Building infrastructures for archives in a digital world

Date: 26 – 28 June 2013                                              

Venue: Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2

To download the abstracts as PDF, please click here.

• Daniel Pitti (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities,  University of Virgina, US)
  Strategic issues for archives in a digital world

• Björn Jordell (Riksarkivet, SE)
  Open data and its strategic impact on archives

• Jennifer Edmond (CENDARI project, IE)
  Learning to say ‘No’: strategic considerations for archives in the digital world

Session 1.1
Strategic issues for archives in a digital world

• Thomas Aigner (ICARUS, AT)
  International cooperation as a precondition for building infrastructures

• Daniel Jeller (ICARUS, AT)
  The digital age: opportunities to ensure access to our cultural heritage

• Boris Blažinić (Institute for quality and human resource development)
  How to raise visibility: archive’s hidden treasuries
  

• Herbert Wurster (Diocese of Passau, DE)
  Persistent-meta-data, the keeping of records and archival science

Session 1.2 
Open data and licensing

• Julia Fallon (IPR & Policiy Advisor Europeana)
  Open data and licensing (legal aspects, consequences for  accessibility, economic aspects, copyright, creative commons etc.)
  

• Walter Scholger (Centre for Information Modelling in the Humanities Graz, AT)
  Archives and the 'digital turn': challenges, opportunities and possible solutions to Open Access, provision and use of archival resources.

• Martin Fries (Swiss Federal Archives, CH)
  Everything online? Dealing with data protection issues
  

• Dorota Drzewiecka, Katarzyna Pepłowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun, PL)
  Access to Polish archival material: legal dilemmas
  

Session 1.3
Linking of data – interdisciplinary cooperation

• Jane Stevenson (Archives Hub, GB)
  A Licence to Thrill: the exciting potential of open data
  

• Eddy Put (State Archives Belgium, BE)
  Pleading the case for a flora of archives
  

• Constanza Giannaccini (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, IT)
  Burckhardtsource.org. A semantic archive
  

• Damiana Luzzi (Digital Renaissance Foundation, IT), Irene Pedretti (Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, IT)
  An ontology for APUG: problem, method and solution
  

Session 1.4
Users of archivistic content now and in the future 

• Stefano Vitali (Soprintendenza Archivistica per  l’Emilia Romagna, IT)
  Archivists and users in the virtual searching room

• Stéphane Gierts (Council of the European Union)
  Archival access and online archives of the Council of the European Union – Considering the user perspective

• Steffen Hennicke (Berlin School of Library and Information Science, DE)
  Modelling the information needs of archival users

• Petra Links (NIOD – Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, NL) & Reto Speck (NIOD, Research Associate at Centre for e-Research, King’s College London, GB)
  Research infrastructures and archival inter-mediation

Session 1.5
Building new partnerships 

• Laura Gould (Lothian Health Services Archive, GB) & Guinevere Barlow (Carmichael Watson Project, GB)
  Small Scale, Big Change – the impact of social media

• Doreen Kelimes (City Archives Speyer, DE)
  The eastern and north-eastern European archives between digitisation, Web 2.0 and social media

• Alexander Schatek (Topothek, AT)
  “Let the crowd work”. Creating a Virtual Archive by Local Units

• Peter Moser (Archives of Rural History, CH)
  Virtual archives: a new solution to old problems?

• Tom Cobbaert (Archief 2.0, BE)
  ArchiefWiki, the collaborative success of independent knowledge sharing

Session 1.6
Archival content in didactic practice 

• Antonella Ambrosio (UNINA – Università degli Studi di NapoliFederico II, IT)
  Charters and digital archives in the didactic practice

• Hrvoje Stančić, Arian Rajh, Ana Stanković (Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of  Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, HR)
  Archival education activities in the online environment

• Artur Dirmeier & Kathrin Pindl (Spitalarchiv Regensburg, DE)
  Spitalarchiv: didactic practice in a digital world

Session 2.1
Archival metadata and standards for digital archives  

• Daniel Pitti (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities,  University of Virginia, US)
  The emerging archival metadata landscape

• Karin Bredenberg (National Archives of Sweden, SE)
  Record creators: use of EAC-CPF in the Archives Portal Europe

• Kerstin Arnold (Technical Coordinator APEx, Federal Archives of Germany, DE)
  EAD revision and its effects on the Archives Portal Europe

• Maud Medves (CENDARI project, FR)
  EAG CENDARI: customising EAG for research purposes

Session 2.2
Best practice: it’s tool time!

• Susanne Waidmann (Federal Archives of Germany, DE)
  The Archives Portal Europe: the adventure of presenting multicultural and multilingual information on archival material, its creators and their repositories in just one tool

• Bastiaan Verhoef (APEx, Nationaal Archief, NL)
  The backend of the Archives Portal Europe: lessons learned and challenges waiting (provisional)

• Jochen Graf (University of Cologne, DE)
  Transcription, contextualization and peer review: the ‘Monasterium Collaborative Archives’

• Eoghan Ó Carragáin (National Library of Ireland, IE), Luke O'Sullivan (Swansea Univesity Library, IE)
  Archival collections in Vufind

Session 2.3
Best practice: from cardboard boxes to European e-archives  

• Zoltán Szatucsek (National Archives of Hungary, HU)
  Search all, find more: access to the Archival Database Service in Hungary

• Maria Popkovacheva-Terzieva (Archives State Agency of Bulgaria, BG)
  Archives State Agency: attempts to popularize its digital holdings

• Peter Fleer (Swiss Federal Archives, CH)
  Interpretation of digital records

• John Cox (National University of Ireland, IE)
  The Abbey Theatre Archive Digitization Project:  challenges and opportunities

• Grace Toland (Irish Traditional Music Archive, IE)
  The Irish Traditional Music Archive & The Inishowen Song Project

Session 2.4
Best practice: sustaining digital infrastructures in the long run

• Hrvoje Stančić, Arian Rajh (Department of Information  and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and  Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, HR), Edvin Buršić  (Financial Agency, HR)
  Using Archival Information Packages for production of sustainable  archival collections of digitised records

• Giovanni Ciccaglioni (ICUU – Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, IT)
  Digital cultural heritage and e-infrastructures

• Salvatore Vassallo (Instituto Centrale per gli Archivi, IT)
  The Archival Resource Catalogue within the Italian National Archival System

• Armin Straube (German National Library, DE)
  Frameworks for digital preservation

Session 2.5
Best practice: building infrastructures on a national level  

• Vlatka Lemić (Croatian State Archives, HR)
  Archival infrastructure at a national level: introducing interoperability, networking and integration in practice

• Christina Wolf, Gerald Maier (State Archives Baden-Württemberg, DE)
  Building a German archives portal: development of a national platform for archival information within the German Digital Library

• István Kenyeres (Budapest City Archives, HU)
  Archives Portal Hungary: asolution for joint publication of databases and digitized archival materials

• Karol Krawczyk (Head Office of State Archives, PL)
  Holdings accessible online: the Polish experience

• Chezkie Kasnett (The National Library of Israel, IL)
  The historical archive reborn: approach and strategy  for the Archive network

Session 2.6
Best practice: building infrastructures on an international level 

• Manfred Thaller, Jochen Graf, Sebastian Rose, Andre Streicher (University of Cologne, DE)
  Network(s) for Europe’s charters: a proven blueprint for an international infrastructure

• Gerold Ritter & Jonas Arnold (Archives Online, CH)
  Archives Online: real time searched in 13 archives without redundant data

• Henk Harmsen (DARIAH-EU)
  DARIAH: the adventure of building an infrastructure

• Anna Bohn & Aleksandra Pawłiczek (CENDARI project, DE)
  CENDARI: building up a research infrastructure on The First World War across borders

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Daniel Pitti (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities,
University of Virgina, US)
Strategic issues for archives in a digital world

Computer and network technologies present the professional archival community with both unprecedented opportunities and unprecedented challenges. The opportunities, in the process of being realized, include providing never-before-imagined access to archival holdings, revealing new perspectives on archival holdings, expanding the community of users, and forging collaborations that overcome the isolation within and among archival institutions. Seizing these opportunities is an intellectual, technological, and political challenge, but the primary challenge presented by advanced technologies is electronic records, in their unimaginable numbers and variety. Fortunately, the opportunities are as inspiring as the challenges are daunting. The strategies for addressing each necessarily involve collaboration and cooperation, both within and among archival institutions and with allied professional and scholarly communities, with respect for traditional cultures, principles and practices, but without respect for the boundaries that have separated them.

Björn Jordell (Riksarkivet, SE)
Open data and its strategic impact on archives

Jennifer Edmond (CENDARI project, IE)
Learning to say ‘No’: strategic considerations for archives in the digital world

A good strategy equips you to use the resources you have to take advantage of the opportunities around you, and understand the relative merits of alternative paths.  But in the fast-changing environment of the digital world, it is often hard to find firm ground from which to think, much less act, strategically.  Taking as its basis the experiences of the Collaborative European Digital Archival Research Infrastructure, or CENDARI Project, this keynote address will focus on some of the key decision windows faced by new or mature archival digitisation programmes, placing them in the context of larger European developments affecting archival end users and service providers.

Curriculum Vitae

Jennifer Edmond is Director of Strategic Projects in the Faculty of Arts Humanities and Social Sciences at Trinity College Dublin.  Jennifer holds a PhD in Germanic Languages and Literatures from Yale University, however her current research largely encompasses methodological questions raised by the application of technology to cultural content, in particular in terms of the infrastructural and or social conditions required for successful development and delivery, and the impact of new technologies on such essential concepts of humanistic scholarship as ‘reading’ and ‘publication.’  She is the Coordinator for the €6.5 M EU project CENDARI (Collaborative EuropeaN Digital/Archival Research Infrastructure), and convenes the Working Group in the impact of digital methods on scholarly publication in the ESF-funded network NeDiMAH (Network for Digital Methods in the Arts and Humanities). 

 

Thomas Aigner (ICARUS, AT)
International cooperation as a precondition for building infrastructures

In the Analogue Era, archives as keepers of unique documents and information could easily afford to solely concentrate on themselves and exist as a “lonely island”, so to speak. In fact, operating as monopolist, it wasn´t even really necessary to develop neither advertising campaigns nor special activities which would heighten the public’s awareness of the archive in question – in any case, one had to turn to a specific archive if certain information was sought after.

In the Digital Era this situation now radically changed and continues to evolve rapidly: both the direct relation between archives and other heritage/memory institutions as well as the relationship between archives and their visitors are undergoing significant changes. Now, so far rigorous borders dissolve manifoldly: inter-institutionally, functionally, organisationally etc.

A profound upheaval is taking place which can only be coped with on the basis of cross-border (in various senses of the word) partnerships. This formation of infrastructure requires the simultaneous attendance of cooperation networks – after all, what would a highway without cars be worth?

Curriculum Vitae

Thomas Aigner, PhD, MAS: Studies in History and Archival Sciences, since 2008 president of ICARUS-International Centre for Archival Research (www.icar-us.eu), since 1995 director of St. Pölten Diocese Archives, founder of portals such as Monasterium (www.monasterium.net) or Matricula (www.matricula-online.at), leader and project manager of many international projects like ENArC-European Network on Archival Cooperation (enarc.icar-us.eu).  

  

Daniel Jeller (ICARUS, AT)
The digital age: opportunities to ensure access to our cultural heritage

The digitisation of archival material that started in the late 20th century is an important factor in determining the manner in which we as a society will make use of the diverse documents stored in our public and private archives in the future. My presentation gives an overview of the effects that this new cultural practice has on how we perceive digitised historical material in relation to its physical counterpart and to describe the unique opportunities that arise out of these developments for the archival world as a whole. I will show that the technological advantages in the fields of digital imaging, data storage and data distribution provide archives with a wide array of possibilities in which they can improve how they can serve their users and at the same time ensure their important role as the societies long term memory and a crucial guardian of our combined cultural heritage.

Curriculum Vitae

Studied History at the University of Vienna; Since 2008 Head of Digitisation and IT at ICARUS

 

Boris Blažinić (Institute for quality and human resource development)
How to raise visibility: archive’s hidden treasuries

In the eyes of the beholder archives are usually seen as our historical memory or its guardians. Archives keep the rich and unique documentary heritage and make them available to the public. Information and evidence contained in the archives relate to the past and present life of our society in many different ways and have potential to meet the needs and expectations of a wide variety of users. In this sense then, why are archives rather invisible to the public compared to other cultural institutions and centres? My presentation deals with general principles, strategies and techniques of visibility from the psychological perspective and how they can be used in archives to raise their visibility (that is become more attractive to the public).

Curriculum Vitae

Boris Blažinić is Director of Institute for quality and human resource development, a professor of psychology and court-appointed expert in psychology, expert in business psychology and human resources development. He is completing his doctoral studies in the area of Information Science at the Faculty of Philosophy in Zagreb. He completed a course of lectures of the postgraduate studies in social psychiatry at the Faculty of Medicine in Zagreb. After receiving a Japanese government scholarship, he completed a specialist program „Management of Human Capacity Development Program“ in Japan. He specialized in Transactional Analysis (prof. dr. Carlo Moiso and prof. dr. Mary Cox) and completed Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Hypnosis coached by Tina Stacey (Hexagon, London). Practitioner NLP and Master NLP, couched by Nada Kaiser. He also completed a specialist training for negotiators and mediators taught by dr. Jerry Barett (USA), a part of the extrajudicial settlement project organized by Croatian government. He works as a consultant, coach and lecturer in the Republic of Croatia and abroad for various companies and institutions (France, Switzerland, Netherlands, Italy, United Arab Emirates and Austria).

 

Herbert Wurster (Diocese of Passau, DE)
Persistent-meta-data, the keeping of records and archival science

Archival storage procedures are well established as far as the "originals" are concerned. But the technical development of the past century has brought several new technical ways of providing access to the records and of preserving them in another medium e. g. substitution microfilms. Each new medium has developed its own strategy of description, especially in the field of how to refer to record groups and call numbers. New ways of archival description through database supported archival programmes have had similar results. As a consequence, the coherence between the various new media, the "original" sources and the information contained in established finding aids has often been broken. It is therefore necessary to reconsider the basic principles of archival science in order to keep intact the usability of the wealth of information of traditional finding aids and to keep alive the correlation i. e. the meta-identity between the "originals" records and meta-records for access and substantial preservation.

 

Julia Fallon (IPR & Policiy Advisor Europeana)
Open data and licensing (legal aspects, consequences for accessibility, economic aspects, copyright, creative commons etc.)

Europeana brings together the digitized content of Europe's galleries, libraries, museums, archives and audiovisual collections. Currently Europeana gives integrated access to over 25 million books, films, paintings, museum objects and archival documents from some 2,200 content providers. The content is drawn from every European member state and the interface is in 29 European languages. Europeana receives its main funding from the European Commission.

Behind Europeana lies a series of framework and tools that enables the standardised, free and open sharing of metadata.  Furthermore, supporting the core Europeana service are a number of projects and initiatives that improve upon the basic service by focusing on industry, social or legal aspects of making content available. For example Europeana is developing three pilot creative communities using the principles of the commons to demonstrate the impact commons can have within a network, through to initiatives such as the Rights Labelling Campaign which aims to deliver improvements in the presence and quality of metadata, specifically Licence information.

All of this is made possible by the Europeana Licensing Framework - guiding the provision and use of data by both users and providers under the basic principles that metadata is provided under a CC0 Licence. The Europeana framework will be presented along with an exploration of the issues it tackles, the services it enables, finding with a brief look to the future of the framework.

More information can be found at http://www.europeana.eu/portal

 

Walter Scholger (Centre for Information Modelling in the Humanities Graz, AT)
Archives and the 'digital turn': challenges, opportunities and possible solutions to Open Access, provision and use of archival resources

Archives can draw on ample and rich experience regarding the access to their material and the terms of its use. Apart from well-established and proven procedures within the archives themselves, they can rely on equally established legal terms and practices, with relatively small differences between European countries.

The current national and international legislature, however, primarily governs the access to and use of physical archival material in situ at the actual archive. The legislature regarding digital resources and digital archives is still underdeveloped and leaves much room for insecurity and interpretation. Principle issues of intellectual property rights, copyright and privacy remain unresolved, but the tendency of international bodies towards open and unrestricted access, especially for the purposes of education and research, is evident. Initiatives like Creative Commons offer a means to protect the interests of individual creators, while providing the public with open access to their work.

While archives have well-established and proven ways regarding the access to and use of physical archival material, there is little experience with the different roles the same archives can take in the digital world: An archive may act as a host of their own digital archive, or provide data to an external online portal; it may autonomously digitise its material or leave that task to external experts. These different roles also call for different legal frameworks, terms of use and forms of collaboration.

The lack of legislative and procedural strictures allows for unique synergy opportunities: Open access to archival resources enables the close and interactive collaboration between archives and expert researchers, enriching both the quality of the scholarly work and the quality of the archival resource (in terms of the information and knowledge about the individual resource, its context and relations to other resources).

This presentation will showcase some of the challenges regarding the provision and usage of digital (and digitised) archival resources, using the example of Monasterium.net. Monasterium.net has developed into the largest virtual archive of medieval and early modern deeds worldwide: It offers access to more than 250.000 documents and continues to expand through a network of more than 50 European partner institutions.

Copyright and Provision issues that surfaced during the establishment of the Monasterium portal will be used to demonstrate the shortcomings and challenges of the existing legal frameworks (from a national Austrian and a broader European perspective). The project’s attempts at possible solutions will be demonstrated and put forward to discussion with the expert audience.

A number of legal texts addressing the aforementioned different roles were created for use with Monasterium. The portal supports the concept of Open Access and promotes the Creative Commons licenses as a role model for the publication of knowledge, research and education resources.

 

Martin Fries (Swiss Federal Archives, CH)
Everything online? Dealing with data protection issues

One of the strategic goals of the Swiss Federal Archives is the development of a comprehensive range of online user services comprising finding aids and digitally accessible content. One important element of the digital access is the Online Search on www.swiss-archives.ch. Behind this web-based access to our finding aids is a database where our holdings are indexed down to the level of a dossier.
The legal framework in Switzerland poses an extra challenge as not all available metadata can be published online. The Federal Act on Archiving and data protection laws prohibit the publication of finding aids when they contain “sensitive personal data“ and the records are still within their closure period.  When designing and implementing www.swiss-archives.ch we had to address legal, technical and organisational issues on the one hand, on the other hand a so-called Onsite Search has to be built which can be accessed in our reading rooms only. This tool thus provides a database access to our entire finding aids and gives a complete overview of all records. My presentation describes the challenges the Swiss Federal Archives had to face and the solutions chosen on our path to digital access.

Curriculum Vitae

Martin Fries has been working for the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA) in Bern since 2009 and is currently a staff member of the Information Access Division. In this position he supports and advises users in search activities and contributes to the development of SFA’s information services. He is also the designated Country Manager for Switzerland of the Archives Portal Europe. Martin Fries obtained an MA in history at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) in 2005 and recently completed an EMBA degree at the University of Applied Sciences and Arts in Basel.

 

Dorota Drzewiecka, Katarzyna Pepłowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun, PL)
Access to Polish archival material: legal dilemmas

Ensuring friendly, continuous and safe access to information resources and the archival materials collected in the archive, to every citizen at any time and in any place, is one of the basic tasks to be completed in the Polish archives. Only recently have the Polish archives entered the digital era. That process creates new problems of legal nature to be solved by the archives. This presentation shall summarise the results of our research on Polish state law regarding Open Access. Our legal analysis will identify those areas that need to be amended especially now in the digital era. This is especially important since the archives as government agencies must respect regulation on personal data protection, copyright, intellectual property protection and other rights related to the protection of privacy. Knowledge of these legal restrictions is essential for the functioning of digital archives. With this in mind, it becomes obvious that any project related to digitisation of archives cannot violate individual rights guaranteed.

Since legal issues are complex and tedious, our presentation will focus on the practical side  and is therefore based on case studies.

Curriculum Vitae

Dorota Drzewiecka:

Doctor of Humanities, special field: archive science and record management (NCU in Torun). Currently has a contract work with Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun, at the Faculty of History, as lecturer. Interests revolve around modern forms of records management and modern form of archives. Member of Polish archival organization. 

Katarzyna Pepłowska:

Graduate of history and archival science and administrative law in NCU in Torun. Actually, student of third year of doctoral studies and member of the Polish archival organization. Reasearch interest are digital archives and archival law. Intends to complete the research on digital archive in 2014 in Poland.

 

Jane Stevenson (Archives Hub, GB)
A Licence to Thrill: the exciting potential of open data

Open data is well and truly on the agenda, in the news and at the forefront of the information environment. To open up data means to share, to exchange, to reuse. It means unlocking the power of information. Tim Berners-Lee, the creator of the World Wide Web, is making it his mission, and he has given inspiring presentations in support of the ‘Web of Data’. Linked Open Data has become a major movement in favour of the open data agenda. But what does this mean for archivists and other information professionals? Have we really embraced open data, or are we still trying to control, to drip-feed, to assume we know what people need and want? Are we inhibiting innovation? Are we making sure that we support and encourage the exciting possibilities for research that are opened up by the Web and by new technologies?

The potential that open and reusable data gives us requires a leap of imagination, to embrace a world where data flows freely. We may need to lose old assumptions about the role of the archivist and gain more understanding of the digital landscape. But there are legitimate concerns about open data, particularly around intellectual property rights. So, we need to consider what can be open, how it can be made explicitly open, and what legitimate limitations we place upon it, either because of copyright or valuable income streams. What does Creative Commons provide? Where does freedom of information and data protection come into this? What about the importance of trust and integrity? How do we balance our concerns against the business case that can be made for opening up our data? Is the distinction between data and metadata important?

We need to be clear: open data is here, and both expectations and technology will continue to push us in this direction. By doing nothing we simply fall behind. By taking appropriate measures to open up our data we raise the profile of archives. There is a compelling business case and there are persuasive moral and ethical arguments. To move forwards we need to clarify what ‘open’ means, we need to understand the landscape we are working within, we need to work together, and we need to understand what we can all do to ensure our resources are at the forefront of scholarship and innovation. APEx and the Archives Portal Europe provide the perfect opportunity to move forwards, to embrace open data and to work together to ensure that archives are central to the progress of knowledge.

Curriculum Vitae:

Jane Stevenson is the Manager of the Archives Hub service, an aggregator for archives across the UK (http://archiveshub.ac.uk).  The service is a Jisc-funded service based at Mimas, a National Data Centre at The University of Manchester. Jane oversees the maintainance and development of the service, working with numerous stakeholders and balancing service requirements with initiating and co-ordinating innovations work. A trained and registered archivist, Jane has expertise in metadata standards for archives, particularly EAD, and issues around interoperability and online dissemination. She has recently been working on Linked Data initiatives, and she has given numerous presentations about the Archives Hub, Linked Data, and issues related to online discovery of archives. She is a Trustee of the Naitonal Jazz Archive and active in the UK Archives Discovery network (http://www.ukad.org).

 

Eddy Put (State Archives Belgium, BE)
Pleading the case for a flora of archives

The opacity of formally described items is an old crux. Archivists are confronted with the limits of accessibility when they describe items in a purely formal way (accounts, sentencebooks, notarial deeds etc.). This is especially the case in early modern serial archives. Traditional finding aids don't highlight these high-quality backbone series. ISAD(G) descriptive element 'Title' (3.1.2), borrowed from library science, enforces the misunderstanding: users don't always have the archival intelligence to understand the relationship between the archival item and its representation.

Documentary form has been studied extensively. The authority lists on documentary forms used by national archives are useful, but there is still a lot of work to do. A European ‘flora of archives’ or a thesaurus of documentary forms is not only useful for archivists, but can be a very important instrument for researchers to recognize and assess document types, especially of the early modern period. The real challenge for the future of the archival profession is not only the opening of massive content, but also the creative unlocking of archival forms.

Curriculum Vitae

Doctor in History, Director State Archives Louvain, Training Director Belgian State Archives, Part time professor archival science KU Leuven.

 

Constanza Giannaccini (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, IT)
Burckhardtsource.org. A semantic archive

http://www.burckhardtsource.org is a result of the ongoing ERC-Advanced Project “The European Correspondence to Jacob Burckhardt” (June 2011-May 2014), which aims at making publicly accessible the critical edition of the letters to the Swiss scholar. The platform hosts the digitised manuscripts of the letters to Jacob Burckhardt from 1842 to 1897. The proposed presentation will be focused on the illustration of the website, which is built on Muruca (www.muruca.org), and on its more innovative features based on Linked data technologies, through which Burckhardtsource.org is made interoperable with the Web of Data. An important part of the presentation will be devoted to Pundit (www.thepund.it), a semantic annotator integrated within the platform, which enables users to create structured data annotating web pages and to collect annotations in notebooks and share them with others, in order to create collaborative structured knowledge.

 

Damiana Luzzi (Digital Renaissance Foundation, IT), Irene Pedretti (Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, IT)
An ontology for APUG: problem, method and solution

Historical Archives of the Pontifical Gregorian University (APUG) own a complex and heterogeneous documental material: manuscripts, printed texts noted by author or teacher, sometimes considered hybrids printed-manuscript. The use of archival or library standards are not sufficient to express this complexity. In addition to represent the physical structure, state of conservation and restoration, it was necessary to bring out context and network of relationships among documents, agents, activities, places, events and periods to reconstruct the history of education, models, subjects taught and their evolution within the Roman College (Jesuits school) and influence in Europe and in the world. We present the problem, how it was solved and the methodology used to create an OWL ontology developed in a bottom-up approach: starting from the analysis of real data, using an iterative process, we have reached interoperability and alignment with international standards (CIDOC-CRM, EAC, EAD, EDM, FRBR-oo, etc.). Each class, property and instance is identified by URI to use as Linked Data.

Curriculum Vitae

Ph. D. Damiana Luzzi coordinates and manages research in national and European projects in the fields of Semantic Web technologies, ontology design, Cultural Heritage, Digital Humanities, technologies, tools and standards for archives, libraries and museum. She is currently working in Digital Renaissance Foundation (Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale) - New Technologies for Cultural Heritage, a no-profit Italian foundation in Florence.

 

Stefano Vitali (Soprintendenza Archivistica per l’Emilia Romagna, IT)
Archivists and users in the virtual searching room

The advent of the Internet and the publication of finding aids and other research tools on the Web have deeply changed the way in which archival institutions provide access to their holdings and communicate with their users. At the same time, users of archives have expanded and changed, both from the point of view of their education and cultural background and of their research interests and purposes.

In a traditional environment, users became familiar with archival research strategies, procedures and tools mostly thanks to interviews and conversations with the reference archivists in the search room, today finding aids and digital reproductions of documents make their journey on the web, alone, without an archivist who can help users to understand their meaning and how to make use of them.

How are archival institutions facing this new situation? How they can establish a better and more direct connection with users of archives?

The development of new types of search tools and the intelligent application of web 2.0 technologies can help archivists to address the challenge of communicating with their users in the new virtual search rooms on the Web.

 

Stéphane Gierts (Council of the European Union)
Archival access and online archives of the Council of the European Union – Considering the user perspective

The Council of the European Union has evolved recently from a provider of historical archives content in paper or microform format to a provider of digital content. This presentation will reflect on digital archives, the evolutions in archival research, archival requests and the users of the Council's archives.

A mass digitisation of the historical archives of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), European Economic Community (EEC) and the European Atomic Energy Community (EAEC) until 1974 has been executed during the last years.

Where researchers up to recently needed to consult the Council's historical archives on microforms, it is now possible to obtain the archives in digital format. This results in new possibilities for accessibility, communication and enhanced searching & retrieval, to meet the expectations of contemporary users looking for archival collections.

 

Steffen Hennicke (Berlin School of Library and Information Science, DE)
Modelling the information needs of archival users

The work presented originates from an ongoing dissertation project at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science. It gives empirical insight into the nature of written user enquiries in free text to the German Federal Archives and investigates how patterns of enquiries can be reasonably represented in an ontological model in order to produce adequate answers for the user. Existing archival knowledge bases can be supplemented with such ontological models. The methodological approach focuses on the interpretation of the enquiries in order to discover the implicit questions with regard to a certain domain of discourse; in the scope of this work, the archival domain of record keeping and the historical domain of social history. The identified patterns are modelled in CIDOC CRM. The result of the analysis is an ontological model which represents enquiry patterns of different abstraction levels to archives in the form of queries to this ontology. The presentation will discuss the “Documentation-Activity” pattern and its ontological representation. It is one of the first and most prominent discoveries from the analysis so far. Concrete examples will show in what way this pattern is able to answer a wide range of user enquiries.

Curriculum Vitae

Steffen Hennicke is a research assistant at the Berlin School of Library and Information Science at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. He has studied history, political science, and media science at the University of Potsdam, Sussex University (UK), and the Free University of Berlin and received his Magister Artium (MA) in 2007. Since then, he has worked for a software company (startext) on data conversion for archives and museums and various other archival projects. After joining the Berlin School of Library and Information Science in 2009 he has focused on topics related to the Semantic Web and the Digital Humanities. He was involved in EuropeanaConnect WP1 "Creating the Europeana Semantic Layer". Currently, he is working for the project Digitized Manuscripts to Europeana (DM2E). His Ph.D project investigates how patterns of archival free text enquiries can be reasonably represented in an ontological model in order to produce adequate answers for the user.

 

Petra Links (NIOD – Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies, NL) & Reto Speck (NIOD, Research Associate at Centre for e-Research, King’s College London, GB)
Research infrastructures and archival inter-mediation

The development of infrastructures is transforming the way archives operate and interact with researchers. The European Holocaust Research Infrastructure (EHRI) project - a trans-European endeavour of 20 institutions to integrate descriptions of Holocaust-related sources in an online portal - is at the forefront of such developments, therefore providing us with glimpses of what the future archive in the digital world will look like.

Our presentation will reflect on our experience of formulating user requirements for the EHRI project, and particularly on interviews we undertook with user-facing archivists working at partner institutions. We will argue that current discussions about infrastructure building in the humanities largely miss one vital aspect of archival research: the considerable amount to which archivists mediate researchers' access to material. Highlighting the importance of inter-mediation in current research practices, we will show that a re-conceptualisation of the relationship between archivists, researchers and archives is one of the most important opportunities infrastructure building offers.

Curriculum Vitae

Reto Speck:

Research Associate at the Centre for e-Research, King’s College London. Further information available here.

Petra Links:

Archivist and Team Leader Collections at NIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Further information available here.

  

Laura Gould (Lothian Health Services Archive, GB) & Guinevere Barlow (Carmichael Watson Project, GB)
Small Scale, Big Change – the impact of social media

Working within a small team, with limited resources, it is often all too easy for staff to focus on the job in hand, achieving results but failing to publicise them. The introduction of Web 2.0 technologies into the working practices of small scale, specialist archives has transformed this, enabling easier promotion, developing wider networks and adding value and expertise.

Within the University of Edinburgh’s Centre for Research Collections there are a number of specialist archives, run either as part of our core services or as one-off projects. Two of these, the Lothian Health Services Archive and the Carmichael Watson Project will discuss the techniques that they have used and the impact that these have had, both in terms of raising awareness and how this has changed they work and the people they work with.

For Lothian Health Services Archive, the use of social media has not only built new audiences, but also lasting partnerships with other archives, organisations and individuals. Through a crowd sourcing initiative, the Carmichael Watson Project has 'mapped' real world, contextual links onto the archive of nineteenth century folklorist, Alexander Carmichael (1832-1912)."

Curriculum Vitae:

Guinevere Barlow:

Guinevere Barlow is the research assistant on the Carmichael Watson Project based at the Centre for Research Collections, University of Edinburgh. The current phase of the project, generously funded by The Leverhulme Trust, concentrates on the object collections of Alexander Carmichael (1832 - 1912). She has studied at the University of Limerick and the University of Aberdeen and is currently finishing her PhD in sociolinguistics.

Laura Gould:

Laura Gould has been the Archivist at Lothian Health Services Archive, University of Edinburgh, for just over a year, having previously been Assistant Archivist there since 2007. She graduated with an MSc in Information Management and Preservation (Digital) from the University of Glasgow in 2006 and has an interest in the use of social media as a tool for engaging with fellow heritage sector professionals and organisations, and developing new audiences.

 

Doreen Kelimes (City Archives Speyer, DE)
The eastern and north-eastern European archives between digitisation, Web 2.0 and social media

The transformation process in the late 1980s in Eastern Europe not only led to an opening of the borders, but also improved the gradual access to the archives in the eastern and north-eastern European countries. Besides that, a new phenomenon has been enriched the world: the invention of the World Wide Web.

Today Web 2.0 and the social media open a new spectrum of public relations to the cultural institutions. This is a new possibility to communicate with the user. Many cultural institutions seize the opportunity to present their collections digitally and carry out more and more projects.

Especially the first projects based on the digitisation, for example the register of births, deaths and marriages and the church records. The digitisation is also an opportunity to protect and to preserve the cultural assets.

This new form of public relations with Web 2.0 and the social media give the institutions the chance to present themselves nationally and internationally with the whole of their archival repertoire. This overview presents a resume of the work of the archives in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland and their Web 2.0 activities.

Curriculum Vitae

Doreen Kelimes studied Intercultural European and American Studies with a focus on Russia and Poland at the University Halle-Wittenberg. She holds a M.A. in Slavic Studies. Since 2012 she has been working at City Archives Speyer (DE).

 

Alexander Schatek (Topothek, AT)
“Let the crowd work”. Creating a Virtual Archive by Local Units

What about historic material and historic knowledge besides Archives? How to mobilise it? How to file and make the vast amount of content accessible?

The answer is the local people themselves: persons interested in the history of their hometown and working voluntarily. To encourage them to work means to invite them, structure their commitment by giving them clear guidelines, tools to work with, a society for back up and, after all, appreciation: So the task is building up an organisation.

The volunteers may work in workgroups, either gathered in a workspace or alone at home, but cross-linked with their colleagues. As soon as the structures of work are visible, there may be the invitation to a wider public: If real crowd sourcing or not is an exciting question! Probably with a core team established, they may supervise the incoming content cumulated by the crowds’ help.

The incoming data has to be examined using scientific aspects by scientific forces: To find content with supra-regional importance and to improve quality of tagging.

One side of the New Partnership is thus identified. But who is the other? The local governments, the governments on a national, even European level to donate structures? Or will there be no partnership at all, with the people working in open source structures that will generate a standard?

Curriculum Vitae

Diploma University for Applied Arts, Industrial Design (1986); from 1989 onwards owner of his company for advertising, IT, industrial design in Wiener Neustadt, Austria; initiated the webservice "Topothek" in 2011.

 

Peter Moser (Archives of Rural History, CH)
Virtual archives: a new solution to old problems?

In many European countries whole sections of the civil society have no archival institution of their own. Since public archives are seldom in a position to acquire, catalogue and make accessible the relevant archival material of these sectors (education, health, agriculture etc.), their history relevant records are in danger of being lost beyond recall.

As an alternative to the costly (and, therefore, unrealistic) establishment of specific archives, historians and archivists in Bern have established the virtual Archives of Rural History (ARH). The ARH has safeguarded collections from 170 institutions and individuals to the extent of more than 1’500 linear meters archival material (incl. photographs and films) since its foundation in 2002. As virtual archives, the ARH do not store the catalogued archival records themselves, but deposit them in already existing public archives or, alternatively, they are kept, after being catalogued, by the owner-creators themselves. In either case, the records are accessible to researchers for scientific purposes. Each collection is provided with its own catalogue or finding aid that functions as a key to identifying the individual items contained in the files of the collection. All catalogues are accessible online via the database ‘Records of Rural History’ (www.agrararchiv.ch).

This presentation will address three main points:

1. the concept of virtual archives exemplified on the ARH,
2. the relationship of virtual archives with the existing, non-virtual archives and
3.  the potential and limits of the concept of virtual archives in the sense of the ARH.

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Peter Moser studied history in Dublin, Galway and Bern. He is a graduate of the University of Bern. The founder and director of the Archives of Rural History (ARH) in Bern, a scientific institution engaged in archiving and historical research (www.agrararchiv.ch), is an active member of the VSA (Association des archivistes suisses), president of the Swiss Society for Rural History and Chairman of the scientific committee of the international conference Rural History 2013 (www.ruralhistory2013.org).

 

Tom Cobbaert (Archief 2.0, BE)
ArchiefWiki, the collaborative success of independent knowledge sharing

ArchiefWiki (www.archiefwiki.org), Dutch for Archives Wiki, is an initiative by the Dutch-Flemish online community Archief 2.0 (www.archief20.org). Founded in 2007 it aims to digitise Dutch reference works into open content for archivists and archives users. By developing a digital point of reference the founders and collaborators want to bring new life and update these "classics". Besides that it wants to promote the use of wikis as a tool in the archives sector.

Since its foundation the wiki hosted two major projects: one bringing together all Dutch archival terminology, found in historical and present day lexicons, as well in standards or archival laws; the other creating a map and detailed guide to all archives in the Netherlands. The data of the latter is currently made semantic and available for re-use, for example by APEx.

Beside those two projects archivists use the wiki to collaborate on projects, standards and translations of ICA texts.

The presentation examines the advantages and disadvantages of using a wiki in collaboration between archivists.

Curriculum Vitae

Master in History (2003), Master in Archival Studies (2004), ADVN: (Deputy-) Archivist / Head of Collections (2004-Present), NISE: Archives and IT consultant (2009-Present), ArchivA: Business Owner (2013-Present), Board member of different archives associations in Belgium and the Netherlands (2008-Present)

  

Antonella Ambrosio (UNINA – Università degli Studi di NapoliFederico II, IT)
Charters and digital archives in the didactic practice

The use of Virtual Libraries to read texts online, digital environments for distance learning and teaching, social networks for sharing and discussing resources – these are only a few of the many possibilities which change the profession of teaching and its didactic methods. This applies also to the historical disciplines where the massive presence of archives of digitised charters changes rapidly the teaching experience.

The learning environments designed with digital technologies and the portals providing digitised charters have certainly proved to be efficient and, at the same time, to be in accordance to the psycho-pedagogic approach of constructivism. They offer broader possibilities of source retrieval, access to different points of view and unusual space for confrontation and reflection. Nevertheless, they manifest a set of problems which risks becoming significant especially with regards to e-learning. For example, today it is indispensable to reflect on the methodology for teaching students the know-how to navigate the virtual universe of historical charters and on the promotional strategies for a correct understanding of the discipline in a de-contextualised milieu as the digital one.

This keynote intends to present the achievements, the trouble spots and the prospective solutions with regard to the teaching methods for those historical disciplines using archival content, so as to present the contributions of the conference session 3.3 and to emphasize the potentialities of the Archival Portal Europe in this field.

Curriculum Vitae

Antonella Ambrosio, researcher in Palaeography, teaches Palaeography and Diplomatics at the Università di Napoli Federico II (UNINA) for Bachelor and Master Degree courses in History; Diplomatics and Exegesis of Historical Sources for the Master in Library and Archival Science and Methodology of Research (Master post lauream). She founded at UNINA the Laboratorio di storia della documentazione (Laboratory of history of charters) and coordinates it together with Rosaria Pilone (Associate Professor in Archives Administration), within which she also has implemented workshops and training courses. At the moment she is vice-president of ICARus (International Centre for Archival Research) and coordinator for Southern Italy of the project: 'Monasterium. Das virtuelle Urkundenarchiv Europas'. It is a group of Middle European Archival and Academic Institutions headed by ICARUS. She is project manager for the Department of History of UNINA, the international project ENArC - European Network on Archival Cooperation (2010 - 2015), funded by the European Union Culture Programme 2007 – 2013. She is also a member of the Editorial Board of 'ClioPress. Editoria digitale per la didattica e la ricerca storica' (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II) and of the Scientific Commitee of 'Documenta & Instrumenta' (Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Antonella Ambrosio is currently working on the charters production of Southern Italy, in particular on the production with reference to Campania and on the relation between new technologies and Diplomatics.

 

Hrvoje Stančić, Arian Rajh, Ana Stanković (Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, HR)
Archival education activities in the online environment

The authors investigate if and how modern archives are using online environment for raising the awareness of the importance of archival materials they preserve by creating online educational content. Firstly, they explore content of different archival institutions and detect what online educational activities they offer. They examine content on the web and on the social networks. The authors then analyse the structure of detected online archival educational content, classify the content according to the type of didactic materials, explore various didactic solutions and evaluate level of the interdisciplinary approach. They also examine if and how interactive and multimedia solutions are used for educational purposes. Further, the authors compare and analyse the quality and innovativeness of online archival educational content. Based on the analytic approach, finally they offer a vision of future development of archival educational activities in the online environment.

Curriculum Vitae

Ph.D. Hrvoje Stancic, associate professor is Head of the Chair for archival and documentation sciences at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is coordinator of ICARUS activities at the faculty level. His research interests fall in the area of digitisation, long term digital preservation, authenticity of digital materials, digital archives and archival communication. He teaches at undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level. He is author of the book "Digitisation" and more than 50 scientific articles. He coordinates biannual international conference "INFuture-The Future of Information Sciences". He was involved in several national and international projects as well as in EU-funded cross-border IPA project Heritage Live.

 

Artur Dirmeier & Kathrin Pindl (Spitalarchiv Regensburg, DE)
Spitalarchiv: didactic practice in a digital world

Can a small archive prevail academically in a digital world? Regensburg´s Spitalarchiv serves – for better or worse – as a benchmark for the implementation of innovative didactic practice in an archival environment.

With its history of 800 years and its over 5.000 charters, 4.500 books of accounts, its chronicles, files, maps and pictures, the small but momentous Spitalarchiv holds more than a few high-profile resources for regional and international scholars and is gradually opening up for digitization and web 2.0.

Our paper thoroughly discusses collaboration between the Spitalarchiv and the University of Regensburg as well as it presents a number of courses – for (under-) graduate, further education plus senior classes - under the aspects of best practice and evaluation. How to build network structures within the academic world and beyond? How to detect worthwhile didactic strategies? How to include online resources in teaching? How to recruit young academics for content-related research?

By applying statistical methods amongst others, we analyze various didactic concepts from paleography exercises using digitized records to one “Spital App” project, thus providing valuable experience for fellow institutions.

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Artur Dirmeier is the Director of Regensburg´s Spitalarchiv and serves as Archival Curator of the Administrative District of Regensburg and Visiting Lecturer for Medieval History and Auxiliary Sciences of History. He is granted fellowship in various scientific institutions and is co-editor of several publications. Dirmeier´s research covers the History of Hospitals, Regional History of Bavaria and archival topics.

Kathrin Pindl BA works as a Research Assistant at the Chair of Regional History of Bavaria in collaboration with Regensburg´s Spitalarchiv. She is currently completing her MA degree in Economic and Social History at the University of Regensburg. Her research interests include Pre-Modern Urban Living Standards and Digital Humanities in Archival Context.

 

Daniel Pitti (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities,
University of Virginia, US)
The emerging archival metadata landscape

The release of the International Council on Archives (ICA) International Standard Archival Description–General (ISAD(G)) in 1993 signalled emerging professional interest and appreciation for the importance of standards, and evidence of an emerging international professional identity founded on them: shared principles and the foundation for common practice. This trend continued with the release of three additional ICA standards and revisions of two of them, and the development of EAD and EAC-CPF. Since 1993, the cultural heritage standards landscape and emergent technologies, in particular semantic technologies, have presented unprecedented opportunities for cooperatively enhancing and integrating access to cultural heritage resources, including archival resources. In order to effectively address these opportunities, ICA has appointed an Experts Group on Archival Description mandated to develop a conceptual model for archival description by 2016.

 

Karin Bredenberg (National Archives of Sweden, SE)
Record creators: use of EAC-CPF in the Archives Portal Europe

The APEnet project successfully established a common profile for the use of the international archival standard EAD (Encoded Archival Description) within the Archives Portal Europe network as a basis for central conversion, validation, indexing and presentation facilities.

Work Package 4 of the APEx project has been with continuing this work by advancing the Archives Portal Europe specific standards & guidelines. As part of this work, Work Package 4 has been adapting EAC-CPF (Encoded Archival Context – Corporate Bodies, Person, Families) by establishing a profile for the use of this standard in the Archives Portal Europe. This presentation will focus on three aspects of the work of WP4. These are:

• The benefits of using EAC-CPF within the Archives Portal Europe
• The work completed so far by WP4 in adapting and developing apeEAC-CPF for the Archives Portal Europe
• The implementation of the standard within the Archives Portal Europe.

 

Kerstin Arnold (Technical Coordinator APEx, Federal Archives of Germany, DE)
EAD revision and its effects on the Archives Portal Europe

The Encoded Archival Description (EAD) is currently being revised and it is planned that the new version is released by the end of 2013. With the APEx team being represented by several of its team members in the Technical Subcommittee on EAD (TS-EAD) as well as the Schema Development Team (SDT) at the Society of American Archivists (SAA), the project has been able to follow the discussions so far, rather closely. By the 1^st of May 2013 the commenting period for the alpha schema of the new EAD will have been completed and so the APEx Conference in Dublin will provide a good forum to present and possibly discuss some of the major changes that are to be expected.

As for the Archives Portal Europe and the implementation of EAD within its tools (based on the profile for apeEAD), there will be various aspects to be taken into account ranging from content display via search facilities and data preparation processes to data management and interoperability tasks.

Curriculum Vitae

Kerstin Arnold holds a Master each in Communication Studies and Information Management. She is currently doing her doctoral thesis next to the work at the Bundesarchiv for the Archives Portal Europe – network of excellence (APEx) project. She has been working at the Bundesarchiv in several projects on standardisation of (encoded) archival descriptions and online access to archival material. In the project’s context she is leading the work package on Interoperability and she acts as the APEx Technical Coordinator.

 

Maud Medves (CENDARI project, DE)
EAG CENDARI: customising EAG for research purposes

CENDARI aims at building a virtual research environment integrating digital resources for research on medieval and modern European history. The emphasis is on being an infrastructure of research (rather than for research) with a focus on end-users: historians.

In this respect EAG CENDARI acts as an interface between two spheres, the archives’ world and the research world. It reflects the different objectives of these two communities in terms of sustainability and coverage on the one side, and in terms of precision and search for specific items on the other. If exhaustiveness is central for archives, it is not as crucial for the researchers and this observation led to an EAG customisation that favours deepness instead of wide coverage. This impacted both the workflow and the schema.

The workflow was defined to involve as much as possible the researchers in the definition of the customisation. All major steps (functions and tools) were considered in this way: edition (xml editor, ODD specification[1]), versioning (Subversion), identification, preservation and visualisation (XTF[2]).

The schema also reflects the researcher’s perspective, particularly the very reduced set of elements and the importance of sourcing and referencing mechanisms.

Curriculum Vitae

Maud Medves, M.A. in communication and information sciences and in political sciences. Since 2012 researcher at INRIA – CENDARI project. 2010-2012: researcher at INRIA – PEER project (Digital Publishing).

 

Susanne Waidmann (Federal Archives of Germany, DE)
The Archives Portal Europe: the adventure of presenting multicultural and multilingual information on archival material, its creators and their repositories in just one tool

The Archives Portal Europe (www.archivesportaleurope.net) is the main visible product of the APEx project. The users can access several types of “archival” information:

• on archival material based on EAD, used in the Archives Portal Europe as apeEAD, developed in the APEnet project and further refined in the APEx project;
• on archival repositories based on EAG 2012, which is the new version of EAG 0.2 developed in the APEx project in the 2012

and in 2014

• on creators of the archival information, based on EAC-CPF that will be used in the Archives Portal Europe as apeEAC-CPF.

The search functionalities and result presentations – already implemented and planned – will be presented combined with a closer look on some aspects of how the standards are used in the portal and of the multilingual services we can already offer.

 

Bastiaan Verhoef (APEx, Nationaal Archief, NL)
The backend of the Archives Portal Europe: lessons learned and challenges waiting (provisional)

There are two main backend tools of the Archives Portal Europe: the Data Preparation Tool (DPT) and the dashboard.

The DPT is a stand-alone tool which allows content providers to undertake the most time and resource consuming actions locally and leave only secondary tasks for the online environment. The most crucial functionalities of the DPT are the batch conversion and validation of data extracted from content providers’ archival systems into the formats supported by the Archives Portal Europe.

The dashboard is the central point of data upload to the Archives Portal Europe and further delivery of data to Europeana. It serves three types of user groups: the central administrators that are creating new users and managing their actions; the Country Managers that are coordinating the participating archival institutions in their respective countries; and the institution managers that are uploading and managing the data of their institutions.

The main functionalities of these tools will be presented, furthermore some aspects of the technology behind these tools and the tasks to be realised in the further project phases.

 

Jochen Graf (University of Cologne, DE)
Transcription, contextualization and peer review: the ‘Monasterium Collaborative Archives’

The Monasterium Collaborative Archive (MOM­CA) was originally designed to serve as the presentation and Wiki platform for the digitised medieval charters of the European Monasterium Community. For some years the MOM­CA platform now has further been used and developed by other archival projects, for example by the Virtual German Charter Network and by Itinera Nova. Within such cooperation projects the MOM­CA software turned into a more general archival software framework not only useful for medieval charters but also for different kinds of archival sources and also for quite different user communities. The presentation will deliver insight into three collaborative systems which are part of the Monasterium software: the Import Environment for the web­based and automatic upload of archival charter collections into the Monasterium database, the easy to use Transcription Tools of Itinera Nova and the newly developed Collection Environment, which allows users to create and publish their own charter collections in a Google Drive­like environment. All these platforms and tools rely on open metadata standards. Also, the quality of published content is generally ensured by peer review mechanisms. Therefore, the presentation will point out that the aforesaid ‘Monasterium Collaborative Archives’ could be seen as potential content providers for Archive Portals Europe.

Curriculum Vitae

Jochen Graf is a software developer specialized in metadata standards, XML technologies, JavaScript and object-oriented programming. After studying church music near Tübingen (Diploma) he was employed as an organ player and choir leader at a church in Cologne and later at the editorial department of the WDR Symphony Orchestra Cologne. Meanwhile, he started studying Digital Humanities, Musicology and Philosophy (MA) at Cologne University. Since 2008, he is working as a research associate at the institute ‘Historisch-kulturwissenschaftliche Informationsverarbeitung’ at Cologne University and is the main developer of two collaborative archival platforms, the ‘Monasterium Collaborative Archive’ <www.mom-ca.uni-koeln.de> and ‘Itinera Nova’ <itineranova.be>. He also was engaged as technical advisor for the ‘Virtual German Charter Network’ <www.vdu.uni-koeln.de> and for ‘Das altägyptische Totenbuch’ <totenbuch.awk.nrw.de>. 

 

Eoghan Ó Carragáin (National Library of Ireland, IE), Luke O'Sullivan (Swansea Univesity Library, IE)
Archival collections in Vufind

Originally “designed and developed for libraries by libraries”, the open-source Vufind project has matured into a flexible discovery interface capable of indexing and presenting all sorts of data from a wide variety of systems. Recently, developers from the National Library of Ireland, Swansea University, Villanova University, and the National Library of Finland collaborated to enhance how Vufind handles hierarchical collections such as those found in archival management systems and digital repositories. With the release of version 1.4 in January 2013, Vufind now has built-in support for the display of complex hierarchies, and tools are available to help with indexing different data-sources, including EAD.

This paper will outline some of the motivations for incorporating archival collections into Vufind and the challenges encountered. We will demo the new archival features and review some of the technical and design choices made by Vufind developers. Finally, we will discuss how other institutions may avail of Vufind to bring their archives to the web, especially those that need to present archival records alongside data from other sources.

Curriculum Vitae

Eoghan Ó Carragáin:

Systems Librarian, National Library of Ireland 

Luke O'Sullivan:

Library Systems Officer, Web Technology Development, Swansea University Library

 

Zoltán Szatucsek (National Archives of Hungary, HU)
Search all, find more: access to the Archival Database Service in Hungary

The DatabasesOnline project of the National Archives of Hungary started in 2010 when the growing amount of digital content led to both technical and intellectual insustainability.

The consolidation involved the two major challenges of standardization and secure archiving, while the most attractive outcome was online access. Federated and field search provide flexible search options for 27 databases of medieval parchments, conscriptions, birth registers and modern records. The paper focuses on the new development cycle, closed this March with the release of 1.3 version. Beside new features, the main purpose was to react to the integration of 20 regional archives into the NAH organization, bringing 158 new datasets into the system. Since then with its wealth and unique content DatabasesOnline became the largest archival service in Hungary. The presentation shows how the APEX partner NAH exploited the experiences of the international archival community and how we use this service to provide data for APE. The final section of the paper deals with user acceptance. Google Analytics and Search Field Analytics tools are used for planning further development according to users' requests.

 

Maria Popkovacheva-Terzieva (Archives State Agency of Bulgaria, BG)
Archives State Agency: attempts to popularize its digital holdings

 I.            The initial question for the Bulgarian archives is who the end-users of our archival heritage are.

Scholars, academic, scientists, students, in brief all those who work in academia and do research use the archives anyhow, they are familiar visitors of our reading rooms.

However, it seems to us, equally important, if not more important, to bridge the gap between the archives and the non-expert user, the one who does not spend much time on academic work and is generally unaware of what the archives stand for and what materials they contain. The general public holds a large diversity of interests and views, and so the archives have to be creative in devising ways with which to capture their attention and even spur their curiosity to explore on their own what the archives hold. Creativity and modern-speak is vital, especially when we keep in mind the plethora of information channels that currently saturate the public space.

II.            A way to go about achieving this is to adequately select what to digitise according to set criteria. Currently, the Bulgarian Archives hold about 100 linear kilometres of documents. It is neither possible given our current capabilities, nor necessary, for us to digitise all records that we preserve – some sort of a minimal description of what we hold will suffice. Hence, similar to the policy of all other archives, for enriching our digital archive we proceed by digitising the documents that merit the greatest interest of the non-expert users and are especially unique and valuable.

III.            This year so far we have completed the digitisation of three collections for a total of 200 000 digital images

IV.            Protocols and Decisions of the former Bulgarian Communist Party

V.            To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Balkan Wars we digitised lists that contain the names of the 48 000 soldiers, who died. This was done in order to commemorate not only large scale events, but the ordinary nameless heroes of the wars. On the site, we have provided general information and pictures of the war, but the list with the three names of the soldiers searchable by a variety of indicators is crucial. In this way, we believe, textbook information regarding the wars is deepened through personal and familial history. In order to further stimulate engagement with this type of history, the site also allows the users to digitise and submit digital material about the war.

VI.            Our third collection is made up of around 8000 digital images of some of the more interesting Police Files of Famous Persons from before 1944.

VII.            These three collections have been quite a success because:

• They prescribe a certain move from national to family history - we received quite a few letters, stating the gratitude and the pleasant experiences of the users working with the sites
• We have had numerous visits and media publications regarding the collections

We would like to gain visibility and highlight the importance of the archives for the functioning of the modern nation-state. In proceeding forward, individuals, institutions and states work within an inherited framework and contours set out by the political economic and cultural developments that preceded them. In that sense, we believe that an important objective of the archives is to emphasise the importance of knowing the past and of being aware of it, to give rise to a certain sense of historicity.

Another objective of the archives is to become a player in the education arena. Documents contain a raw, unmediated truth that can lead to the solution of many disagreements or the fostering of agreements, once one knows how to use them. Working with primary sources has an intrinsic value and the archives are trying to cultivate it. The archives contain materials for what seems like an infinite number of topics and we can provide expertise on numerous subjects once we have earned and been granted a place at the table.

The third objective is to raise the national conscience not in terms of some headstrong adherence to national symbols and rhetoric, but in terms of a sense of belonging to a community of citizens.  Hence, we have resorted to various means and initiatives that help us reach out to the general non-expert user in a modern, even entertaining, way.

• Facebook – during the past year, 700 new users have signed up to our page; a new  “Document of the week” can now be found on our page.
• Wikipedia – inspired by the experience of the US archives, we launched a cooperation project with Wikipedia. Wikipedians receive help from archivists in searching records and information with which to deepen and enlarge their articles. We see our efforts in this area as enhancing the global spread of knowledge since so many people use Wikipedia.
• Working on a Crowd-sourcing Initiative

APEX – we are a content-provider in the Archival Portal Europe where we plan to contribute to the portal our finding aids, our Politburo Protocols, a topic relevant to current political affairs, and images of some of our most important masterpieces

World War I – we have organised an initiative via ICARUS that plans to digitise documents on WWI and show how the wars affected the ordinary people, the women, the children, etc. We are planning to use a variety of ways through which to exhibit the materials amongst which a web-site and a digital exhibition. We will know if we receive funding for this project early next year.

Visual Archive of South-Eastern Europe, which is to be launched in the fall of 2013 is meant to show the daily lives of European cities in the beginning of the 20^th century through the photography of a famous Bulgarian family – Karastoyanovi.

Finally, top-notch among our efforts to popularize the Bulgarian digital archival heritage is an aggressive media campaign which currently sees us cooperating with all major media.

We believe that the educational arena is where we can further strengthen our input. We believe we are lagging in Europeana mainly because there is a lack of national financing for digitisation and this is because digitisation is not seen as a priority.

Curriculum Vitae

Maria has been the IR and Publicity Officer at ASA since June 2011. Currently, she is in charge of all international relations and international projects in which ASA is involved. She is fluent in English and conversant in German.

      

Peter Fleer (Swiss Federal Archives, CH)
Interpretation of digital records

Contrary to analogue documents, which ordinarily serve as their own user interface, digital documents cannot be read instantaneously. They require software programmes to be displayed and interpreted, which become, therefore, part of the auxiliary sciences of history of the 21st century. According to Bruno Latour, the drawing together and the mobilization of inscriptions (documents, data etc.) are the most important elements of the production of knowledge. As a result, “classical archives” are inextricably linked with the scientific production of new knowledge through the archiving of digital documents. These facts have to be taken into consideration when developing infrastructure for archives in the digital age.

The presentation focuses on three dimensions of turning digital information into knowledge. Firstly, it provides insight into the experiences archives made with the interpretation of digital records, secondly, it explores the recent practices and tendencies of interpreting digital documents within Digital Humanities (data mining, distant reading, crowd sourcing, thick mapping etc.), and, thirdly, it discusses the actual and future requirements within the humanities and the social sciences concerning the elaborate exploitation of digital archival data. Against this backdrop, the presentation evaluates the possibilities of the Swiss Federal Archives of making available concrete tools to researchers.

Curriculum Vitae

Peter Fleer has been working as a research associate at the Swiss Federal Archives (SFA) since 2002 and has been engaged for several years in the appraisal and analysis of digital archival data, particularly relational databases. He studied history, constitutional law and economics at the University of Berne (Switzerland) and holds a PhD in Modern History. His current areas of research are administrative history and the history of the Swiss Federal Administration.

 

John Cox (National University of Ireland, IE)
The Abbey Theatre Archive Digitization Project: challenges and opportunities

National University of Ireland, Galway, and the Abbey Theatre entered in 2012 a partnership to digitise the archive of the Abbey Theatre (http://www.nuigalway.ie/abbey-digital-archive-partnership/). This is the largest theatre archive digitisation ever undertaken, and will open up a new era of scholarship for Irish theatre internationally. The Abbey Theatre holds one of the world’s most significant archival collections, running to almost 2 million pages. The digitisation process is in progress on the NUI Galway campus in the James Hardiman Library.

Managing the digitisation project presents a range of challenges, including the scale of the operation, the diversity of formats and media, development of optimal workflows and technologies for speed of throughout, quality control, restricted access materials and digital rights management. There are also very exciting opportunities in terms of developing partnerships with academic communities, placing archives at the centre of a major digital humanities initiative. This project has the potential to redefine the nature of research into the history of Irish drama and Irish writing and to develop new roles for archivists.

The proposed paper will outline the challenges and opportunities arising from the Abbey Theatre Archive Digitisation Project and their wider significance for digital archives.

Curriculum Vitae

John Cox is University Librarian at National University of Ireland, Galway where he has worked for twelve years, previously as Deputy Librarian. He manages the development of a range of digitization, institutional repository and archives services and partnerships at NUI Galway, with a particular emphasis in recent times on digital preservation of, and access to, unique and distinctive collections. He is a member of the Consortium of National and University Libraries (CONUL) and is Chair of the Irish Universities Association Librarians. He has published on a range of topics, most recently an article on “Academic libraries in challenging times”, accessible at aran.library.nuigalway.ie.

 

Grace Toland (Irish Traditional Music Archive, IE)
The Irish Traditional Music Archive & The Inishowen Song Project

In 2008 the Irish Traditional Music Archive (ITMA) began publishing digitised materials on its website.  Digitisation and web publishing provide the archive with a means of giving world wide access to a selection of its extensive sound, print, video, still image & manuscript collections.

To-date the ITMA Digital Library contains 3,839 digital items – sound, print, images, videos & interactive music scores - with accompanying metadata, PDFs (where possible) and brief contextual essays. ITMA’s digital metadata is harvested regularly by Europeana and made available via the europeana.eu portal

In 2011, a local Donegal development organisation, the Inishowen Traditional Singers’ Circle (ITSC) approached ITMA with a proposal to use its Digital Library to host local audio & video field recordings of traditional singers and accompanying material.  With Leader funding The Inishowen Song Project (ISP) was completed in March 2013. The ISP microsite now gives free searchable access to 524 audio recordings, 75 videos; images/info on 157 singers and downloadable PDFs of 599 songs.

His presentation will give:

• Overview of ITMA’s Digital Library
• Case study on the Inishowen Song Project – its structure, content & potential as a resource locally & internationally. The presentation will give the opportunity to hear and see Irish traditional singers from Donegal

Curriculum Vitae

Grace Toland has been working as Librarian in the Irish Traditional Music Archive since 2007.   As a practising traditional singer, this position is a happy marriage of work and her passion for the traditional arts. Her role in ITMA is to monitor and advise on the full range of information processes, from accession to storage, description to user access, that are associated with a multimedia archive.  With this remit comes active involvement in multimedia digitisation, metadata standards and web publishing.  Grace has been a key player in bringing to fruition The Inishowen Song Project, a new contextual microsite dedicated to Donegal singers and songs.  With a great belief in accessibility and information sharing , Grace liaises with Europeana and other agencies to develop networks and platforms to share Irish traditional music with the widest audience possible.

 

Hrvoje Stančić, Arian Rajh (Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, HR), Edvin Buršić (Financial Agency, HR)
Using Archival Information Packages for production of sustainable archival collections of digitised records

The authors investigate the ways of creation of Archival Information Packages (AIPs) based on ISO 14721:2012 and the benefits of AIPs for sustainable preservation of digitised materials. They use the example of large scale digitisation (more than 8M images) of analogue medicinal product documentation, consisting of applications submitted by medicinal products’ marketing authorisation holders (dossiers) and other documentation created by national competent authority in regulatory processes, which are being structured as AIP for importing in an enterprise content management system. Digital packages consist of ISO 19005 compatible content files (searchable PDF/A) and XML index files consisting of 45 metadata elements. Index files are being created by using structured metadata schemes extracted from various databases (archival database and main business registry) and semi automatically edited. Based on the research analysis the authors offer a general scenario for preparing digitised materials for long term preservation.

Curriculum Vitae

Ph.D. Hrvoje Stancic, associate professor is Head of the Chair for archival and documentation sciences at the Department of Information and Communication Sciences, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences University of Zagreb, Croatia. He is coordinator of ICARUS activities at the faculty level. His research interests fall in the area of digitisation, long term digital preservation, authenticity of digital materials, digital archives and archival communication. He teaches at undergraduate, graduate and postgraduate level. He is author of the book "Digitisation" and more than 50 scientific articles. He coordinates biannual international conference "INFuture-The Future of Information Sciences". He was involved in several national and international projects as well as in EU-funded cross-border IPA project Heritage Live.

 

Giovanni Ciccaglioni (ICUU – Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, IT)
Digital cultural heritage and e-infrastructures

The DCH-RP Project: Towards an Open Science Infrastructures for Digital Cultural Heritage in 2020 DCH-RP Digital Cultural Heritage Roadmap for Preservation is a coordination action led by the Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities – ICCU, supported by EC FP7 e-Infrastructures Programme, and launched to look at best practice for preservation standards in use (www.dch-rp.eu/).

It started in October 2012 and builds upon the knowledge generated by the DC-NET ERA-NET and the INDICATE, two pioneer projects for Digital Cultural Heritage (DCH) e-infrastructures where many of the DCH-RP partners participate. The consortium involves 13 partners from EU countries, Cultural Institutions and e-Infrastructures Providers, and will move to external partners from Europe and other countries.

The project aims to harmonise data storage and preservation policies in the digital cultural heritage sector; to progress a dialogue and integration among institutions, e-Infrastructures, research and private organisations; to identify models for the governance, sustainability and maintenance of the integrated infrastructure for digital preservation of cultural content. DCH-RP is not dealing with the actual digitisation process, nor with the developments of advanced access and interaction technologies, which are covered by national and regional programs and ICT R&D initiatives respectively.

The main outcome of the project is to validate a roadmap for the implementation of preservation e-infrastructures for Digital Cultural Heritage. The consortium is organising a number of Proof of Concepts, where cultural institutions and e-infrastructure providers will experiment with the actual use of grid and cloud services to store digital culture resources i. e. digital assets (data plus metadata) produced by institutions involved in the various field of Cultural Heritage, archives, libraries, museums.

DCH-RP has an impact on different areas: on European and national CH programmes, on CH institutions, experts and professionals, on e-Infrastructures and on the general public. It is targeting three main types of user communities, namely, content providers, policy makers and program owners, end users accessing the resulting DCH infrastructures to access data that content providers make available for subsequent research. In this way DCH-RP is establishing collaborative links with the DCH community to give information on the project and, above all, on the use of e-Infrastructures for the long and short term preservation of Digital Cultural Heritage.

Curriculum Vitae

EMPLOYMENT AND RESEARCH EXPERIENCES: (2011 - present) Metadata specialist, member of the Internet Culturale technical group, contact person for WP5 of DCH-RP project at ICCU Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities; (2010 - 2011) Research associate for DCH metadata R&D at Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa; (2006-2010) Research fellow at University of Pisa and Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

EDUCATION: (2011) Course for "Responsabili della conservazione di risorse digitali” / Records keeping and managment, Fondazione Giangiacomo Feltrinelli, Milan; (2009) School of Library Science at Vatican Apostolic Library, Rome; (2005) PhD in History at University of Pisa; (2000) Master Degree in Medieval History ay University of Pisa 

 

Salvatore Vassallo (Instituto Centrale per gli Archivi, IT)
The Archival Resource Catalogue within the Italian National Archival System

The Italian archival organisation is diversified and complex. The state archives alone represent a scattered network of 103 archival institutions. In addition, there are the archives of municipalities, provinces, regions and many other public institutions, as well as private archives.

The Catalogo delle Risorse archivistiche (Archival Resource Catalog) or CAT, within the Sistema Archivistico Nazionale (Italian National Archival System) or SAN, is an aggregator of information and digital reproductions, coming from all this variety of sources.

The presentation will describe the architecture and the data model of the CAT and the import and update procedures of the archival data and the digital objects that are managed through the combination of EAD, EAC-CPF, METS schemas.

Both manual import and data harvesting based on the OAI-PMH protocol are used for populating the system. The data is then processed through a dashboard (Ontoir), meant to validate the files and also verify the integrity of the relationships between the entity described (archival aggregations, creators, custodians, finding aids, digital objects).

The presentation will depict also some of the challenges generated by such an approach, along with some of the alternative solutions to be experimented in the future for enhancing the access and data sharing as, for example, the use of linked data or alternatives based on an approach borrowed by Distributed Concurrent Versions System (DVCS).

Curriculum Vitae

Salvatore Vassallo (PhD in Library Science) is digital archivist at the Archivum Romanum Societatis Iesu and he is consultant for the National Institute of Archive in Italy (Istituto Centrale per gli Archivi). He was a research fellow for the University of Pavia for two years (2010-2011). He is member of the Standards Committee’s Schema Development Team (Development and Review Team) of the SAA Standards Committee and he is member of the commission for drawing the digital archive of the National Archives System in Italy (SAN).

 

Armin Straube (German National Library, DE)
Frameworks for digital preservation

Building and maintaining trusted digital repositories is a major task for archives in the digital world. Since 2004, nestor, the German network for digital preservation supports cultural heritage institutions embarking on this endeavour. Now, standards and recommendations for the preservation of images and textual media are in place. The work on technical aspects goes on, nestor working groups are looking into the preservation of websites, software and audiovisual media.

The key challenge for cultural heritage institutions however, is to build a sustainable institutional framework for digital preservation. In 2013 nestor working groups will publish guides on cost calculation and on drafting institutional policies.

A new nestor service is the certification of digital repositories in the form of an extended self-evaluation. The process is designed to check and improve existing digital repositories. The criteria catalogue is based on DIN 31644 and is available in both German and English.

Curriculum Vitae

EDUCATION: Master of Arts, Archives and Records Management, UCD Dublin 

CURRENT POSITION: Manager of nestor, the German network of digital preservation (www.langzeitarchivierung.de)

 

Vlatka Lemić (Croatian State Archives, HR)
Archival infrastructure at national level: introducing interoperability, networking and integration in practice

To practically build a national archival system, portal or platform requires the existence of an integrated national archival network with a defined legal, organizational and professional framework. Regulations, standards and infrastructure are just preconditions which have to be upgraded through planning, coordination and managing of such project in order to present a successful product. Building archival infrastructure requires systematic and complex work on raising awareness and connecting administration, archives and public on the basis of interoperability, networking and integration principles. Establishment of the unique comprehensive system shared by various institutions implies standardization, new technologies and user orientation, and must improve quality of services and products provided by archives to be recognized by archivists and users.

 

Christina Wolf & Gerald Maier (State Archives Baden-Württemberg, DE)
Building a German archives portal: development of a national platform for archival information within the German Digital Library

Presenting archival material on the internet is an important way for archives to gain attention in the digital age. One central portal which offers access to all kinds of archival content from various archives can bring a significant added value to both users and institutions. A major step towards this direction is the development of a German Archives Portal (Archivportal-D) [3], a platform for which archives situated in Germany can provide information and which aims at becoming the central access point for users interested in archival material.

The German Archives Portal is being built as a specific view on the German Digital Library (Deutsche Digitale Bibliothek, DDB)[4], the central, overall platform for cultural and scientific information from libraries, archives, museums and other cultural heritage institutions in Germany and national aggregator for Europeana. The German Archives Portal will offer access to archival content within the DDB in a way that refers to the particular requirements for a professional presentation and research concerning archival material. The German Research Foundation funds its realisation within a project which started in autumn 2012. It is carried out by the State Archives of Baden-Wuerttemberg, FIZ Karlsruhe – Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure  and other skilled archival institutions.

Thanks to the planned development of interfaces to other archival information systems like the Archives Portal Europe, the German Archives Portal will be connected with and integrated into the world of digital archival services.

This presentation will give an insight into the activities and prospects of the German Archives Portal and the German Digital Library, also addressing the definition of a standard for data delivery based on EAD.

Curriculum Vitae

Christina Wolf:

Christina Wolf is an archivist and head of the coordination office for digitization in the State Archives of Baden-Wuerttemberg. One focus of her work is on collaborations with archives, libraries and museums. She was entrusted with the EU-funded projects "MICHAEL Plus" (www.michael-portal.de, www.michael-culture.org), "Bernstein" (www.memoryofpaper.eu) and the Europeana projects "EDLnet" and "Europeana v1.0" (www.europeana.eu) on behalf of the State Archives and is involved in the national project activities of the BAM-Portal (www.bam-portal.de), the German Digital Library and the German Archives Portal "Archivportal-D".

Dr. Gerald Maier:

Dr. Gerald Maier is vice president of the State Archives of Baden-Wuerttemberg and head of the administration department. He represents the German Länder in the Member States’ Expert Group on Digitization and Digital Preservation and is a visiting lecturer at the Stuttgart State Academy of Art and Design. He studied history, Protestant theology, art history and historical geography in Tübingen and Bonn and thereafter graduated in archival sciences.

 

István Kenyeres (Budapest City Archives, HU)
Archives Portal Hungary: asolution for joint publication of databases and digitized archival materials

The creation of the Archives Portal Hungary (APH) (www.archivportal.hu) was supported by the Hungarian Ministry of Education and Culture in 2009. The Ministry charged the Budapest City Archives with the realisation of the project. The portal provides access to up-to-date information on both archival material and archival institutions to visitors and publishes a joint database integrating 23 Hungarian archival institutions. These are represented on the portal through parts of their archival material (maps, documents, files etc.) available for online search. The presentation focuses on one specific function of the portal: the Joint Archival Database. The aim of the project was not to create new digital content, but to collate the available records of the collaborating institutions into one system and to publish them online on the portal. At present APH contains more than 1,8 Million records and 3 Million images of 10 different sub-databases with the same frame system:

• Integrated Archival Database – which unifies descriptive records on highly differing archival files and documents, many of them linked to digital images
• Database of fonds and sub-fonds – basic information on the archival material
• Cadastral maps of the counties – with georeferenced maps and an online gazetteer database
• Digitised documents of the Communist Party (searchable PDF format)
• Archival publications (searchable PDF format)
• Archontology and Name Directories.

Moreover, APH also provides access to 4 databases of the Hungarian National Archives (medieval charters, plans, feudal conscription, royal books). Each of the sub-databases (integrated database, fonds and subfonds, cadastral maps – settlements names, documents of the communist party, archival publications, archontology and name directories) has its own search engine. The unified search engine enables combined and easy search of the complete Joint Database with one click. The presentation aims at addressing the methodological features of the project and the collaboration of the archives represented in the portal.

 

Karol Krawczyk (Head Office of State Archives, PL)
Holdings accessible online: the Polish experience

The presentation will describe the following:

• Archival Information Systems used by Polish archives to manage finding aids and their presentation on the internet as well as experience of Polish archives in making available digitised archival records on the internet.
• The process which has already started of building single Integrated Archival Information System for all the archives in Poland to manage all information about Polish archives' holdings and to make it fully accessible online.
• The internet portals which users can use for finding digitised archival records presently available and to discuss the main portal www.szukajwarchiwach.pl which will be the place from which all digitised archival records from all archival institutions in Poland will be accessible.
• The future plans for developing portal www.szukajwarchiwach.pl e.g. including Web 2.0 services and functionalities which meet the requirements of different groups of users.
• The process of preparing and delivering Polish data to the Archive Portal Europe which we used so far in APEnet project and the process which we shall be using in APEx project.

Curriculum Vitae

Karol Krawczyk has been the IT advisor to the General Director of the Polish State Archives since 2010. He has an extensive IT background. His previous posts include: Director of the IT and Telecommunication Department for Polish Airports State Enterprise, Chairman of the Board of a Polish-Swedish company operating in the field of computer science for industry and IT Adviser to the Board of 'Polskie Radio' S.A. His qualification include: Master of Science (Computer Intelligence, specialization in control and decision support systems), Manager's Certificate in IT Service Management (ITIL Service Manager), certifying the highest level of knowledge in the field of ITILV2. and Associate's Certificate in Project Management - George Washington University.

 

Chezkie Kasnett (The National Library of Israel, IL)
The historical archive reborn: approach and strategy for the Archive network

The Israel Heritage Archive Network is a national cultural heritage project to include over 400 historical archives into an online public network. 

Case: Many historical archives are unknown and inaccessible to the public and thus there exists a real danger of losing historically valuable material.  

Objectives:

1. A platform for archives to improve the quality of and access to their collections.
2. Provide public access to valuable national material c. Provide a framework and infrastructure for long-term digital preservation of records and digital objects 

Value:

1. Create shared controlled vocabularies.
2. Semantic processing of metadata and OCR.
3. Federated search
4. Achieve a range and depth of results never before possible.  

Project challenges:

1. Archives

• different/lack of standards of metadata
• organisations vary greatly in both size and structure
• poor physical state of archives and their holdings
• hesitance of archives in participating
• enormous quantity of data 

2. Technology

3. The process

Solution:

Core strategy factors:

• Securing necessary funding. 
• Building a team of experts.
• Creating a framework for Long-term Digital Preservation 
• Copyright and legal aspects
• Employ standards.
• Implement a KIS (Keep It Simple) approach.
• Learn from other projects. 
• Involve the archives and the public.
• Create a win-win situation for the maximal participation.

Curriculum Vitae

Digital Projects Manager, 11 years experience in the field of text analysis, intelligent search, digitization, information discovery.

 

Manfred Thaller, Jochen Graf, Sebastian Rose, Andre Streicher (University of Cologne, DE)
Network(s) for Europe’s charters: a proven blueprint for an international infrastructure

Since the beginning of the project in 2002 the site http://www.monasterium.net/ has developed into one of the largest collaborations for medieval source material. It was started by Thomas Aigner of the Episcopal archive at St. Pölten, originally to make the charters of monastic archives of Austria available in digital form. In the meantime it has grown into an international effort bringing together around 80 archives from a dozen European countries, carried onwards by the non-profit organization http://www.icar-us.eu/. Between them, the archives have made ca. 250.000 medieval charters available, all in the form of digital facsimiles, many of them connected to edited texts. The digital environment contains a WYSIWIG XML editor for collaborative editing, graphical tools for palaeography and various other components, including a tutorial system to teach the handling of the online archive as well as diplomatic as such. This software environment has in the meantime produced spin-off projects which deal with similar corpora elsewhere.

This presentation deals with the software side of the project, emphasising particularly the design issues surrounding support for ten-language multilingualism.

 

Gerold Ritter & Jonas Arnold (Archives Online, CH)
Archives Online: real time searched in 13 archives without redundant data

The Project "Archives Online"

Since summer 2010 the trilingual archive portal "Archives Online" (www.archivesonline.org) provides parallel full-text search in the databases of currently 13 affiliated archives. The search queries are transmitted to the databases in real time as SRU (Search/Retrieve via URL) requests. The databases return their 50 most relevant hits containing 6 ISAD(G) data elements. The hits are aggregated and displayed in Archives Online as a sortable link list and can be filtered by years and archives.

This approach allows fast distributed searches, avoids redundant data storage and data maintenance and guarantees access to the most up-to-date data of every archive at very low maintenance costs.

The presentation by Dr. Gerold Ritter, director of "Archives Online" will present the portal and its technical architecture. Jonas Arnold, head IT of the Archives of Contemporary History at the ETH Zurich will describe the solution from the point of view of participating archives and of its end-users.

Curriculum Vitae

Dr. Gerold Ritter:

*1967, studied history, computer sciences and political sciences at the University of Zurich. Lic. phil. 1992, Dissertation 2004. From 1992 to 1998 IT-coordinator at the History Department of the University of Zurich, since 1995 owner of e-hist, a company which specialises in projects in history and computing. Since 2010 director of Archives Online. Lives and works in Zurich, Switzerland. 

Jonas Arnold:

*1969, studied history and political sciences at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland). Lic. Phil. 1997. Since 1996 archivist at the Archives of Contemporary History of the ETH Zurich (AfZ), since 2002 head IT and responsible for photographic and audiovisual records, member of the Archives Online project team. Lives in Baar and works in Zurich, Switzerland.

 

Henk Harmsen (DARIAH-EU)
DARIAH: the adventure of building an infrastructure

DARIAH, the Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities, aims to enhance and support digitally enabled research and teaching across the humanities and arts. DARIAH will develop, maintain and operate an infrastructure in support of ICT-based research practices and support researchers in using ICT-enabled methods to analyse and interpret digital resources.

DARIAH emerged as a Research Infrastructure on the ESFRI (European Strategy Forum on Research Infrastructures) Roadmap in 2006.

DARIAH is on its way to becoming a European Research Infrastructure Consortium (ERIC). This European legal entity will facilitate the long-term sustainability of DARIAH.

DARIAH is an integrating activity bringing together the state-of-the-art digital arts and humanities activities of its member countries. DARIAH will operate through its European-wide network of Virtual Competency Centres (VCCs). Each VCC is centred on a specific area of expertise. VCCs are cross-disciplinary, multi-institutional and international:

• VCC e-Infrastructure will establish a shared technology platform for Arts and Humanities research
• VCC Research and Education Liaison will expose and share researcher's knowledge, methodologies and expertise
• VCC Scholarly Content Management will facilitate the exposure and sharing of scholarly content (research data)
• VCC Advocacy, Impact and Outreach will interface with key influencers in and for the Arts and Humanities

Curriculum Vitae

Henk Harmsen is the DARIAH-EU Chief Integration Officer (CIO).He studied computer linguistics at the University of Amsterdam (UvA) and wrote a PH.D. at the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam (VU) about automatic syntactical- and semantic text-parsing. He was head of the IT department (1993-1995) and interim manager (1996-1997) of an institute of the Netherlands Royal Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). In 1998 he went to the UvA as a librarian and operational manager at the Faculty of Science. In 2000 he returned to the KNAW to become operational director at the Netherlands Institute of Scientific Information (NIWI-KNAW). He has lead a few reorganisations and he is the primary 'booster' of various innovative IT-projects. Since 2005 Henk is the vice director of Data Archiving and Networked Services (DANS).

 

Anna Bohn & Aleksandra Pawłiczek (CENDARI project, DE)
CENDARI: building up a research infrastructure on The First World War across borders

The memory of the First World War is saved in archival records in archives, museums and libraries worldwide. As a result of war and political changes, many records have been lost, fragmented, dispersed or relocated. CENDARI is building up an Archive Directory and Archival Research Guides to give access to archival holdings relevant for the First World War and to create a linked data environment for the eHumanities. The CENDARI digital infrastructure will enable source research, gathering and linking information about archival material on the First World War in many different institutions and countries. Special attention is given to East Europe and South East Europe and to "hidden archives".

The transnational and interdisciplinary approach is promoted by linking multilingual source material of different media types (written sources, moving images, images and sound) from countries affected by the war. CENDARI also provides researchers with a virtual infrastructure and with digital tools which allow users to generate content, annotations, visualisations and customisations of their own research outcomes. To ensure partnership with the research community, CENDARI cooperates with the project “1914-1918-online. International Encyclopaedia of the First World War”.

Curriculum Vitae

Anna Bohn: 

Dr. phil., since 2012 researcher for CENDARI (Freie Universität Berlin). 2013 book publication on the safeguarding of moving images. Former curator at Stiftung Deutsche Kinemathek Berlin, Deutsches Historisches Museum Berlin et al.

Aleksandra Pawliczek:

Dr. phil., since 2012 researcher for CENDARI (Freie Universitaet Berlin). Historian and trained archivist. Former research fellow at Humboldt-Universitaet Berlin, archivist at Geheimes Staatsarchiv Berlin et al.