For over a decade now, the State Archives has been a key player in digital preservation: the institution’s internal developments and the numerous national and international co-operations bear witness of the commitment of the State Archives to tackle this major challenge of the 21st century. Listed below are a few examples of preservation initiatives in which the State Archives is actively involved.
- SAM / e-depot / e-transfer / New Search (National Archives of Belgium)
Between 2016 and 2018, the State Archives developed its new archives management system called SAM (State Archives Management). Our institution also introduced a new transfer procedure for digital archives, which is operative since early 2018, and it is currently also elaborating fully digital transfer lists. While extending the different functionalities of its internal digital archiving system, the State Archives also started developing entirely new search interfaces for the benefit of the large public, researchers and genealogists. More information
- LTP (BELSPO)
The Federal Science Policy Office (BELSPO) has funded the development of a long-term preservation platform for the digital collections of the federal scientific institutions and of the Royal Belgian Film Archive (Cinematek). The State Archives of Belgium uses this platform since 2017. More information
- Archiving-as-a-Service / AaaS (ONSS/ SMALS)
Within the framework of Government-Cloud services and projects aimed at creating synergies, the National Social Security Office (NSSO) has decided to invest in the transformation of an archiving solution for internal use into a shared platform (AaaS), thereby providing a digital archiving service with probative value for digital information in order to exploit them and make them accessible in the long term. The State Archives was involved in the development of this service and supports this initiative for sharing information across all federal public services. More information
- HECTOR (BRAIN/BELSPO)
The research project HECTOR aims at developing a model for transforming, organising and managing hybrid archives in the Belgian federal administrations in order to simplify the transition towards reliable, secure and efficient e-government. The analysis carried out for this project has raised a number of key questions related to the management and archiving of hybrid documents, among others the issue of exchanging and preserving reliable digital archives. More information
- PROMISE (BRAIN/BELSPO)
The PROMISE project is an initiative of the State Archives and the Royal Library of Belgium and aims to develop a federal strategy for the preservation of the Belgian web. During the two-year project a research team will draft a general strategy and a selection policy for the websites that need to be archived, propose a legal framework to determine the roles and responsibilities of the State Archives and the Royal Library and develop a prototype web-archive that will be tested and evaluated by a panel of users. More information
- SODA (BELSPO)
The SODA (Social Sciences Data Archive) project aims to develop a data archive prototype for the Belgian service provider of the European CESSDA network. The services offered by a data archive which revolve around the concept of the data life cycle, are collection, analysis, archiving and dispersion of research data to support further scientific research. More information
- UGESCO (BELSPO/BRAIN)
The UGESCO project bears on the issue of geo-temporal metadata. Its objectives are twofold: exploring the added value of extracting and enriching geo-temporal metadata, and developing a web-based platform for the large public that allows exploration of these metadata through time and space. More information
