Digital Preservation Services : State of the Art Analysis

Research report funded by the DC-NET project.An overview of the state of the art in service provision for digital preservation and curation. Its focus is on the areas where bridging the gaps is needed between e-Infrastructures and efficient and forward-looking digital preservation services. Based on a desktop study and a rapid analysis of some 190 currently available tools and services for digital preservation, the deliverable provides a high-level view on the range of instruments currently on offer to support various functions within a preservation system.European Commission, FP7peer-reviewe

Estonian folklore archives

The Estonian Folklore Archives was established as the central folklore archives of Estonia in 1927.1 The original collections of the archives were built upon manuscript reports and accounts of Estonian folklore, consisting of over 115,000 pages of material contributed primarily by the noted Estonian folklore collector Jakob Hurt (1939-1907) and his more than 1,400 informants in the late nineteenth century. Today the Estonian Folklore Archives holds nearly 1.5 million manuscript pages as well as a collection of photographs, videos, and audio recordings.Not

Documentation, Common Information and Short Overview of the E-ARK pilots

This report contains the common information and short overview of the pilots, along with references to the final version of the Pilot Definition Excel files and Pilot Documentation Packages

Education alignment

This essay reviews recent developments in embedding data management and curation skills into information technology, library and information science, and research-based postgraduate courses in various national contexts. The essay also investigates means of joining up formal education with professional development training opportunities more coherently. The potential for using professional internships as a means of improving communication and understanding between disciplines is also explored. A key aim of this essay is to identify what level of complementarity is needed across various disciplines to most effectively and efficiently support the entire data curation lifecycle

E-ARK Final Report

Between 2014 and 2017 the E-ARK project brought together a consortium of five European national archives, five leading research institutions, three systems providers, two government institutions, and two membership organisations to work on the development and implementation of the tools, standards, and administrative processes required to support digital archiving. The project exceeded its objectives and achieved significant results in numerous areas. In particular, it met all ten milestones; produced all 31 deliverables (plus some extra) http://www.eark-project.com/resources/project-deliverables ; was assessed as excellent in the final year review; and was dubbed a “European Showcase Project” by the Project Officer, Alina Senn, together with the two external project reviewers Adrian Brown (Parliamentary Archives, UK), and Hannes Kulovits, (Austrian National Archives)[1]. Finally, robust measures were adopted to sustain the project outputs, which are now listed by category

Information governance: nature and implementation from the European public administrations' perspective

The concept of Information Governance (IG) as a multidimensional approach to manage information with the aim of optimising the realisation of the strategic and operational corporate goals is increasingly implemented both in public and in private sector, but a common and scientific ground of this approach is yet to be defined. This Master’s Thesis has been prepared on the basis of a task commissioned in the frameworks of the research project implemented by InterPARES Trust (a multi-national, interdisciplinary research project exploring issues concerning digital records and data entrusted to the Internet). Briefly, they can be formulated as follows: understanding the key notions and components of IG and analysing the best practices of the IG in European public administrations based on the comparison of academic research and available specialist practices. Given the exploratory nature of the study we used a qualitative approach to investigate the stated objectives. We started with document and content analysis to carry out the state of the art not only on IG’ definition and dimensions but also on relevant IG maturity assessment models, methods and tools. Based on the developed Interview Guide the semi-structured interviews were carried out with European experts and practitioners in the field of information management who can be, without exaggeration, referred to as leaders and active participants of their professional community. The information received from the experts provided some sort of empirical validation, and at a subsequent stage allowed us to summarize and correlate the already available data we had developed from the literature and the data developed from the interviews. We have succeeded in capturing and reviewing a number of important issues related to the situation of IG in the public sector, identify a range of main challenges during IG implementation and suggest a number of recommendations (related to development of IG Policies, IG services, business cases and improving of the professional skill of information management staff) that could facilitate the development of IG in public administrations

Challenges of transformation of research data into open data : The perspective of social sciences and humanities

The authors address the transformation of research data into open data. The article draws on the experience in four countries: Sweden, Finland, Estonia and Lithuania. The transformation process presents several challenges where legal, organizational and individual aspects influence the process. Research data often contain personal data. Research data could also be covered with intellectual property (IP) rights. This means that personal data and IP regulations should be integrated into the dissemination model. While there is a potential conflict between the policies for open data that aim to make data freely available and those of an entrepreneurial university that emphasize commercialization of research results, these policies need to be made compatible. Researchers producing data are vital for reconciling the two, but they currently lack the motivation to contribute towards the implementation of the open data policy due to missing career incentives.Peer reviewe

The political imaginaries of blockchain projects: discerning the expressions of an emerging ecosystem

There is a wealth of information, hype around, and research into blockchain’s ‘disruptive’ and ‘transformative’ potential concerning every industry. However, there is an absence of scholarly attention given to identifying and analyzing the political premises and consequences of blockchain projects. Through digital ethnography and participatory action research, this article shows how blockchain experiments personify ‘prefigurative politics’ by design: they embody the politics and power structures which they want to enable in society. By showing how these prefigurative embodiments are informed and determined by the underlying political imaginaries, the article proposes a basic typology of blockchain projects. Furthermore, it outlines a frame to question, cluster, and analyze the expressions of political imaginaries intrinsic to the design and operationalization of blockchain projects on three analytic levels: users, intermediaries, and institutions.</p