1. Get familiar with legislation and standards
Since there is no European Union Directive that governs digital archiving, you should start by checking how local legal obligations are regulating archiving activities in your Member State. What we provide are documentation and support services based on international standards to help you describe, transmit and preserve digital information. The main standard for digital archiving is the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS): ISO 14721:2012.
2. Determine needs and requirements for digital archiving
In addition to requirements deriving from legal obligations, gather business needs from the end users and translate them into further requirements for your eArchiving application.
3. Define your digital archiving plan
Based on gathered requirements, define what digital information to keep, for how long and who can access it. Study your business's document workflow and identify where archiving should take place.
The E-ARK Knowledge Centre provides a comprehensive set of services that allow users to understand, contribute and validate good practices relating to information governance.
4. Decide how to enable digital archiving
With your archives, decide whether to develop your own application, buy software from an external provider or use existing components, such as eArchiving, to put together a digital archiving solution. eArchiving offers both mix and match components, as well as end-to-end solutions. Consider the benefits of going digital with eArchiving.
5. Implement, integrate and test your solution
These steps will all be done by your repository owner. If you decided to develop your own application, you can use our technical specifications to ensure it conforms to standards. If you want to use an existing solution, we provide eArchiving sample software.
6. Archive and retrieve data
Once you have started to archive digital information with eArchiving, you can always retrieve digital information with the E-ARK Platform UI.
The eArchiving Service Desk is open for your questions, comments, incidents and change requests at any point before, during or after implementation.
Related Content
Big Picture
eArchiving - provides core specifications, software, training and knowledge to help people store information for longer.
See Also
The eArchiving Knowledge Centre aims to provide easy to use inofrmtaion on eArchiving tools.
In order to create and adapt your archive, or develop your own application, you can refer to our technical specifications to ensure it conforms with the eArchiving standards.
Make sure your development of components or end-to-end solutions preserve data safely and in line with European standards, so your clients can trust your applications.
We will assist you on following the standardised specifications to keep interoperable and secure the data you have been trusted with.