JPEG2000 -- A follow-up post to "Articles on long-term file access..."

[10/5/2007, 1:45 p.m. please see addendum below as well as note the inserted new text.]

I received an very interesting email comment on the post I wrote entitled "Articles on long-term file access and digital preservation." It was pointed out the the Vitale article reportedly contains some inaccuracies as well as out-of-date information on JPEG 2000. I obviously don't know the details of JPEG 2000 as well as Ronald J. Murray (Digital Conversion Specialist at the Library of Congress) does, and so I appreciate him taking the time to give me his perspective. (I've since also heard from Tim Vitale, who wonders what the specific inaccuracies are.) Ron Murray pointed to two resources for learning accurate information about JPEG2000:

• JPEG 2000 in Archives and Libraries, http://j2karclib.info
• JPEG 2000 related blogs at Disruptive Library Technology Jester, http://dltj.org/ (Peter Murray, the Jester, also contributes to the first site.)

The Charles Olson Research Collection, on which Ron Murray consulted, used JPEG2000 and there is a case study on that web site about their use of JPEG 2000. The web site for the project notes that:

To our and his knowledge, the Delmas-supported CHARLES OLSON'S MELVILLE PROJECT is the first project in an academic library or archives to use this new image standard.

Ron Murray said that people in the library & archives communities generally don't have the engineering and mathematical literacy in order to understand JPEG 2000's capabilities. He, however, encourages us to read more about the format and become comfortable with it.

If you have had experience with JPEG 2000, please leave a comment and tell us about it. Please take a moment to teach us what you've learned. (Or if politics prohibit you from leaving a comment, email me at hurst [at] hurstassociates [dot] com)

ADDENDUM (10/5/2007, 1:45 p.m.): I want to publicly apologize to Tim Vitale for not checking with him first before publishing this post. That was bad etiquette. Evidently different communities are arguing over JPEG 2000 (JP2K) and whether or not it should be adopted. Here are my questions:

• Are there specific uses that people are disagreeing over such as JPEG 2000 for video?
  
• Is the problem/concern when JPEG 2000 is used instead of a TIFF, rather than just being a replacement for the JPEG file?
  
• Is the problem that the library community determined to use this format, no matter what?

At this point, I would enjoy hearing from others who have knowledge and experience with JPEG 2000. I have been given the name of someone who worked on the original committee and guess I better quickly contact him for his opinion!

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Technorati tag: Digital Preservation