National Archives and Library of  Congress Join the PDF Association; National Archives to host PDF Day in 2018

Winchester, MA – The National Archives and the Library of Congress have announced that they have joined the PDF Association as Partner Organizations of the non-profit organization which promotes adoption of international standards for portable document format technology. Both federal agencies collect, and produce, numerous documents as PDF documents.
The National Archives will host the PDF Association’s PDF Day: a full-day of strategic education delivered by subject-matter experts and designed expressly for federal and state agency executives and contractors. PDF Day will include six areas of focus, including the just-published PDF 2.0 specification, PDF/A, archival of engineering content in PDF, PDF accessibility, and much more.
“In our roles as both producers and custodians of PDF documents, the National Archives and the Library of Congress seek to engage with the PDF standards and vendor communities to advocate for the needs of cultural heritage communities in the vendor-neutral space offered by the PDF Association,” said Laurence Brewer, Chief Records Officer for the National Archives. “Working together with other PDF Association Liaison Organizations, we gain the opportunity to influence the development of PDF specifications, tools, and systems to meet the business needs of archiving and long-term access.”
“The Library’s participation will foster enhanced relationships with industry, providing more opportunities for the Library to communicate its needs to the community that develops the software which content producers and publishers use for digital documents and more,” said Mark Sweeney, Associate Librarian for Library Services at the Library of Congress.
“We’ve worked with NARA and LoC staff at the ISO table for some time now. We look forward to sharing PDF Association resources with two of the world’s leading cultural heritage organizations,” said Matt Kuznicki, DataLogics CTO and current Board Chairman of the PDF Association.
“We feel strongly that PDF Association members will learn from enhanced opportunities for dialog with Library of Congress and National Archives personnel, and in addition, that the two federal agencies will further their missions by way of enhanced access to technical experts throughout the PDF industry,” said Duff Johnson, Executive Director of the PDF Association and ISO Project co-Leader for ISO 32000, the PDF specification.
Originally invented by Adobe Systems in the early 1990s, the Portable Document Format (PDF) family of standards is now managed by volunteers working within International Standards Committee ISO’s TC 171 SC 2 of which the National Archives is an active member. PDF includes subset formats appropriate for a variety of uses, including PDF/A, PDF/UA, PDF/E and others with characteristics appropriate for archival collections.