Digital Preservation Cluster (WP6)

Participation led by Seamus Ross

HATII was established in 1997 to enhance Glasgow’s reputation as a centre of excellence in Humanities Computing and Information Studies. HATII has continued to promote subject-based computing by building on nearly two decades of pioneering initiatives and experience in the Faculty of Arts. We have developed a cutting edge research programme in humanities computing, digitisation, digital curation and preservation, and archives and records management. We are home to many internationally recognised research activities.

Participation led by Michael Day

UKOLN is involved in a variety of digital library research in both UK and EC funded activities. These include technical development and support of the distributed information architecture which is providing digital library resources to UK higher and further education, development of web services in this context and research in the areas of semantic web, metadata schemas and ontologies. UKOLN also has expertise in the areas of digital preservation and Web archiving, Web standards, cross-sectoral description of collections, the development of national and institutional e-print repositories, integration of digital libraries with learning management systems and institutional portals. More recently, UKOLN is collaborating with the Grid/e-Science community through joint workshops with the National e-Science Centre and in projects linking digital library concepts with Grid-enabled applications."

Participation led by Andreas Rauber

The Department of Software Technology and Interactive Systems (IFS) at the Vienna University of Technology (TUW) has carried out research activities on both fundamental and applied aspects of software technology and information systems. During the last five years 10 books and about 150 papers in different international conferences and journals were published. TUW participates in several major national and international research initiatives, with the addition of excellent staff funding from all sources. The Department is engaged in various third-party funded projects with partners from the mobile computing area (e.g. max.mobil), the software area (e.g. Microsoft Research, SAP, Software AG), the banking sector, and others, as well as participating in a national competence center on e-commerce (EC3). The department will bring into DELOS its long-standing experience in several disciplines of digital libraries related research, specifically with respect to information organization, retrieval, and visualization, both for text as well as multimedia documents, i.e. video and audio analysis, through a series of national and international projects. TUW has been the IT-partner of the national AOLA project building an archive of the Austrian National Webspace in cooperation with the Austrian National Library since 1999.

Participation led by Maria Guercio

The “Istituto di studi per la tutela dei beni archivistici e library” of the University of Urbino was created in 1998 to co-ordinate all the research and educational activities within the University of Urbino in the area of archival and library heritage, with specific reference to the creation, access and preservation of the documentary heritage. The Institute organises courses and manages research programmes in the area of archival science, electronic record-keeping systems, librarianship, information studies and legal studies for cultural heritage, digital preservation.

The Institute has been involved in many national and international projects: as Italian co-ordinator in the InterPARES project for the long-term preservation of authentic electronic records (1999-2002) in the NPACI project for the preservation of Persistent Archival Objects conducted by the USA National Archives and the San Diego Supercomputer Centre in the project funded by the Italian Ministry for University and scientific research in a industrial research project (3D Informatica, CNR, Consorzio Roma Ricerche) to run as test bed in evolving an Information Retrieval application into a XML product preparation of the dossier on the policies for preservation existing at European level for the International Conference of Florence on Digital Preservation /16-17 October 2003): agreement signed with Istituto Centrale per la Catalogazione (ICCU), Ministero per i beni e le attività culturali. The institute is also running many projects at application level:

• to define a classification scheme and an electronic record-keeping standard for Sogei, the public software house of the Ministry for Finance;
• to define the archival functional requirements for the electronic records systems for Prisma Engineering (Filenet distributor);
• to create an Italian network for disseminating good practice and professional training in business records management (Centro per l’Innovazione nell’Impresa, Milan).

Participation led by Hans Hofman

The Nationaal Archief has obligation to ensure access and preservation of archival records through time, both paper and digital. In this respect it has a longstanding experience in preservation of paper records and providing public access. Over the last seven years the NA has been developing its expertise through a series of pilot projects to to acquire, ingest and preserve digital archival records. It is partner in different international collaborative efforts, such as the European funded ERPANET project (2001-2004), the InterPares research project (2002-2007), that has as objectives to provide guidelines, policies etc. on preserving digital objects in an authentic and understandable way; the DLM-forum (an EEIG), that brings together national archives in Europe on issues regarding electronic records and preservation, and the ISO TC46/SC11, that is working on standards for records and records management (including metadata). Through these activities and its pilot projects the Dutch National Archives has worked to shape research and innovation in digital preservation and contributed to the delivery of tools and processes.

Participation led by Dietrich Schüller

OEAW is the audiovisual research archive of Austria. Founded in 1899, it has accumulated one of the world's major research sound collections. Since 2001 the Archive's activities have been extended to include videographic research footage. Systems have been built up for digital audio and, most recently, for uncompressed digital video archiving. Considerable research activities are also conducted in the field of handling, storage, and preservation of analogue and digital audiovisual data carriers. The Archives has ample experience in re-recording, the optimal signal retrieval from all analogue audio and most video formats. Training courses are held on a regular basis on all issues related to storage, preservation and digital archiving, in Austria and abroad.

Participation led by Manfred Thaller

The Universität zu Köln, Germany's largest university, enrolls around 65.000 students and supports numerous research centres. It has recently set a focus of its research activities on media studies, including a course and research activities in media related computer science. The Faculty of Arts has two specializations: The "Sprachliche Informationsverarbeitung" basically implements a model of Computer Linguistics; the "Historisch-Kulturwissenschaftliche Informationsverarbeitung (HKI)" (cf. www.hki.uni-koeln.de) is unique in providing computer science training for non-linguistic disciplines. The main research activities focuson various aspects of digital library systems. Software developed and maintained by HKI supports some of Germany's largest digital libraries. Among HKI recent grants two are worthy of mention: One to create a prototype for the digitization of all existing German incunabula and the other for an evaluation study encompassing all digitization activities undertaken so far under the auspices of the German National Research Council. Besides general research in the area of non-relational /native XML databases, these activities have recently also lead to the development of a vast heterogeneous database backbone ("Prometheus"; cf. www.prometheus-bildarchiv.de) funded by the German Federal Ministry of Research for a pilot project testing the possibilities of a virtually unified server uniting the image collections of all German art history departments.