eArchiving in practice

How the eArchiving Initiative supports the development of an electronic archiving policy

An electronic archiving policy is the mandate for an organisation to support the preservation of digital records through a structured and managed digital preservation strategy. The policy details why selected material needs to be preserved; the strategy defines how this will be implemented. 

This policy is also important as a means of explaining why data creators may need to act themselves in order to have digital assets accepted for preservation. 

The core specifications, reference architecture and knowledge provided by the eArchiving initiative, based on trusted experiences and international standards such as the OAIS reference model, can be of great use for your organisation when drafting its electronic archiving policy. 

The eArchiving community also provides a meeting point for those interested in digital archiving through its community building actions, by sharing the different experiences and best practices of different organisations when implementing their digital preservation systems. 

The eArchiving training services, such as webinars, Train the trainer and the eArchiving curriculum, can be of great of use when addressing the training needs to suit your policy. 

Our support services are there to address your needs and can provide you guidance throughout the process or put you in touch with other people or organisations that have faced the same challenges. 

Generic Services projects

In 2020, the Connecting Europe Facility (CEF) released a call for eArchiving-related proposals under the Telecom Work Programme. The objective of this call (CEF-TC-2020-2: eArchiving) was to foster the adoption of eArchiving solutions and standards beyond National Archives, reaching out to other levels of public administration, public institutions, international bodies, software companies, small and medium enterprises, etc., and different domains, such as cultural heritage, etc. Four projects received funding under the call.

The four projects that were funded under the CEF-TC-2020-2: eArchiving call are briefly described below. Please follow the links to the project websites to get more information about the individual projects.

	OneClick eArchiving The OneClick eArchiving project developed a simple-to-use tool to create Submission Information Packages (SIP), enabling organisations without archival knowledge to adhere to eArchiving archival standards. Oneclick was a collaboration between the South-Eastern Finland University of Applied Sciences (XAMK), PIQL, the Estonian Academy of Arts, Digitalia, and DISEC.
	PROHUB (Protecting Oral Histories Using Blockchain) The PROHUB project was a collaboration between AIT (Austrian Institute of Technology), NIOD (Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies) and Highbury R&D. It integrates blockchain technology with eArchiving solutions to protect oral history records containing sensitive information. Blockchain technology provides an additional layer which allows registering objects for access and handling license management.
	J-Ark (European Jewish Community Archive) The J-Ark project connected eArchiving, Europeana, and eTranslation CEF digital services to support the sustainability of Jewish heritage archives in an integrated long-term preservation platform named J-Ark. The online solution offers cloud services to ingest, preserve and distribute a wide range of heritage materials, including oral history interviews and recordings, historical photographs, documents, and more. J-Ark is based on the open-source digital preservation platform RODA.
	Engineering and Science Library The Engineering and Science Library project was a collaboration between Piql (Norway, Spain), Airbus Space and Defence (Spain), and the Central Library of Slovak Academy of Sciences (Slovakia). It developed on-site and hosted E-ARK conformant archival systems with embedded Archivematica preservation workflows for science and engineering content. The project has archived 2D technical drawings and documents at Airbus and scientific manuscripts and documents at UKSAV.