The document outlines the agenda and sessions of a conference held at Trinity College Dublin from June 26-28, 2013, focusing on building infrastructures for archives in the digital age. Topics include strategic challenges, open data, interdisciplinary cooperation, and user engagement in archival content, with presentations from various experts discussing legal, technical, and practical aspects of digital archiving. The conference emphasizes the importance of international collaboration and best practices in ensuring access to cultural heritage through digital means.

1. Building infrastructures for archives in a
digital world
Date: 26 – 28 June 2013 Venue: Trinity College Dublin, College Green, Dublin 2
Note: Each session starts with a keynote which is marked like this:
Table of contents
SESSION 1.1
STRATEGIC ISSUES FOR ARCHIVES IN A DIGITAL WORLD 6
Thomas Aigner (ICARUS, AT)
International cooperation as a precondition for building infrastructures 6
Daniel Jeller (ICARUS, AT)
The digital age: opportunities to ensure access to our cultural heritage 6
Boris Blažinić (Institute for quality and human resource development)
How to raise visibility: archive’s hidden treasuries 6
Herbert Wurster (Diocese of Passau, DE)
Persistent-meta-data, the keeping of records and archival science 7
SESSION 1.2
OPEN DATA AND LICENSING 8
Julia Fallon (IPR & Policiy Advisor Europeana)
Open data and licensing (legal aspects, consequences for accessibility, economic aspects, copyright,
creative commons etc.) 8
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 8
Martin Fries (Swiss Federal Archives, CH)
Everything online? Dealing with data protection issues 9

2. Dorota Drzewiecka, Katarzyna Pepłowska (Nicolaus Copernicus University of Torun, PL)
Access to Polish archival material: legal dilemmas 10
SESSION 1.3
LINKING OF DATA – INTERDISCIPLINARY COOPERATION 11
Jane Stevenson (Archives Hub, GB)
A Licence to Thrill: the exciting potential of open data 11
Eddy Put (State Archives Belgium, BE)
Pleading the case for a flora of archives 12
Francesca Di Donato (Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, IT)
Burckhardtsource.org. A semantic archive 12
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 12
SESSION 1.4
USERS OF ARCHIVISTIC CONTENT NOW AND IN THE FUTURE 14
Stefano Vitali (Soprintendenza Archivistica per l’Emilia Romagna, IT)
Archivists and users in the virtual searching room 14
Stephane Gierts (Council of the European Union)
Archival access and online archives of the Council of the European Union – Considering the user perspective14
Steffen Hennicke (Berlin School of Library and Information Science, DE)
Modelling the information needs of archival users 15
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 15
SESSION 1.5
BUILDING NEW PARTNERSHIPS 16
Laura Gould (Lothian Health Services Archive, GB) & Gunivere Barlow (Carmichael Watson Project, GB)
Small Scale, Big Change – the impact of social media 16
Doreen Kelimes (City Archives Speyer, DE)
The eastern and north-eastern European archives between digitisation, Web 2.0 and social media 16

3. Alexander Schatek (Topothek, AT)
“Let the crowd work”. Creating a Virtual Archive by Local Units 17
Peter Moser (Archives of Rural History, CH)
Virtual archives: a new solution to old problems? 17
Tom Cobbaert (Archief 2.0, NL)
ArchiefWiki, the collaborative success of independent knowledge sharing 18
SESSION 1.6
ARCHIVAL CONTENT IN DIDACTIC PRACTICE 20
Antonella Ambrosio (UNINA – Università degli Studi di NapoliFederico II, IT)
Charters and digital archives in the didactic practice 20
Hrvoje Stančić, Arian Rajh, Edvin Bursić (Department of Information and Communication Sciences,
Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Zagreb, HR)
Archival education activities in the online environment 20
Maria Gussarson Wijk (APEx, Swedish National Archives, SE)
The Archives Portal Europe and its possible uses in the upper secondary school: the Swedish Global college
example 21
Artur Dirmeier & Kathrin Pindl (Spitalarchiv Regensburg, DE)
Spitalarchiv: didactic practice in a digital world 21
SESSION 2.1
ARCHIVAL METADATA AND STANDARDS FOR DIGITAL ARCHIVES 23
Daniel Pitti (Institute for Advanced Technology in the Humanities, University of Virginia, US)
The emerging archival metadata landscape 23
Karin Bredenberg (National Archives of Sweden, SE)
Record creators: use of EAC-CPF in the Archives Portal Europe 23
Kerstin Arnold (Technical Coordinator APEx, Federal Archives of Germany, DE)
EAD revision and its effects on the Archives Portal Europe 24
Maud Medves (CENDARI project, DE)
EAG CENDARI: customising EAG for research purposes 24

4. SESSION 2.2
BEST PRACTICE: IT’S TOOL TIME! 26
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 26
Bastiaan Verhoef (APEx, Nationaal Archief, NL)
The backend of the Archives Portal Europe: lessons learned and challenges waiting (provisional) 26
Jochen Graf (University of Cologne, DE)
Transcription, contextualization and peer review: the ‘Monasterium Collaborative Archives’ 27
Eoghan Ó Carragáin (National Library of Ireland, IE), Luke O'Sullivan (Swansea Univesity Library, IE)
Archival collections in Vufind 27
SESSION 2.3
BEST PRACTICE: FROM CARDBOARD BOXES TO EUROPEAN E-ARCHIVES 29
Zoltán Szatucsek (National Archives of Hungary, HU)
Search all, find more: access to the Archival Database Service in Hungary 29
Maria Popkovacheva-Terzieva (Archives State Agency of Bulgaria, BG)
Archives State Agency: attempts to popularize its digital holdings 29
Peter Fleer (Swiss Federal Archives, CH)
Interpretation of digital records 32
John Cox (National University of Ireland, IE)
The Abbey Theatre Archive Digitization Project: challenges and opportunities 33
Grace Toland (Irish Traditional Music Archive, IE)
The Irish Traditional Music Archive & The Inishowen Song Project 33
SESSION 2.4
BEST PRACTICE: SUSTAINING DIGITAL INFRASTRUCTURES IN THE LONG RUN 35
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 35
Giovanni Ciccaglioni (ICUU – Italian Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities, IT)
Digital cultural heritage and e-infrastructures 35
Salvatore Vasallo (Instituti Centrale per gli Archivi, IT)
The Archival Resource Catalogue within the Italian National Archival System 36

5. Armin Straube (German National Library, DE)
Frameworks for digital preservation 37
SESSION 2.5
BEST PRACTICE: BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURES ON A NATIONAL LEVEL 38
Vlatka Lemić (Croatian State Archives, HR) 38
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 38
István Kenyeres (Budapest City Archives, HU)
Archives Portal Hungary: asolution for joint publication of databases and digitized archival materials 39
Karol Krawczyk (Head Office of State Archives, PL)
Holdings accessible online: the Polish experience 39
Chezkie Kasnett (The National Library of Israel, IL)
The historical archive reborn: approach and strategy for the Archive network 40
SESSION 2.6
BEST PRACTICE: BUILDING INFRASTRUCTURES ON AN INTERNATIONAL LEVEL 43
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 43
Gerold Ritter & Jonas Arnold (Archives Online, CH)
Archives Online: real time searched in 13 archives without redundant data 43
Henk Harmsen (DARIAH-EU)
DARIAH: the adventure of building an infrastructure 44
Anna Bohn & Aleksandra Pawłiczek (CENDARI project, DE)
CENDARI: building up a research infrastructure on The First World War across borders 45

6. Session 1.1
Strategic issues for archives in a digital world
Thomas Aigner (ICARUS, AT)
International cooperation as a precondition for building infrastructures
tba
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.
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).

7. 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.

8. 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.)
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

9. 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

10. 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.
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.

11. Session 1.3
Linking of data – interdisciplinary cooperation
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.

12. 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.
Francesca Di Donato (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,

13. 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.

14. 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
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.
Stephane 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.

15. 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.
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

16. 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.
Session 1.5
Building new partnerships
Laura Gould (Lothian Health Services Archive, GB) & Gunivere 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)."
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.

17. 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.
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?
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

18. 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:
a) the concept of virtual archives exemplified on the ARH,
b) the relationship of virtual archives with the existing, non-virtual archives and
c) the potential and limits of the concept of virtual archives in the sense of the ARH.
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.

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

20. 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
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.
Hrvoje Stančić, Arian Rajh, Edvin Bursić (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

21. 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
Maria Gussarson Wijk (APEx, Swedish National Archives, SE)
The Archives Portal Europe and its possible uses in the upper secondary school: the
Swedish Global college example
In 2011 The Swedish parliament approved of a new education plan for upper secondary schools. In it,
the importance of learning how to work with historical sources was emphasised. This has been
received with mixed feelings within the teachers’ corps, but unquestionably, the archives have seen a
growing interest in the use of their fonds for educational purposes. Two further objectives set in the
plan are that students should learn how to use and benefit from new digital technology and also
learn about the European Union and its importance to Sweden. The emphasis on historical sources,
digital technology and the European Union suggests that the Archives Portal Europe could be
regarded as a relevant and interesting pedagogical means for historical studies at this level.
So how could upper secondary schools use the digital possibilities for archival studies provided by the
Archives Portal Europe? And what are the limitations? Could anything be done to improve its
potential usefulness for this user-group, or even create new uses? The following presentation will
discuss these questions departing from the Global College, an upper secondary school in Stockholm,
Sweden.
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

22. 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.

23. 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
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.

24. 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 1st
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.
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 specification1
), versioning (Subversion), identification, preservation and visualisation (XTF2
).
1 See http://www.dh2012.uni-hamburg.de/conference/programme/abstracts/future-
developments-for-tei-odd/
2 http://xtf.cdlib.org/

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

26. 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
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.

27. 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 (MOM-CA) 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 MOM-CA 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 MOM-CA 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
web-based 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 Drive-like
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.
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

28. 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.

29. 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
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.

30. 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:
a. 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
b. We have had numerous visits and media publications regarding the collections
VIII) With this in mind, we move onto a discussion of supply-side motivation – in other words does
the Bulgarian archive have an agenda for digitisation? What are the current goals that the
archives are trying to fulfil when reaching out to the non-expert user?
1) 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

31. 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.
2) 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.
3) 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.
IX) This year, we have a new web-site – it actually won an award for the best State Administration
web-site of the Year 2012. The web-site gives access to our digital archive – it contains finding
aids and thematic collections. Other initiatives that further enhance our commitment in this
area include:
- 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
X) International Projects
1) 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

32. 2) 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.
3) 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 20th
century
through the photography of a famous Bulgarian family – Karastoyanovi.
4) 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.
XI) Finally I would like to address some areas in which we think we can improve our efforts to
popularise our digital holdings.
- 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.
-
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

33. evaluates the possibilities of the Swiss Federal Archives of making available concrete tools to
researchers.
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.
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

34. 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.
My 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

35. 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
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.
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

36. 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.
Salvatore Vasallo (Instituti 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

37. 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).
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.

38. Session 2.5
Best practice: building infrastructures on a national level
Vlatka Lemić (Croatian State Archives, HR)
Tba
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.
3 www.archivportal-d.de (in German).
4 www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de.

39. 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:
1. Integrated Archival Database – which unifies descriptive records on highly
differing archival files and documents, many of them linked to digital images
2. Database of fonds and sub-fonds – basic information on the archival material
3. Cadastral maps of the counties – with georeferenced maps and an online
gazetteer database
4. Digitised documents of the Communist Party (searchable PDF format)
5. Archival publications (searchable PDF format)
6. 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.

40.  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.
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:
a. A platform for archives to improve the quality of and access to their collections.
b. Provide public access to valuable national material c. Provide a framework and infrastructure
for long-term digital preservation of records and digital objects
Value:
a. Create shared controlled vocabularies.
b. Semantic processing of metadata and OCR.

41. c. Federated search
d. Achieve a range and depth of results never before possible.
Project challenges:
1. Archives
a. different/lack of standards of metadata
b. organisations vary greatly in both size and structure
c. poor physical state of archives and their holdings
d. hesitance of archives in participating
e. enormous quantity of data
2. Technology
a. difficulty in controlling and managing the information
b. long-term digital preservation
c. standardisation and unification of the data
d. creating a usable, intuitive, engaging website aimed at different user groups
3. The process
a. dealing with numerous languages in the data
b. creating multilingual website and application interfaces
c. working with many agents in the execution of the project
d. funding and bureaucracy
e. lack of standards and unified methodology.

42. Solution:
Core strategy factors:
1. Securing necessary funding.
2. Building a team of experts.
3. Creating a framework for Long-term Digital Preservation
4. Copyright and legal aspects
5. Employ standards.
6. Implement a KIS (Keep It Simple) approach.
7. Learn from other projects.
8. Involve the archives and the public.
9. Create a win-win situation for the maximal participation.

43. 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
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.

44. 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.
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

45. 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”.