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Latest on the APEx DoW amendments and finances
Thanks to the great support and response of WP1 members and content provider contact persons, a new Description of Work (DoW) was drafted and submitted to the European Commission in January, together with a formal request for an amendment to the Grant Agreement.
We are now awaiting the green light from the Commission to start uploading the new DoW in the NEF module of the Research Participant Portal. The delay in being able to do this is caused by the fact that the NEF can only be used for one type of session at a time (the NEF is typically used for negotiations, amendments and periodic reporting). The project’s first year cost claim session (first year reporting) has been closed and is now being processed by the Commission. As soon as the payments have been made and everything has been finalised, the NEF can be opened for an amendment session. We will keep you informed about this process and will contact you when you need to sign the amended Grant Agreement or correct any information available in the NEF regarding your LEAR, contacts and official name of your institution etc.
A quick recap of the requested amendments:
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Amendment #1– addition of members to the project
The Archives Hub (UK), the National Archives of Romania and the Historical Archives of Belgrade have joined as consortium and project partners while the following content providers have now chosen to join the consortium as project partners as well: the Austrian State Archives, the Directorate Generale of Archives (Italy), the Office of the Chief Archivist of Lithuania, the National Archives of Luxembourg and the National Archives of Iceland. The National Archives of the Czech Republic has chosen to become an associated partner within the project and consortium.
Amendment #2– request for an extension to the project by ten months
Due to the difficulties of some project members in hiring (new) project staff members – especially for the technical tasks within the project – during the first year, certain tasks had to be delayed for a period of up to ten months.
Amendment #3 – modification of the reporting periods following the ten-month extension of the project
Amendment #4 – budget decrease of €21,358
The decrease is due to the correction of personnel for some partners and corresponding changed man months for some partners due to the delays in the start of the project. Furthermore, the change in hosting allocation has resulted in the possibility to redistribute the budget among the partners, especially for supporting all partners in their Country Manager activities to get more archival institutions from their country to participate in the Archives Portal Europe and via this, in Europeana too.
Amendment #5 – modification of the DoW
European Commission review
The third review of the project by the Commission will be held on 30 April. The Project Board has been very busy preparing all their presentations and we will of course inform you of the outcome of the review as soon as we receive the report from the Commission.
First year financial report
Thank you all for submitting your original stamped and signed Form Cs. The forms have been sent to the Commission and they are now being checked and processed. The payments should be made shortly.
Second year financial report
Due to the unavailability of the NEF module, the second year financial reporting will be delayed until the first year session and the following amendment session have been completed. As soon as the new cost claim session is opened, we will contact you with information on what you need to do to submit your incurred costs.
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Europeana interoperability update
As the developments of release 1.2 have furthermore improved the conversion and delivery functions of the Archives Portal Europe dashboard towards Europeana, the APEx WP2 team had a meeting with the Europeana team at the end of February to discuss the next steps of actively delivering data. As reported some time ago, this had been postponed last autumn due to the fact that Europeana was still working on the implementation of a hierarchical objects display. In late January, WP2 was informed that this implementation would once more need to be delayed until this summer so that the necessity for a joint meeting became obvious.
With the fact in mind that some of you have been waiting to see your data on Europeana for several months already and with regard to the upcoming third review of the APEx project by the European Commission, it was decided to move forward the data delivery. Eight partner countries and the Country Managers redelivered their data within just a week, an effort for which WP2 Leader Kerstin Arnold would like to thank you once again. This swift movement was also possible thanks to Europeana now using the APEx OAI-PMH harvesting console so that even bigger files can be harvested without any trouble.
Though the display in the Europeana portal is still an issue, data has now been delivered via the Archives Portal Europe to Europeana since 23 April which can be viewed here. WP2 will continue to develop the direct conversion from apeEAD to EDM in order to fully use EDM's hierarchical possibilities. The corresponding hierarchical objects display is expected to be implemented in the Europeana portal in June. What it possibly will look like is illustrated in the mock-up below.
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Improvements in the Archives Portal Europe
Within the last month, the APEx technical team has been working on stabilising the latest release available (release 1.2):
Archival Landscape upload: improvements in the display of the report of changes to facilitate the review of data by the user
EAD:
- Review and correction of the editing functionality for apeEAD files in the dashboard to enable work on the files
- Improvement and review of the uploading functionality for EAD files, enabling better management of EAD files that have no EADID
Mapping the Directory:
- New feature that allows users to select a marker on the map; the institution is selected in the existing tree below the map and information relating to this institution is displayed
- Inclusion of the address details to be shown on the map beneath the name of the institution
Adaptation of the header image on the dashboard to the new header image on the portal
The technical team is also working on the implementation and development of the following future enhancements/features planned for the next interim release:
- Create and modify the apeEAC-CPF creation form in the dashboard
- Manage apeEAC-CPF files through the Content Manager in the dashboard
- Implementation of the second display for apeEAC-CPF in the dashboard and portal
- Re-design of the “Advanced search” section in the portal to include the option to search for all data published in the portal (apeEAD, apeEAC-CPF and EAG 2012)
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Boost in portal user numbers for year 2
During the second project year of APEx, the number of visits and visitors to the portal increased dramatically! From a total of approximately 3,500 visits in March 2013, the number increased to approximately 19,500 in February 2014, which confirms the excellent work of all APEx Work Packages and of our Country Managers.
During the first half of the project year, the numbers remained somewhat static and slightly decreased during the summer months. However, with the implementation in autumn 2013 of new user-oriented functions in the Archives Portal Europe and the possibility for search engines to access the archival descriptions within the portal, the user numbers increased impressively.
The portal reached nearly 90,000 visits during the analysed period. One visit is counted for the interaction of one user in the portal. During one visit, a user might go to several pages on the portal and use our social media functions. On average, our users stay over three minutes in the Archives Portal Europe and visit six pages.
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Recent evaluation activities
The APEx project regularly conducts usability tests on the Archives Portal Europe in order to learn more about practical user experiences and issues (dashboard as well as front-end users). Just recently, such tests were carried out again in which twelve partner countries participated. In parallel with these, focus group evaluations were conducted in Germany, Croatia and Hungary and a user survey featured on the Archives Portal Europe homepage.
These different tests and evaluations help the APEx team significantly in further improving the portal in close connection with actual user needs and demands. The first evaluations were carried out in 2012 and focused on the content providers – that is, the archivists who actually upload their archival material to the portal via the Data Preparation Tool (DPT) and the dashboard.
The main aspects the APEx team wanted to learn about were, for example, how self-explanatory and easy to use are the dashboard tools provided, is the uploaded data displayed correctly etc. The user survey launched in parallel on the portal homepage mainly aimed at finding out who is actually using the portal.
In contrast, the most recent evaluation phase has put the focus on the portal´s end users as such where the archivists who are APEx team members observed their colleagues on how they as first-time users use the portal’s functionalities.
These types of trans-national evaluations on a portal – as they are being carried out by the APEx project that builds the backbone of developing the Archives Portal Europe – are critical for the development of the portal and we await the results with anticipation!
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Standards
WP4 has almost finished its work on the standard METS and is going to publish its sixth deliverable entitled ”State of the art report on METS and recommendation for its use in the Archives Portal Europe”. After sending it to the European Commission, it will be published on the project website.
This report is the result of the work of all APEx partners as all of them have provided information about the use of METS in their institutions. The apeMETS profile has been built by comparing and combining the METS profiles used in the constituent institutions. In close cooperation with WP2 (Interoperability with Europeana), an apeMETSRights profile and schema were also created. Here, the use of the apeMETS files with embedded rights information can ensure interoperability with Europeana and ensure the later use of these files by Europeana.
For those institutions waiting to provide EAC-CPF files, it won’t be long now before you can start! We are testing the different functionalities the technical team has already provided and for these, your EAC-CPF files are more than welcome. Please contact the WP4 Leader if you would like to provide us with the test files of your institution.
Furthermore, you are – as always – welcome to contact WP4 for any questions regarding the Archives Portal Europe standards and the easiest way of doing this is to use the forum or via direct mail to the WP4 Leader. All feedback is welcome: we need to know if the standards used fit your purposes, so do not hesitate to contact us!
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Dissemination update
In tandem with the dramatic increase in visitors to the portal, a number of other improvements have also been implemented to make the portal user interface more user friendly. Still, the complexity of the portal content does not permit us to create a fully intuitive interface and therefore videos and tutorials explaining the different modes of search are in production. This development is also under way for the back-end tools, the dashboard and the Data Preparation Tool (DPT), the manuals for which (the DPT, the Institution Manager and the Country Manager dashboard manuals) have recently been updated in accordance with the latest version of the portal and are available on the project website.
A busy spring lies ahead for WP7 participants, starting with the second technical review on 30 April. While assembling the efforts made during the last activity period, we find that more than 160 dissemination activities have been conducted by APEx partners and more than 2000 flyers together with posters, lanyards, pins and roll-ups have been produced or updated and distributed. Useful contacts have also been made with engaged people in archival institutions, other projects, companies and initiatives and a lot of interest has been shown in the development of the portal. This has led to a number of new content providers in the portal and to new and promising offers of collaboration.
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Archives Portal Europe Foundation update
The Executive Steering Committee (ESC) has mandated a group of directors from within the ESC to implement a business plan to sustain the Archives Portal Europe after the APEx lifetime, which is the major task of Work Package 8. This WP8 Strategic Group will be chaired by Karel Velle, National Archivist of Belgium while the Project Coordinator who is project leader of WP8 is also a member of the group. In this framework, NANETH asked external experts from The Knowledge Centre Digital Heritage Netherlands (DEN) to present a Business Plan that will support the transition of the APEx consortium into a non-profit foundation under Dutch law. The Business Plan will contain a plan for sustainability of the infrastructure, financial matters, marketing, communication, housing and staff etc. At their meeting in Athens in early June, the ESC will discuss some questions regarding the business plan and make decisions on further steps for the implementation of the APEx Foundation.
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Upcoming events
Wednesday 30 April
Third Technical Review of the APEx project
Location: Nationaal Archief, The Hague, the Netherlands
Wednesday 7 May and Wednesday 4 June @11.00–13.00
Jour fixe @Bundesarchiv, Berlin
Jour fixe for German-speaking archivists on managing archival data in the Archives Portal Europe at the Bundesarchiv, Berlin-Lichterfelde.
Open to all interested archivists. Please send a short application to .
Location: Bundesarchiv (IT-Schulungsraum im Pförtnergebäude), Finckensteinalle 63, 12205 Berlin, Germany.
Monday 12 May @10.00–16.00
May '14 workshop Archives Portal Europe for Dutch archivists
Click here for more information.
Location: Nationaal Archief, The Hague, the Netherlands.
Wednesday 21–Thursday 22 May
WP7 meeting in Uppsala
Location: Landsarkivet Uppsala (Regional Archives in Uppsala), Arkivcentrum, von Kræmers allé 19, Uppsala, Sweden.
Tuesday 3–Wednesday 4 June
APEx Project Board meeting
Location: General State Archives, Athens, Greece.
Wednesday 4 June
APEx ESC meeting
Location: General State Archives, Athens, Greece.
Monday 16–Wednesday 18 June
APEx Country Manager Meeting
The Country Managers for the Archives Portal Europe will come together at the Danish National Archives in Copenhagen in order to catch up on their most recent activities, discuss current topics and plan future steps.
This event is a joint meeting with ICARUS.
Location: Danish National Archives, Copenhagen, Denmark.
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Contact list
| Topic/question about |
Contact/document(s) and pages |
| Get information on Country Manager issues |
Country Manager Coordinator Wim van Dongen – |
| Get a Country Manager account for the dashboard (https://www.archivesportaleurope.net/Dashboard and https://contentchecker.archivesportaleurope.net/Dashboard) |
Administrators Bastiaan Verhoef – – and Yoann Moranville – |
| Get a new partner account for the project website and subscribe to the bi-monthly internal project newsletter (http://www.apex-project.eu) |
Administrators Susanne Danelius – – and Wim van Dongen – |
| Get the latest version of the Data Preparation Tool including the manual |
Consult “Outcomes > Tools and manuals” or contact WP5 Leader Lucile Grand – – for details |
| Get information about the use of standards in the Archives Portal Europe |
Consult “Outcomes > Standards” or contact WP4 Leader Susanne Waidmann – – for details |
| Get information about the relationship to Europeana, the DEA and the formats used |
Consult WP2 Team space (Partner area) or contact WP2 Leader Kerstin Arnold – – for details |
| Get information about the current (technical) development discussions and status |
Consult Redmine (account for viewing: username: viewer, password: vi3wer_pmd) or contact Development Coordinator Chris Houwing – – and WP3 Leader Beatriz González Villodas – – for details |
| Provide information on upcoming events in your country or presentations you’ve held about the APEx project and the Archives Portal Europe |
At the Forum > News pool or contact WP7 Leader Peder Andrén – |
| Get information on administrative issues of the project |
Contact the APEx Project Office –
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