General Information
Name of the solution: eArchiving
Solution's owner: CEF Digital
Description: eArchiving provides the core specifications, software, training and knowledge to help data creators, software developers and digital archives tackle the challenge of short, medium and long-term data management and reuse in a sustainable, authentic, cost-efficient, manageable and interoperable way.
eArchiving technical specifications are ideal for migrating long-term valuable data between generations of information systems, transferring data to dedicated long-term repositories (i.e. digital archives), or preserving and reusing data over extended (and shorter) periods of time and generations of software systems.
Type of solution: Common service
eArchiving implements the following:
| Principles | Interoperability layers |
|---|---|
| ✅ Openness | ✅ Interoperability governance |
| ✅ Reusability | ✅ Semantic interoperability |
| ✅ Technological neutrality | ✅ Technical Interoperability |
| ✅ User-centricity | |
| ✅ Administrative simplification | |
| ✅ Preservation of information |
eArchiving implements the following recommendations as explained below:
✅ Recommendation 4 | Principle 2: Openness
The CEF eArchiving building block is based on open specifications and open standards.
✅ Recommendation 7 | Principle 4: Reusability
eArchiving building blocks allows for digital data preservation, hence ensuring its reuse in the long term.
✅ Recommendation 8 | Principle 5: Technological neutrality
eArchiving encourages the use of open source software, which is technologically neutral.
✅ Recommendation 9 | Principle 5: Technological neutrality
Being based on international standards, eArchiving ensures data portability, namely that data is easily transferable between systems.
✅ Recommendation 12 | Principle 6: User-centricity
The E-ARK Knowledge Centre allows users to contribute and validate good practices relating to information governance.
✅ Recommendation 17 | Principle 10: Administrative simplification
The eArchiving building block can be coupled with services and processes to support administrative burden reduction.
✅ Recommendation 18 | Principle 11: Preservation of information
eArchiving provides documentation and support services based on international standards to help describe, transmit and preserve digital information.
✅ Recommendation 23 | Interoperability layer: Interoperability governance
eArchiving technical specifications describe in detail the interoperable and open formats for packaging data and metadata for transfer to archival repositories (E-ARK SIP), for the preservation over extended periods (E-ARK AIP) and the reuse of archived content (E-ARK DIP). The most common principles and requirements are presented separately within the E-ARK Common Specification for Information Packages.
✅ Recommendation 30 | Interoperability layer: Semantic interoperability
eArchiving aims is to properly describe, transmit and preserve digital information.
✅ Recommendation 31 | Interoperability layer: Semantic interoperability
eARK Knowledge Centre contributes to harmonising currently fragmented archival approaches for ingest, preservation and re-use of data, thus putting in place an information strategy to avoid fragmentation and duplication.
✅ Recommendation 32 | Interoperability layer: Semantic interoperability
The CEF eArchiving building block encourages community driven development and updates of standards, hence involving a wide range of stakeholders in its maintenance and development.
✅ Recommendation 33 | Interoperability layer: Technical interoperability
eArchiving promotes the use of open source software, as the main standard for digital archiving is the Reference Model for an Open Archival Information System (OAIS).
