Electronic Resource Preservation and Access Network

The Electronic Resource Preservation and Access Network, commonly known as ERPANET, was funded by the European Commission’s IST initiative under the Fifth Framework Programme (IST-2001-32706) from 1 November 2001 until 31 October 2004. Its mission was to raise awareness, provide access to experience and transferable knowledge, share policies and strategies, improve practices, and lead and promote innovative research which would enhance the preservation of cultural and scientific digital objects. Through its activities, it helped to tackle the lack of awareness, fragmentation of knowledge and skills amongst the stakeholder communities about how to handle existing digital preservation problems, and the paucity of guidance as to how to plan effectively for the future.

Background

The project, was led by the Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII) at the University of Glasgow (Scotland), and its partners the Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv (Switzerland), ISTBAL at the Universit à di Urbino (Italy) and Nationaal Archief van Nederland (Netherlands). The Directors of ERPANET were Niklaus Bütikofer (Schweizerisches Bundesarchiv), Maria Guercio (ISTBAL, Università di Urbino), Hans Hofman (Nationaal Archief Nederland, Den Haag), and Seamus Ross (HATII, University of Glasgow). ERPANET's initial funding stream of some 1.2 million euros ran for thirty-six months. As generous as the level of funding from the European Union and the Swiss Government may seem to have been, it would not have been sufficient without the commitment of professionals from across Europe, Australia and New Zealand, and Canada and the United States, to help ERPANET to achieve its objectives. These experts donated time, thought, effort, and knowledge. By the conclusion of the project ERPANET was established as an internationally recognised brand name signifying excellence in training, research, knowledge transfer, and catalysing community action in digital preservation. Its website remains in 2006 a primary point of delivery for high quality content about digital curation and preservation.

ERPANET Activities

ERPANET consulted widely about the preservation needs of digital content creating communities, and it delivered guidance and training which responded to the needs identified through its consultation. For example, it delivered five preservation guidance documents: aPolicy Building Framework, Costing Digital Preservation Strategies, Digital Object Risk Management Methods, Selecting Technologies, and Ingest Strategies (see external links below).

ERPANET organised twenty workshops and seminars in fourteen different countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Switzerland, and United Kingdom) which attracted participants from forty-one different countries (including eighteen within the EU). Through promoting cross-disciplinary environments ERPANET provided opportunities for communication between public and commercial sector actors working to address the challenges posed by digital preservation and access. Forty organisations contributed expertise, venues, and a range of other intellectual effort to the work of ERPANET. Among the co-sponsors of ERPANET events were the Accademia dei Lincei, Archives de France – Le Centre des Archives Contemporaines (Fontainebleau), Nederlands Instituut voor Archiefonderwijs en -onderzoek (Amsterdam), Archivschule (Marburg), Biblioteca Nacional España, Caja Castilla la Mancha, CODATA, Det Kongelige Bibliotek (Denmark), National Archives and Records Administration (Washington DC), Open Society Archives at the Central European University, Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Research Libraries Group, and the Stadsarchief Antwerpen. More than 90% of respondents to the evaluation questionnaires collected at these events reported that the events met their expectations and they hoped to attend another in the future. In delivering these events ERPANET engaged participation of 213 speakers from archives, libraries, museums, and other public sector institutions and commercial organisations. 180 of these were different speakers. The speakers represented 143 different institutions drawn from twenty different countries. 173 of these presentations are available at the ERPANET website as PowerPoint and/or Adobe PDF files. (In many cases with oral recordings of the presentation itself.) Reports from these workshops provide both a summary of the event and form the foundation for future developmental thinking and action.

The ERPANET team produced and publishing commentaries on hundreds of publications in the area of digital preservation and laid down the guidelines for the preparation of further commentaries. It established ERPAePRINTS as an eprints service for published and grey-literature on digital preservation. It delivered an interactive, participant-driven and extensible database on key digital preservation projects world-wide. ERPANET conducted case studies the examine how leading European organizations approached digital preservation. The development of these case studies involved more than 200 interviews. They provide evidence of the low level of appreciation of digital preservation challenges within both the public and private sectors and the high risk exposure that organizations and individuals face as a result.

The loss of digital information remains a major challenge to our guaranteeing the long-term accountability of e-government and commercial organizations.

ee also

* DigitalPreservationEurope

References

*

External links

* [http://www.erpanet.org ERPANET]
* [http://eprints.erpanet.org/ ERPAePRINTS]
* (A case study of Project Gutenberg, published on project Gutenberg)

ERPAGuidance

* [http://www.erpanet.org/guidance/index.php#ingest Ingest Strategies]
* [http://www.erpanet.org/guidance/index.php#cost Costing Orientation]
* [http://www.erpanet.org/guidance/index.php#technology Selecting Technologies]
* [http://www.erpanet.org/guidance/index.php#policy Digital Preservation Policy]
* [http://www.erpanet.org/guidance/index.php#risk Risk Management]