Last night in Paris, Microsoft announced that it was co-submitting , with a broad array of its partners, the Office Open XML file format technology to Ecma International.  This will enable millions of people who have created billions of documents to access this digital information using XML technology.

For Higher Education, I can think of a number of powerful benefits to this.  Just think of all the dissertations, theses and research documents that have been created over the last 10 or more years.  Without this programme, there could have been a danger that this substantial knowledge may have been lost as technology moves on and the job of the digital curator becomes more complex.  Now, it should be possible to access these document libraries through XML technology thereby aiding digital preservation for future generations.  I see that the British Library is one of the participants in this announcement and I can understand their interest too.  I find this an exciting programme because I have been working with records managers for sometime now and preservation is always an interesting discussion.

http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/2005/nov05/11-21Ecma.mspx