diff --git a/R/editing.R b/R/editing.R
index 187bb41..9199019 100644
--- a/R/editing.R
+++ b/R/editing.R
@@ -45,9 +45,9 @@ publish_object <- function(mn,
   }
 
   # Check if format ID is valid
-  if (!(format_id %in% D1_FORMATS)) {
+  if (!is.null(D1_FORMATS) && !(format_id %in% D1_FORMATS)) {
     stop(call. = FALSE,
-         paste0("The format_id of '", format_id, "' is not a valid format ID. See https://cn.dataone.org/cn/v2/formats for the current list. This package stores a copy and may be out of date with that list so please email the author if needed."))
+         paste0("The provided format_id of '", format_id, "' is not a valid format ID. Check what you entered against the list of format IDs on https://cn.dataone.org/cn/v2/formats. Note that this list is cached when arcticdatautils is loaded so if you haven't restarted your R session in a while you may have an outdated copy and restarting your session may fix this."))
   }
 
   # Set up some variables for use later on
@@ -138,9 +138,9 @@ update_object <- function(mn, pid, path, format_id=NULL, new_pid=NULL, sid=NULL)
   }
 
   # Check if format ID is valid
-  if (!(format_id %in% D1_FORMATS)) {
+  if (!is.null(D1_FORMATS) && !(format_id %in% D1_FORMATS)) {
     stop(call. = FALSE,
-         paste0("The format_id of '", format_id, "' is not a valid format ID. See https://cn.dataone.org/cn/v2/formats for the current list. This package stores a copy and may be out of date with that list so please email the author if needed."))
+         paste0("The provided format_id of '", format_id, "' is not a valid format ID. Check what you entered against the list of format IDs on https://cn.dataone.org/cn/v2/formats. Note that this list is cached when arcticdatautils is loaded so if you haven't restarted your R session in a while you may have an outdated copy and restarting your session may fix this."))
   }
 
   message(paste0("Updating object ", pid, " with the file at ", path, "."))
diff --git a/R/sysdata.rda b/R/sysdata.rda
deleted file mode 100644
index acb96fc..0000000
Binary files a/R/sysdata.rda and /dev/null differ
diff --git a/R/zzz.R b/R/zzz.R
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..b34d3f5
--- /dev/null
+++ b/R/zzz.R
@@ -0,0 +1,51 @@
+.onLoad <- function(libname, pkgname) {
+  load_d1_formats_list("https://cn.dataone.org/cn/v2/formats")
+  warn_if_outdated()
+
+  invisible()
+}
+
+# Warning: This function produces a side-effect of assigning into the package
+# env with <<- to update the value of D1_FORMATS
+D1_FORMATS <- NULL
+load_d1_formats_list <- function(url) {
+  req <- httr::GET(url)
+
+  if (httr::status_code(req) != 200) {
+    warning(paste0("Failed to load an up-to-date list of format IDs from ", url, " because the request to the CN failed. Checking of format IDs is disabled."))
+    return(invisible())
+  }
+
+  formats_content <- httr::content(req, encoding = "UTF-8")
+  format_id_nodes <- xml2::xml_find_all(formats_content, "//formatId")
+
+  if (length(format_id_nodes) == 0) {
+    warning(paste0("Failed to load an up-to-date list of format IDs from ", url, " because the response returned from the CN was not formatted as expected. Checking of format IDs is disabled."))
+    return(invisible())
+  }
+
+  D1_FORMATS <<- vapply(format_id_nodes, function(x) { xml2::xml_text(x) }, "")
+}
+
+warn_if_outdated <- function() {
+  installed_version <- packageVersion("arcticdatautils")
+
+  req <- httr::GET("https://api.github.com/repos/nceas/arcticdatautils/releases/latest",
+                   httr::add_headers("Accept", "application/vnd.github.v3+json"))
+
+  release <- httr::content(req)
+
+  if (httr::status_code(req) != 200) {
+    warning(paste0("The request to check whether the version of arcticdatautils you have installed is the latest, the response from GitHub's API failed. The response was: \n\n", req))
+    return(invisible())
+  }
+
+  if (!("tag_name" %in% names(release))) {
+    warning(paste0("While checking to see if your installed version of arcticdatautils is the latest available, the response from GitHub's API was not as expected so checking was not done."))
+    return(invisible())
+  }
+
+  if (!stringr::str_detect(release$tag_name, paste0("^v", stringr::str_replace_all(as.character(installed_version), "\\.", "\\\\."), "$"))) {
+    warning(paste0("You do not have the most recent version of arcticdatautils installed. This is just a reminder to update next time you get the chance. Visit https://github.com/NCEAS/arcticdatautils/releases to find the latest release."))
+  }
+}