University of Oregon Libraries

Digital Content Coordinators

Recommended File Naming Conventions

This page will shortly contain recommended practices for the naming of digital files at the University of Oregon Libraries. Until those guidelines are finalized, the following rules of thumb may be helpful:

• File names should be unique
• Do not use spaces as part of file names
  • The same effect can be achieved by an underscore _ or hyphen -
• Keep file names as short as possible
  • Longer file names take up more storage space and may affect display in some systems
• If you have multiple versions of the same digital object (such as tiff, jpeg, jpeg2000), keep file names for the different versions as consistent as possible. For instance:
  • 1930g001-tn.jpg
  • 1930g001-rf.jpg
  • 1930g001-fs.tif
• Prefer 3-letter file extensions, such as: .doc, .pdf, .jpg, .tif, .mov, .wav, etc.