GAP report between E-ARK requirements for access, and current access solutions

This report is a GAP analysis between current access services and user requirements for Access. It describes the landscape of access services today and highlights the results of the examinations of user needs for access services. The study targets the producers of the access services (service providers and archives), the clients of these services (archives) and the end-.‐users of them (third-.‐party users, the archives and the content providers themselves). This GAP analysis report can be read by readers uninvolved with the E-ARK project to gain understanding of the current situation and assess their own solution(s)

D3.2 Cost Concept Model and Gateway Specification

This document introduces a Framework supporting the implementation of a cost concept model against which current and future cost models for curating digital assets can be benchmarked. The value built into this cost concept model leverages the comprehensive engagement by the 4C project with various user communities and builds upon our understanding of the requirements, drivers, obstacles and objectives that various stakeholder groups have relating to digital curation. Ultimately, this concept model should provide a critical input to the development and refinement of cost models as well as helping to ensure that the curation and preservation solutions and services that will inevitably arise from the commercial sector as ‘supply’ respond to a much better understood ‘demand’ for cost-effective and relevant tools. To meet acknowledged gaps in current provision, a nested model of curation which addresses both costs and benefits is provided. The goal of this task was not to create a single, functionally implementable cost modelling application; but rather to design a model based on common concepts and to develop a generic gateway specification that can be used by future model developers, service and solution providers, and by researchers in follow-up research and development projects.<p></p> The Framework includes:<p></p> • A Cost Concept Model—which defines the core concepts that should be included in curation costs models;<p></p> • An Implementation Guide—for the cost concept model that provides guidance and proposes questions that should be considered when developing new cost models and refining existing cost models;<p></p> • A Gateway Specification Template—which provides standard metadata for each of the core cost concepts and is intended for use by future model developers, model users, and service and solution providers to promote interoperability;<p></p> • A Nested Model for Digital Curation—that visualises the core concepts, demonstrates how they interact and places them into context visually by linking them to A Cost and Benefit Model for Curation.<p></p> This Framework provides guidance for data collection and associated calculations in an operational context but will also provide a critical foundation for more strategic thinking around curation such as the Economic Sustainability Reference Model (ESRM).<p></p> Where appropriate, definitions of terms are provided, recommendations are made, and examples from existing models are used to illustrate the principles of the framework

SIP Draft Specification

A Submission Information Package (SIP) is defined in the OAIS standard1 as an Information Package that is delivered by the Producer to the OAIS for use in the construction or update of one or more AIPs and/or the associated Descriptive Information. Many different SIP formats are used all over the world and unfortunately there is currently no central format for a SIP which would cover all individual national and business needs identified in the E-ARK Report on Available Best Practices. Therefore, the main objective of this report is to describe a draft SIP specification for the E-ARK project – give an overview of the structure and main metadata elements for E-ARK SIP and provide initial input for the technical implementations of E-ARK ingest tools. The target group of this work are E-ARK project partners as well as all other archival institutions and software providers creating or updating their SIP format specifications. This report provides an overview of: • The general structure for submission information packages. This report explains how the E-ARK SIP is constructed by following the common rules for all other (archival, dissemination) information packages. • The SIP METS Profile. We provide a detailed overview of metadata sections and the metadata elements in these sections. The table with all metadata elements could possibly be of interest to technical stakeholders who wish to continue with the more detailed work of the E-ARK SIP implementation later. Two examples with different kinds of content (MoReq2010, SIARD-E) following the common structure for EARK submission information package can be found in the appendixes to this report

Best Practice:SIP specification, records export requirements, transfer and ingest

This report provides an overview of the current situation of the digital archiving best practices. Special attention is placed on archival ingest workflows, submission information package formats used for transfer and ingest of digital objects and their metadata. Records export best practices are covered as well. The report consists of the following parts: • introduction; • description of the methods used for the analysis; • overview of the results with short descriptions of practices, standards and tools; • recommendations for the E-ARK project; • appendices (the survey questions, an assessment of the interviewed stakeholders, the questions from the qualitative interview and a terminology list). The study concentrates on the following topics from the archival workflow: • Records export (Pre-Ingest workflow steps); • Steps in Ingest workflow; • Submission information packages (SIP) used. Highlighted points of this best practice report for E-ARK work are: • One high-level (pre-) ingest workflow is proposed in section 4 which consists of 4 phases of the PAIMAS methodology, but several existing workflow parts must be examined more deeply to include the common steps to the E-ARK archiving workflow; • E-ARK needs to develop detailed and commonly understood requirements for the records export process which include procedures for data selection, extraction, metadata mapping, validation and quality control as these are currently lacking; • One high-level SIP structure is proposed in section 4. (Recommendation for further work), but several existing SIP physical and logical structures must be examined more deeply to include the common aspects of formats used at archives into the E-ARK SIP specification

E‐ARK Dissemination Information Package (DIP) Draft Specification

The primary aim of this report is to present the first version of the E-­‐ARK Dissemination Information Package (DIP) format. In order to do so the report describes the workflows and use cases of archival access services, and ultimately makes use of these these to present a set of requirements which should be followed when designing a DIP format. As access to archival records is largely dependent on the tools and environments used, the secondary aim of the deliverable is to go beyond the DIP format and look closely at the tools needed for preparing and using the DIP

The Network Electronic Archiving Concept for Organizing Digital Preservation for Small Archives: iPres 2018 - Boston

This paper presents details about a network organization that enables small public archives in Denmark to do professional digital preservation that both lives up to established best practices and is economically feasible. The Network Electronic Archiving (NEA) is built around extensive collaboration and sharing with archival infrastructure and expert staff at its core. To demonstrate how NEA works in practice, this paper includes the case of one of the small public archives that implement NEA support and services into their day-to-day work. From the point of view of a small archive this case illustrates how sharing and collaboration via NEA has allowed them to do full-scale digital preservation in accordance with OAIS

How collaboration and sharing has made OAIS compliant archiving at (very) small archives possible

Can small archives with limited budgets and only a handful of employees do professional OAIS compliant digital archiving? In Denmark 26 small public archives have joined forces and found a way to do it. This poster describes how it is made possible through close collaboration and sharing within a network organization

State of the Art of Cost and Benefit Models for Digital Curation

This paper presents the results of an evaluation carried out by the EU 4C project to assess how well current digital curation cost and benefit models meet a range of stakeholders’ needs. This work aims to elicit a means of modelling that enables comparing financial information across organisations, to support decision-making and for selecting the most efficient processes – all of which are critical for ensuring sustainability of digital curation investment. The evaluation revealed that the most prominent challenges are associated with the models’ usability, their inability to model quality and benefits of curation, and the lack of a clear terminology and conceptual description of costs and benefits. The paper provides recommendations on how these gaps in cost and benefit modelling can be bridged