EU Internet GatewayPortal

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EU Internet Gateway/Portal

• Bill Stockting
• the National Archives (TNA)
• European Board of National Archivists (EBNA)
• Kew, 17 November 2005

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Introduction

• Priority Action 3 of report on Archives in the
  Enlarged European Union proposes an
• Internet gateway to documents and archives for
  European citizens
• I will
• Review the purpose and structure of the proposed
  gateway
• Discuss issues relating to the development of
  international Internet gateways by reference to
  recent professional developments

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Why a European gateway for archives?

• The report calls for a central access point to
  all published archival descriptive information in
  the form of a gateway with benefits for the
• Public
• Democratise access to archival information across
  Europe
• Enhance learning about European history and
  culture
• Professionals
• Enable co-ordinated working
• Sharing of expertise, skills and best practise

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Central Union Finding Aid (Cross searching
with links to national/ local services and
digitized images of archives)
Links to other online resources databases,
websites
Offline Finding Aids
Online Finding Aids
Union Finding Aid
References to printed finding aids and
resources
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Tools for users incl.e-learning How to read
archives etc.
Offline Findig Aids
Online Finding Aids
Union Finding Aid
Galleries of Digital images of significant histor
ical documents
General information on repositories (opening
hours, location maps etc.)
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RLG International Archival Gateways Meeting

• 2 days of discussion organised by RLG, hosted by
  the National Archives at Kew in May 2005
• Representatives from France, Germany, the
  Netherlands, Poland, Sweden, UK and U.S.
• Reviewed current programmes
• Discussed nature of interoperability and issues
  of the development of gateways in an
  international context

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The importance of the user

• The meeting agreed that a gateway service must be
  clear who its users are
• Provide those users with a good quality service
• Academic work on use of online archival systems
  now backed up with focussed user evaluation both
  before and after service launch online
• Also European work in wider cultural heritage
  sphere such as the Minerva and Calimera
  programmes

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Standards descriptive

• The archives ISAD(G)
• The context ISAAR(CPF)
• Archive repositories standards in development

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Standards technical

• XML data structure standards allow the online
  presentation and interoperability of archival
  data, discussed at workshop as part of the
  Bundesarchivs ltdaofindgt project in May 2005
• The archives Encoded Archival Description (EAD)
• The context Encoded Archival Context (EAC)
• Archive repositories Encoded Archival Guide
  (EAG)
• Digital images Metadata Encoding and
  Transmission Standard (METS)

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Content Creation

• The proposed union finding aid and virtual
  reading room of the gateway demand digital
  finding aids and versions of the archives
• Mass retroconversion programmes such Access to
  Archives (A2A) in UK
• Many cataloguing databases or XML based systems
• Much experience of digitisation and guidance in
  process developed by Minerva guidelines for
  example

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Technical architecture

• The RLG meeting also looked at the architecture
  of gateway systems and the relationship between
  those that create content and those who provide
  online gateways
• Preference for distributed systems where central
  service gains access to metadata created and
  managed by archive institutions
• Standards and protocols for connection such as
  Z39.50, XML based web services or OAI as used in
  the European Library (TEL) launched in 2005 for
  example

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Business issues

• While, technical developments then make the
  development of the proposed gateway possible, the
  RLG meeting noted business issues that remain
  unresolved
• Culture and language
• Leadership and partnership
• Funding
• Content creation
• Development
• To sustain a viable and popular service

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