eArchiving Documentation
CEF DigitaleArchivingFacilitate the preservation, migration, reuse and trust of your information
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What is eArchiving?
Important information should be kept accessible and reusable for years to come, regardless of the system used to store it. eArchiving provides core specifications, software, training and knowledge to help people preserve and reuse information over the long-term.
Interoperability by default
Following international standards and specifications for packaging digital information enables organisations to transmit documents and information across borders, for short-, medium- and long-term storage (and subsequent access and reuse) regardless of the platform they use.
Openness and transparency
Having a common set of open specifications for packaging and archiving digital information promotes a high level of transparency and confidence among all participants in the information lifecycle.
Sustainability and legal compliance
With eArchiving, digital archival systems can be successfully deployed, implementing reusable modular components that are compliant with various national legal backgrounds.
How to start using the solution
Determine your digital archiving: what information to keep, for how long (legislation) and who can access it. The answers will translate into your solution’s requirements.
Decide which eArchiving components you want to use to implement the solution.
With the support of our Service Desk, implement, integrate and test your solution!
Contact us for help or feedback in any step of your journey.
Who can benefit from eArchiving
Data Producers
Anyone with information that needs to be preserved and reused.
Learn how you can apply international standards and specifications to your data, to be able to preserve and reuse it on the long-term.
Archives
Organizations responsible for digital archiving activities
We will assist you on following the standardised specifications to keep interoperable and secure the data you have been trusted with.
Solution Providers
Software and service providers
Make sure your development of components or end-to-end solutions preserve data safely and in line with European standards, so your clients can trust your applications.
Key eArchiving resources
Onboarding and training of stakeholders
These services aim to facilitate the onboarding process of stakeholders interested in reusing the eArchiving Building Block.
Technical specifications
In order to create and adapt your archive, or develop your own application, you can refer to our technical specifications to ensure it conforms with the eArchiving standards.
Portfolio of sample software
Discover several sample software components you can use for the development, testing and deployment of an eArchiving solution.
eArchiving in use
38
projects
23 Projects reusing eArchiving
15 Projects committed to analyse or reusing eArchiving
We work with institutions just like yours
“eArchiving facilitates a universal set of standards and specifications for transmitting, describing, and preserving digital data. For us, this will remove the obstacle of different standards and specifications that exists for archives wanting to collaborate or share solutions.”
Phillip Mike Tømmerholt IT-project leader and project manager, Danish National Archives
eArchiving FAQ
CEF eArchiving helps organisations tackle the issues of long-term accessibility of information. It offers a set of components including:
- Open and platform independent specifications, based on international standards, for creating information packages;
- Open-source software components to demonstrate how data can be preserved and reused according to the specifications;
- Guidance and training on issues around long-term data management and digital archiving; and a central community for digital archiving discussions.
Crucial data must be kept accessible and reusable over many decades to come. In order to be available over the long-term, digital information must be regularly migrated between generations of software, bringing about issues of cost and risks concerning the authenticity and integrity of data. Any information system we use right now becomes obsolete sooner or later, which raises issues of security, efficiency and ease of use. By using the components of eArchiving, any organisation can set up its own institutional long-term archiving ecosystem or develop standardised workflows for delivering valuable content from line-of-business systems to external archival repositories.
The primary aim of eArchiving is to address the needs of three stakeholder groups:
- Data Producers, who can use eArchiving for developing standardised archival export interfaces and workflows into their line of business systems;
- Archives, for which eArchiving provides archives with the standardised specifications for the development of their ingest, preservation and access interfaces, as well as an international community for professional advice and discussions;
- Solution providers, who can use eArchiving specifications to develop standardised archiving functionality into their products.
Using eArchiving starts with mapping your digital preservation problem to the eArchiving format specification and tool portfolio. That is to select the right format specifications and tools that best address your problem. Finding the right eArchiving components is not always easy. You have to understand the logic behind the eArchiving elements and have some knowledge of the eArchiving use cases, specifications and tools.
This section aims to help newcomers to digital archiving or to the eArchiving Building Block find the best solution. We guide you through the eArchiving concepts, approaches and elements:
- Users start the onboarding journey by prospecting the CEF eArchiving building block and understanding what it can offer.
- Then, they must identify their business needs and translate them into requirements.
- Having the requirements, users choose the appropriate components among those detailed in the available software portfolio or specifications.
- Users then deploy the solution and benefit from the support of the Service Desk and training sessions to aid deployment and integration.
- Following the operation of the solution, organizations can assess the current state of the implementation using a maturity assessment tool.
- Based on the assessment results, an improvement plan is created to guide organisations in improving their long-term information accessibility maturity.
Contact us and start your digital transformation
If you have any question regarding eArchiving, feel free to contact us or join our user community for further discussion and support.
Pawel Onboarding Manager