The digital transformation offers great opportunities for archives, but also presents them with considerable challenges. After all, using archives in the digital age means researching and processing archived material online from any location at any time. To achieve this, however, a wide range of prerequisites must be created for the acquisition, indexing, management, digitization, preservation, and target-group-specific access to documents.
State Archives of Baden-Württemberg and FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure want to make the vision of digital research archives a reality. To this end, the two renowned infrastructure institutions have now signed a cooperation agreement that is intended to intensify their successful collaboration. For example, together with other partners, Archivportal-D was created as a Germany-wide research portal with holdings from more than 400 archives. Currently, both partners are developing easy-to-use indexing software for small and medium-sized archives.
The combination of archival expertise and strategic networking on the part of the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg and FIZ Karlsruhe's strength in software development and research creates considerable synergies. It benefits all institutions dedicated to the preservation and presentation of cultural heritage. The next step will be the joint development of a new type of Archival Subject Information System (AFIS), with an entirely novel, digital approach towards the technical basis of archival work "AFIS Next Generation" serves to index, manage and present archival material - with a map module, linked data, user-generated content, and AI functions. It is intended to support all internal archival work processes of the State Archives. Externally, the new AFIS enables the comprehensive online presentation and the use of indexing data and digitized material.
Another focus is on cooperation in the area of digital long-term archiving. It can build on existing, established services: For example, the State Archives has been operating DIMAG (Digital Magazine), an IT system for the permanent preservation of their digital archival materials, since 2006. FIZ Karlsruhe, in turn, develops and operates RADAR, a repository for cross-disciplinary archiving and publication of research data.
Click here to read the original press release.
