Guidelines for assessing archives management systems and new LOD report published

Archival institutions searching for IT solutions to support their business activities often consider the organisation of proofs of concepts to identify the best tools. Within the Standards-based archival data management action supported by the ISA² programme, a methodology has been identified to guide institutions through this complex process.

The action launched by DG DIGIT and the Historical Archives Service of the European Commission (OIB), with the support of the Commission's General Secretariat in 2017 is being conducted in 3 phases. After the publication of an extensive desk report, guidelines have now been published to inspire archival services in selecting products and tools.

Proofs of concept (PoC) have been organised within the European Commission to get insight into the capabilities of shortlisted archives management systems. In that context, a reusable and rigorous methodology for the evaluation of archives management systems has been designed. This PoC methodology, which can guide other archives services through the selection process, is available here.

Besides this, a specific proof of concept was established to examine the feasibility to publish archival data as linked open data (LOD). The published LOD report explains how sample archival test data were used to develop an archival domain-specific ontology. The defined ontology was further developed based on existing initiatives like the International Council on Archives’ RIC-CM (Records in Contexts Conceptual Model) and RIC-O (Records in Context Ontology) initiatives. A SPARQL endpoint allows accessing and querying the sample archival data. 

Check out the action page for further information and documents in multiple languages.