The open source JHOVE characterization tool has proven to be an important component of many digital repository and preservation workflows. However, its widespread use over the past four years has revealed a number of limitations imposed by idiosyncrasies of design and implementation. The California Digital Library (CDL), Portico, and Stanford University have received funding from the Library of Congress, under its National Digital Information Infrastructure Preservation Program (NDIIPP) initiative, to collaborate on a two-year project to develop a next-generation JHOVE2 architecture for format-aware characterization.

Among the enhancements planned for JHOVE2 are:

* Support for four specific aspects of characterization: signature-based identification, feature extraction, validation, and rules-based assessment

* A more sophisticated data model supporting complex multi-file objects and arbitrarily-nested container objects

* Streamlined APIs to facilitate the integration of JHOVE2 technology in systems, services, and workflows

* Increased performance

* Standardized error handling

* A generic plug-in mechanism supporting stateful multi-module processing;

* Availability under the BSD open source license

http://confluence.ucop.edu/display/JHOVE2Info/Home