Hi all,
This email is about the Archives Portal Europe (APE): http://www.archivesportaleurope.net/
At present, the UK is not contributing to the portal, which is intended to be a means to bring together archives from across Europe. 15 countries are currently represented, but the new APEx project (Archives Portal Europe network of excellence: http://www.apex-project.eu/) is looking to increase this considerably.
Whilst the Portal has quite a way to go to really become a useful resource for researchers, they are doing good work in bringing European archives together and putting a focus on European heritage. They can also feed data into Europeana.
APE are organising contributions through 'Country Managers'. This role is about co-ordinating and supporting contributing institutions. The Country Manager administers the dashboard that is provided to create logins and organise the archival landscape of the country. It's quite a big role, as APE are asking Country Mangers to liaise with their archival institutions, support them in converting their data into APE EAD, work with software providers within the country in terms of the APE EAD export, run workshops and generally promote the Portal through dissemination and outreach activities.
"The Country Manager is the person with thorough knowledge regarding the portal; both front- and back-end, as well as the overall objective of the project. Therefore s/he will be the first contact point for content providers that may approach him/her regarding either their participation or the delivery of content." (From the Handbook for Country Managers).
The CM does testing and reports issues, sends out questionnaires, gathers demands and needs of institutions, assists with implementing standards such as EAD, EAD-CPF and METS.
I am proposing to be the Country Manager for descriptions that are fed into APE via the Archives Hub. The Hub has essentially carried out many of the tasks that APE requires, and we already have a network of providers. If they wish, their data can be fed through to the Portal via the Hub - we will do all the work around data integration.
However, we do not have the resources within our team to undertake the role other than through the Archives Hub. The UK can also choose to have a Country Manager that co-ordinates institutions that want to provide their data directly. Several countries have more than one CM, as it is quite a bit to take on!
I will be liaising with TNA and with UKAD about this, as quite often the national archives within a country do take on the CM role, but I wanted to send out a general email so that anyone with any interest in this could be part of the discussions.
For all those who contribute to the Hub, I will be asking you about contributing to APE and keeping you up-to-date. If you don't yet contribute to the Hub but would like to do so then please do get in touch.
I'll try to answer any questions anyone has. I did attend a workshop for Country Managers last week, so I got a reasonable idea about the whole project, but I'm only just setting out on this, so there is still going to be quite a bit to think about and decide upon. The good news is that we already have interoperable EAD on the Hub, so it looks like the transformation to APE EAD shouldn't be too painful! As far as I'm concerned the goal is to be able to contribute data to different initiatives like this without significant additional work, so that it is more likely to be sustainable over time.
all the best
Jane.
Jane Stevenson
The Archives Hub
Mimas, The University of Manchester
Devonshire House, Oxford Road
Manchester M13 9QH
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tel: 0161 275 6055
website: archiveshub.ac.uk
blog: archiveshub.ac.uk/blog
twitter: twitter.com/archiveshub
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