For many years, libraries and archives have used the JPEG and TIFF coding standards to store and make available images in an electronic format. Decades of research in image compression techniques as a subfield of signal processing have yielded advancements through the use of wavelet transformation (as opposed to JPEG which uses discrete cosine transformation and various competing standards for TIFF compression), and some have adopted products based on proprietary wavelet compression implementations such as SID. In the 1990s, under the auspices of the International Standards Organization and the standards section of the International Telecommunication Union, the Joint Photographic Experts Group worked to create a new imaging standard using wavelet compression. The work of the committee reached a pinnacle in December 2000 with the ratification of Part 1 of the JPEG 2000 standard.

The symposium organizers view JPEG 2000 as both an evolutionary progression of formats and a revolutionary step in the advancement of best practices that will sustain the library and archive communities for a long period of time. On November 4-5, 2004, the invited speakers and delegates considered the adoption of the JPEG 2000 standard by libraries and archives. The symposium was arranged in an arc to take delegates from little assumed knowledge of the JPEG 2000 standard, through an awareness of how it can be used, to a point where a discussion could occur on stewarding the critical aspects of the standard. The result was a dialog that started the process of the adoption of this important standard into best practices, products, and services that meet the unique needs of the library and archive communities.