data, in various forms, is becoming more commonly deposited in repositories both in its own right and as supporting material for other work. There are more complex version control issues with data that text, for example, and many creators of data use version control software to keep track of their versions, as mentioned on the previous page. VIF recommends that if authors submit data to a repository, they: Inform the repository exactly what version or period of time the data relates to What other work the data is referenced by What other forms the data exists in (eg is this an edited set of results, a combination of other sets of data and so on). Embed version information into the object itself (see below) Title Sheet: Similar to the recommended good practice VIF has made for text documents and PowerPoint slides, it is also easy to have an equivalent title sheet in a spreadsheet. The framework suggests adding version information on an extra tab or sheet called 'about': Download this example here: aboutexample.xls File > Properties: Excel also contains the same options for adding properties to a file as other Microsoft Office Programs. Please see below for a recommended usage of these properties fields (accessed by clicking File then Properties):