Welcome!
Kia ora, and welcome to Searching for a Signature: A File Format Identification Workshop. This workshop loosely follows the concept of See one, Do one, Teach one. Depending on how much time you have for your workshop the balance between teaching and student engagement may vary. We recommend around 1.5 hours for teaching (including some engagement and interaction) and an additional 45 minutes for more interactive workshop activities and sharing.
Take it offline!
This course has been designed as a workshop but it can also be used as a self-taught module and reference material.
Pre-workshop reading
Hopefully you will have had a chance to read the pre-workshop reading materials. If you haven’t had the opportunity, don’t worry, we will do our best to introduce everything thoroughly as we go.
Links to all materials can be found below and in the reference sections of this site.
Please do not be afraid to ask questions!
At the end of this introduction you should introduce an icebreaker for the class. Some ideas:
- what is your favorite file format?
- if you were a file format, what would it be?
Website layout
Lessons are listed as “Episodes”. As you work through the sections you may also be interested in:
You can keep these tabs open as you work through each episode.
Open source learning
The Searching for a Signature resource is open source and you are welcome to contribute changes and suggestions based on what has worked for you, or what might work better. If you have feedback we are happy to hear it, and if you have used this resource to teach a class, let us know, and please feel free to share recordings or other resources associated with your teaching!
Acknowledgements
With thanks to
- Francesca Mackenzie - Digital Archivist at The National Archives UK, who was part of the team for iPRES2024’s workshop: What’s in the box? an exploration of container-based file format identification
- All past and present PRONOM colleagues who work tirelessly on a never-ending shopping list of file formats and continue to dp their utmost to support the resource for the community.
| Setup Instructions | Download files required for the lesson | |
| Duration: 00h 00m | 1. Introduction |
Why signature development? What is PRONOM? |
| Duration: 00h 05m | 2. Hexadecimal |
What is hexadecimal? Why is it important? What are the basics of hexadecimal we need to understand? |
| Duration: 00h 10m | 3. Using a hex editor |
Introducing the Hex Editor What is a Hex Editor? Why use a Hex Editor? How do I understand the layout How can I keep my data safe when using a hex editor How do I use a Hex Editor? Can I use a hex editor now? |
| Duration: 00h 20m | 4. Looking for patterns |
Do my samples have the same “magic” numbers? What version do these files represent? Do I need more samples to draw conclusions? Do I have access to a format specification? |
| Duration: 00h 25m | 5. Introducing PRONOM syntax |
Why does PRONOM need syntax? What syntax exists? What does the syntax enable us to do? |
| Duration: 00h 35m | 6. Reversing PRONOM syntax |
How do I understand if something should match a PRONOM
signature? How do I translate syntax into a file? |
| Duration: 00h 50m | 7. Creating signature files |
What’s a signature file? How do we create one? |
| Duration: 00h 55m | 8. Plugging it in |
How do we use a signature file? Should I use DROID or Siegfried? |
| Duration: 01h 05m | 9. Doing it for yourself | Can you apply what you’ve learned? |
| Duration: 01h 20m | 10. Teaching us how to do it! |
Can you articulate your procedure? Can you identify any changes you might make to your method? Is there anything the workshop can be clearer about? |
| Duration: 01h 30m | 11. Advanced PRONOM |
What’s left to learn? What other considerations are there when documenting file format signatures? |
| Duration: 01h 35m | 12. Final thoughts | What are the key take-aways? |
| Duration: 01h 40m | Finish |
The actual schedule may vary slightly depending on the topics and exercises chosen by the instructor.
Room setup
Before we get started, organize yourself in the room so that you are able to split into groups of three or more. This will make the final part of the workshop easier.
Tools
- hexed.it
- ffdev.info (bundles Roy and Siegfried)
Workshop files
Workshop files will be highlighted inline. You can inspect them below as well.
Pre-reading
If you’d like to get a head start or refresh your knowledge, the following resources may help you feel more confident and prepared:
Supplementary resources
Here are a few additional tools and references that may be useful during or after the workshop:
- User-friendly PRONOM syntax guide.
- Automatic Format Identification Using PRONOM and DROID (the original design document).