News Bulletin – January 2013
Dear reader, Thank you for subscribing to our News Bulletin and welcome to the world of the Archives Portal Europe network of excellence! A follow-up to the APEnet project, the APEx project had its kick-off meeting in mid-March this year in The Hague, signing the Grant Agreement at the end of May during the second meeting of the APEx Executive Steering Committee (ESC) in Copenhagen. With 29 partners on board, we have since been working eagerly to expand, enhance, enrich and sustain the Archives Portal Europe. This regular APEx News Bulletin (published every three months) will keep you in the loop on what is going on within the project: you will learn about ongoing processes and current achievements as well as past and upcoming events. As the APEx network works in close cooperation with a wide range of other international projects, we would also like to direct your attention to relevant news and issues from these projects. We always appreciate and welcome feedback, comments and new ideas, so please don’t hesitate to contact us at editorial@apex-project.eu. All the best, The APEx team
Contents Who’s who in APEx.................................................................................................................................. 2 Keeping you up to date ........................................................................................................................... 2 January 2013: release 1.1 of the Archives Portal Europe ....................................................................... 3 Standardising the standards.................................................................................................................... 4 Evaluation of tools................................................................................................................................... 4 Interoperability and cooperation............................................................................................................ 5 Past events and conferences................................................................................................................... 5 Upcoming events..................................................................................................................................... 5 Presentations and publications on the Archives Portal Europe.............................................................. 6 Collaborating projects ............................................................................................................................. 6
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Who’s Who’s who in APEx APEx is organised in eight work packages to which the partners contribute to different extents. The project is coordinated by the National Archives of The Netherlands where the Project Office is located. For administrative questions about the project, you can contact the Project Coordinator, Gerrit de Bruin, at the Project Office, using the contact form on our project website www.apex-project.eu. In addition, the APEx ESC – composed of the directors and presidents of our partner institutions – appointed • Angelika Menne-Haritz (Federal Archives of Germany) as Scientific Coordinator; • Chris Houwing (National Archives of The Netherlands) as Development Coordinator; • Kerstin Arnold (Federal Archives of Germany) as Technical Coordinator.
Keeping you up to date One of the first tasks of the APEx project team was to set up our project website – www.apex-project.eu – launched on 31 May 2012. Here you can keep up to date with upcoming events, developments and the latest project outcomes, learn more about the partners and the organisation of the APEx project and find out how your institution with archival holdings can become part of the project. Another great way to stay on top of things is of course, to check us out on Facebook and Twitter!
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme
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January 2013: release release 1.1 of the Archives Portal Europe 17 January 2013: the release 1.1 of the Archives Portal Europe marks an important step in developing this unique portal towards an invaluably useful tool for the international archival community. New project, new portal, new address: www.archivesportaleurope.net As the network around the Archives Portal keeps growing steadily, this new release proofs to be the perfect occasion to officially introduce the portal’s new web address: from now on it is available at www.archivesportaleurope.net! Take a closer look at our adjusted logo and header area on the site and you will notice the correlation between the look and our new address. The continuous expansion of the network can be experienced vividly and directly on the portal itself as we keep including new data regularly. For example just recently the Icelandic National Archives where able to provide their data as well as new regional and local archives from e.g. the Netherlands and Portugal. Your research possibilities and perimeters keep growing step by step! CMS: it’s all in the foundation With the Archives Portal Europe 1.1 the portal’s infrastructure has now been moved to a CMS (Content Management System)-based environment that will allow for the archival material available at the Archives Portal Europe to be presented in more serviceable and practical ways and feature previews of the developments to be realised in the future. User interface and dashboard: the two basic elements to the portal’s entity Not only will you notice a few exciting enhancements to the portal’s user interface with regard to design and colouring scheme which will make your use of the portal even more efficient and fun. There are also more languages available for the portal's interface thanks to translation efforts made by our partners. With regard to the functionalities, an exact date search has been added and it's now easier to reset your search when needed. In addition to these adjustments the backend of the Archives Portal Europe – the dashboard – where all content providers hold their private accounts has been improved: the processing of data preparation and publication is now that much easier and more convenient. The Data Preparation Tool: amping up data processing Following the release 1.1 of the Archives Portal Europe, a new version of the Data Preparation Tool (DPT) which provides the important steps of data processing in the form of a desktop application, will be made available via our project website (look out for version 1.2 of the DPT). Besides being able to easily convert and validate local data to apeEAD (Encoded Archival Description as used in the Archives Portal Europe) or create information files on the archival institutions encoded in EAG (Encoded Archival Guide), the DPT now also includes a first version of conversion from apeEAD to EDM (Europeana Data Model) for providing EDM-compliant data to Europeana via the Archives Portal Europe.
Curious yet? Well then, welcome to the Archives Portal Europe at www.archivesportaleurope.net and let us know what you think of it! We will keep working on improving the portal for you and keep you in the loop on our further progress.
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme
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Standardising the standards APEx Work Package (WP) 4 is continuing the task of evaluating which international archival standards shall be used in the Archives Portal Europe and of defining how they shall be used, as well as following closely the general developments in this area of archival work. Apart from keeping track of the ongoing revision process of EAD 2002, the activities of WP4 in the first six months of the project have been focused on revising the existing EAG 0.2 in order to increase this standard’s compliance with the International Standard for Describing Institutions with Archival Holdings (ISDIAH) as well as taking advantage of current experiences with EAD and Encoded Archival Context – Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families (EAC-CPF). With Spanish archivists participating in this task, WP4 could ensure direct contact with the Censo-Guía, where EAG 0.2 was created and first implemented. Comparisons with ISDIAH and especially with EAC-CPF together with detailed discussions within the project group about encoding, presentation and implementation possibilities have now led to a draft EAG 2012 that was presented briefly during the joint meeting of the Technical Subcommittees on EAD and EAC-CPF at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists (SAA). EAG 2012 has also been the subject of one of the APEx deliverables (D4.1) that is available via the project website for everyone interested. Furthermore, it will be one of the enhancements in the release 1.1 of the Archives Portal Europe in January 2013. Following the release, the effectiveness of EAG 2012 will be evaluated based on its implementation in the Archives Portal Europe and its broader use will be promoted. In 2013, WP4 will examine EAC-CPF and decide how it can be used in the Archives Portal Europe for enhancement of its content and functionalities.
Evaluation of tools In order to amplify the usability of the Archives Portal Europe and the tools provided, an Evaluation Plan has been mapped out by WPs 4 and 6 in collaboration. The plan specifies evaluation cycles and defines methods, user groups and specific evaluation criteria used and addressed in each of these cycles. The latter accompany the larger development cycles of the APEx project with the first evaluation phase starting in early 2013 after the release 1.1 has been launched. In this iteration, the evaluation will include: • Sessions combining observations and interviews with archivists of different backgrounds and experience using the portal, the dashboard and the DPT; • Focus group evaluation; • An end-user survey that aims at learning more about the users of the Archives Portal Europe and that will soon be made available via the portal's homepage.
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme
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Interoperability and cooperation Apart from ensuring technical interoperability with related portals and projects – especially Europeana – APEx WP2 has also been dedicated to ensuring organisational interoperability eg by participating in Europeana taskforces on hierarchical objects or a possible EDM extension with FRBRoo (Functional Requirements for Bibliographic Records – object oriented). There will be two more Europeana taskforces starting with the participation of APEx team members at the end of 2012 and early in 2013, where the topics of end-user research and impact awareness will be discussed and evaluated. Furthermore, interoperability efforts have been extended towards other European projects such as TEL (The European Library), CENDARI (Collaborative European Digital Archive Infrastructure) and Europeana Awareness, with the aim of creating synergetic effects not only for the projects and their teams, but also for the institutions participating.
Past events and conferences • 13 March: • 31 May: • 5 September:
• 10 September:
• 12 September: • 26–28 September: • 26 September:
• 12 October: • 17–19 October:
• 26–27 November:
Project kick-off meeting, National Archives of The Netherlands, The Hague (NL) nd 2 APEx ESC meeting, Copenhagen (DK) ICARUS@work as pre-convention workshop within the XI General Convention of Polish Archivists: “The future of archival content on the web: the Archives Portal Europe”, Wroclaw (PL) EAD/METS workshop: introductory presentation of METS (Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standards) including examples of some APEx partners using METS in their own systems, Cologne (D) – link to programme and presentations here APEx, CENDARI, TEL and Europeana meeting, The Hague (NL) German Archives Day, Cologne (D) Conference: “Research in virtual space: new technologies in editing and presenting archival sources in Serbia”, Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Belgrade (RS) rd 3 APEx Executive Steering Committee meeting, Nicosia (CY) Presentation and workshop: “The Archives Portal Europe – current developments, goals and possibilities of participation” within the conference Austrian Archives in Europe, Vienna (AT) Second Annual General Meeting (AGM) of the Europeana Network, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin (DE): pre-conference with several Europeana taskforce meetings, Humboldt University/Berlin State Library, Berlin (DE)
Upcoming events • 29–30 January:
• 26–28 June:
Workshop and training: “The European archival community on its way into the Archives Portal Europe”, Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa (IT) – invitation only. This workshop will be the kick-off event for the Country Managers’ work. Conference: “Building infrastructures for archives in a digital world”, Trinity College, Dublin (IE) – the Call for Papers and more information can be found here.
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme
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Presentations and publications on the Archives Portal Europe • 23 August:
• 14 September: • 8 November:
• 20 November:
International Council on Archives Congress: “From institutional online presentations to an international research and publication platform: a European experience”, Brisbane (AU) Presentation of the Archives Portal Europe and APEx for archival students, Stockholm University (SE) EVA Berlin conference: Presentation “Das APEx-Projekt und die ICARUSCommunity – Gemeinsamer Weg zum Archivportal Europa”, Berlin (DE) – published synopsis with abstract also in English here. Presentation of the APEx at the ICARUS-Meeting #10: “The Swedish NationalArchives and international cooperation in APEx“, Bratislava (SK)
Collaborating projects CENDARI Visiting Research Fellowship – Call for 2013 Fellows; Ten fellowships on the topics of the First World War and medieval European culture; deadline for application was: 12 December 2012; read more here. • Europeana Awareness Online survey on availability of digital content in smaller and local archives; deadline for feedback was: 13 December 2012; English version of the questionnaire here.
• CENDARI
Project co-funded by the European Commission within the ICT Policy Support Programme