From 4 to 7 May 2026 in Brussels, Belgium, this EDDI-SODHA Summer School brings together experts from physical and digital archives, galleries, museums, and libraries to discuss vital questions around digital archiving, ontologies, the cost of archiving, and more.

The week opens with a pre–Summer School discussion on the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI), offering a shared foundation in high-quality data documentation through group exercises and discussion. Over the following days, sessions address the practical, methodological and legal dimensions of digital archiving, ontologies, vocabularies, and shared meanings, and the broader impact of archiving on collective memory and open science.

Combining presentations and group activities, the programme provides both conceptual insight and practical guidance on archival best practices, with explicit highlighting on data documentation, in contemporary research and heritage contexts.

Preliminary programme

• 4 May 2026: Pre Summer School Training

  • An introduction to DDI by Alina Danciu (CDSP, SciencesPo) and Becky Oldroyd (CLOSER, UCL) 
    Join us for a half‑day workshop, "An introduction to metadata and the Data Documentation Initiative (DDI) standard". We’ll explore the foundations of research data, metadata, and metadata standards, building a shared understanding of the concepts that underpin high‑quality data documentation. The session will focus on the DDI standard - the most commonly used social science metadata standard - and will include practical activities and group discussions to help you put the ideas introduced in this workshop into practice.

  • An organised tour at a museum of a partner institute in Brussels
    To Be Announced

• 5 May 2026: Memory, method and meaning
   
  • Digital archiving, the how’s the what’s and the why’s by István László Gyimes (State Archives of Belgium, Vrije Universiteit Brussel)
    A discussion and workshop on the necessities of digital archiving, the need for awareness raising for users, and the considerations around different data types. We will discuss what one needs to build, upkeep, and develop a digital archive, and how these goals can be achieved. Following the presentation, group activities will further encourage discussions.
     
  • Law and order (of things) by Louise de Béthune (State Archives of Belgium, KU Leuven)
    How does the law influence the archivists’ tasks? Many archival aspects are regulated by national and European law. Data in particular is heavily regulated at the European level. How does the law understand the archive, data, metadata, research, an original work, an author? As archivists and data stewards it is important to understand how this influences the rights within the archive and the obligations of (digital) archives, but how to apply them in practice? These questions will be tackled in this workshop, alongside a broader introduction and discussion on the applicable laws.
     
  • Sharing meaning, vocabularies in a European Context by Róza Vajda (ONTOLISST team at ELTE Centre for Social Sciences)
    Digital archiving faces a dual challenge in making research data accessible: how to preserve their integrity, while opening up their assets for broader use. Data curation methods must acknowledge traditional approaches as well as be adaptable to recent social exigencies and technological innovation in rendering data interoperable. Our session explores the practices at various European archives in developing thematic metadata to explore their holdings and create bridges to connect with similar datasets in other repositories. Through exercises of labelling research documents the participants will receive experiential evidence of the ambiguity of meanings and the irreducible uncertainty of interpretation.6 May 2026: The impact of archiving
     
• 6 May 2026: The impact of archiving
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  • Curating the collective memory by Filip Strubbe & Johan van der Eycken (State Archives of Belgium)
    Curating archives as part of our collective memory involves a continuous process comprising three core activities: (1) appraisal, through collaboration with public bodies to identify records eligible for permanent preservation; (2) disclosure of archival holdings by means of inventories and other research instruments; and (3) support for diverse user groups in locating relevant information. Each of these stages presents specific methodological and organisational challenges.
    The first part of the presentation introduces these principles in the context of physical archiving, focusing on traditional archival practices and their practical constraints.
    The second part addresses digital archiving, where the same core functions are performed under significantly altered conditions. Born-digital materials, rapidly increasing data volumes, and evolving legal and regulatory frameworks place substantial pressure on established workflows. Addressing these challenges requires adaptive procedures to ensure the long-term integrity, authenticity, accessibility, and usability of digital archives.
     
  • Open science: connecting archives to make them by Stephanie Buyle (KIK/IRPA)
    The transition from siloed paper archives to digital ecosystems is vital for aligning heritage research with Open Science. At the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA), the H-SEARCH project modernizes 75 years of interdisciplinary intervention dossiers—spanning conservation and material science—by migrating disparate formats into a unified framework of machine-actionable FAIR Digital Objects (FDOs). This initiative addresses the challenges of a heterogeneous data landscape characterized by inconsistent metadata and limited interoperability.To resolve these issues, KIK-IRPA established a stepwise pre-archival workflow that first consolidates legacy and born-digital dossiers into a controlled "pre-archive" environment. This foundational stage organizes disparate data to prepare for the current transition toward embracing fully-realised Digital Objects. Methodologically, this involves implementing over 40 data models aligned with international standards within the Cordra repository. This architecture links archival metadata to institutional and external platforms, ensuring long-term preservation according to OAIS principles while enhancing data discoverability. Metadata created in Cordra are fed back into the pre-archive, where the archival workflow starts. Digital files and their metadata are then bundled, preserved, and stored in a dedicated long-term preservation environment, ensuring that the data remain accessible, reliable, and reusable over time.      
    Finally, these FDOs are shared via the BALaT+ platform, which integrates multiple institutional data sources. While the project promotes "as open as possible" access, it employs structured metadata and tiered controls to manage sensitive administrative and personal data in compliance with GDPR. Ultimately, H-SEARCH demonstrates how rigorous metadata schemas can maintain data privacy and integrity while contributing to a transparent, FAIR-compliant scientific record.
     
• 7 May 2026: Archival best practices
   
  • Putting the re- in research by the Royal Belgian Institute of Natural Sciences
    To Be Announced