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Shaping Europe’s digital future

History of eArchiving starting with the original E-ARK project (2014-2017) through the eArchiving Building Block (2018-2021) to the current eArchiving initiative.

September 2025 marks the end of the EU funding in support of the eArchiving Initiative (E-ARK). E-ARK will continue its mission under the stewardship of the DLM Forum, the DILCIS Board and the Open Preservation Foundation (OPF). The information presented on this website is still relevant for the digital preservation community, please feel free to use it as guidance.

The eArchiving initiative is based on the outcomes of the E-ARK project (2014 - 2017) and the eArchiving Building Block (2018-2021). The project, which involved a number of European national archives, e-government agencies, digital preservation software developers and research institutions, aimed to synthesise best-practices from across Europe and develop a core set of interoperability specifications for archival operations.

The project also updated a number of archival software components to meet the specifications, and carried out a number of operational pilots to verify the cross-border validity and interoperability of the specifications. After the successful conclusion of the E-ARK project in 2017, the European Commission included its outcomes into the CEF programme to become the basis of the eArchiving Building Block.

Within CEF the initial specifications and open-source software components were enriched with training, implementation guidance services, service desk etc..

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Big Picture

The eArchiving Initiative provides core specifications, training and knowledge to help people store information for longer.