Project Partners
Clickable map of DPE partners and associate partners
Humanities Advanced Technology and Information Institute (HATII), University of Glasgow
HATII is a world-leading Institute researching the application of advanced technologies to the cultural and scientific heritage and in the area of digital curation and preservation. It provides academic undergraduate and postgraduate programmes in arts and media informatics and digital preservation for archivists, records managers and digital librarians. Since 2001 it has been home to ERPANET, the European Commission's major activity under the Fifth Framework Programme of funding, designed to help public and private sector institutions across Europe to improve their knowledge about digital curation and preservation and to enhance their practices. It is a core partner in the UK's Digital Curation Centre, which is researching, developing, supporting and raising awareness in the area of digital curation. HATII's research concentrates on the areas of technologies, methods and theoretical developments that enable (a) access, (b) content analysis and appraisal, (c) evaluation and impact methodologies, and (d) preservation. Recent HATII's externally funded research has been investigating how users discover and access resources, how ingest of digital objects into repositories can be streamlined, and how metadata extraction can be automated.
Vienna University of Technology (TUW)
The Department of Software Technology and Interactive Systems addresses the broad spectrum of tools and methods that are relevant in the life cycle of software and information systems, beginning from abstract models for problem analysis to the implementation of software products. It has expertise among its staff of 63 (one third of the faculty being women) in Data Engineering, Information & Knowledge Engineering, Process Engineering, Software Engineering and Web Engineering. It has long-standing experience in digital preservation research, specifically with respect to the evaluation and comparison of preservation strategies. Current activities include cooperation with the Austrian National Library for Web Data preservation and a national project on ingest and verification of PDF files for the Chief Information Office at the Prime Minister's Department. Other work includes cultural heritage projects in cooperation with UNESCO and several museums, as well as digital preservation projects within the DELOS Network of Excellence. In the latter activity it has participated in the Preservation Cluster, a cluster that has successfully delivered research that could only be possible through cross-institutional collaboration.
State and University Library (Statsbiblioteket) and National Media Archive, Aarhus (SB)
The State and University Library of Denmark is the keeper of major national collections and contributes to world-class research in Digital Preservation (e.g. its Web archiving work carried out in collaboration with the Royal Library in Denmark has been adopted as a model for work by other institutions). Its work on digitising all broadcast national radio and television programmes gives it a lead in addressing preservation of very large amounts of data. The growth of its archive is expected to exceed 100 TB during the coming year. It also brings to the consortium a broad understanding of the needs of a wide range of communities through serving three very different communities: it is the library of Aarhus University, a national library with primary responsibility for the national newspaper collection, the national archive of media sound recordings and radio and TV, and it runs the national lending service for public libraries. Digital preservation is a new focus area of the Library and one in which it has conducted groundbreaking research. It has taken the initiative to create a coalition along the lines of the British Digital Preservation Coalition to foster a national infrastructure to support collaboration in, and create awareness of, digital preservation activities across Denmark. The Library is actively involved in the Danish Electronic Libraries' activities around electronic publishing and is specifically leading activities related to a national strategy for preservation of material in Institutional Repositories. The Library is one of the Danish representatives in NORDOA, a Nordic initiative concerned with e-publishing and Open Access.
Het Nationaal Archief (NANETH)
The Dutch National Archives is responsible for preserving archival records with continuing value and must deal with digital records as well. The National Archives has carried out internationally recognised research to build a (digital) repository for preservation of digital information. Until now government agencies were not able to send in their digital records for archiving, since there were no facilities. Among its ground-breaking projects are the Dutch Testbed Project, which has provided a valuable research environment not just for the archives itself but also for researchers working on the DELOS NoE's Preservation Cluster. Its successful Dutch Digital Longevity Program was established in 1996 by the Ministry of the Interior and the National Archives of the Netherlands. The Programme's objectives are: to raise awareness on issues related to electronic records and to define strategies regarding electronic records management; to support in this respect government organisations in their transition to electronic service delivery, and to suggest strategies with respect to digital preservation.
Both institutions are involved in finding solutions in the area of preservation of electronic records in their complete life cycle. One of the projects under this programme was the so-called Testbed project for digital preservation. The investment in this project was about Euro 1.5 million. The project investigated what preservation strategies (e.g. migration, emulation, Universal Virtual Computer, XML-based approach) can be applied to what type of electronic records. It started in September 2000 and continued until 2003. Both institutions are collaborating with other institutions in this field, in The Netherlands and internationally, such as the Dutch National Library (DNEP project), NARA in the USA, the CAMiLEON project of the Universities of Leeds (UK) and Michigan (USA), Victoria Electronic Records Strategy (VERS, Australia).
Czech Republic National Library - NKP
The main mission of the National Library is twofold: to be the archive library for documents issued on the territory of the Czech lands and to be a public research library especially in the domain of humanities, pure natural sciences, culture and arts. The library has more than six million volumes, which have irreplaceable cultural value not only for the territory of the Czech Republic, but also for many cultures of the world. The library is a leading institution in preservation and access to documentary heritage. It is a coordination centre for several national programmes in these areas including research and development. It has conducted several dozens of research and development projects and has participated in several EU and international projects (e.g. FPs, eContent, Eureka! and Culture2000). Among others, NKP is running a Web harvesting and preservation project. For its international impact in preservation of and virtual access to cultural heritage, it has been awarded the newly established UNESCO World Jikji prize (September 2005).
General Directorate for Library Heritage and Cultural Institutes - MIBAC
The MIBAC, of the Ministry for Heritage and Cultural Activities (MiBAC), preserves and exploits the national print heritage held by the 46 Italian public libraries. It coordinates and supports the activities of the national cultural institutes and promotes the diffusion of books and reading in Italy and abroad. The General Directorate has stimulated the use of technologies for enhancement and preservation of national heritage in recent years; it has led coordination programmes of digitisation projects (Italian Digital Library), improving an integrated access system for traditional and digital resources with the creation of a cultural portal (Internet Cultural). It has participated in several European projects (e.g. NEDLIB and TEL) through its centre of excellence (National Library of Florence, MIBAC). The General Directorate organised, during the Italian Presidency of the EU in 2003, an International Conference incorporated into the 'Firenze agenda' which, promoted by MINERVA and ERPANET projects, had the aim of pointing out concrete actions and developing skills and framework. Its participation in DigitalPreservationEurope will be supported by the National Centre for the Union Catalogue - ICCU, which is responsible for setting guidelines and for producing and disseminating standard and technical recommendations in Italy.
Fondazione Rinascimento Digitale - FRD
The 'Digital Renaissance - New Technologies for Culture Heritage' Foundation works to stimulate the adoption of new ICT technologies and, in collaboration with other research institutions, facilitates documentation, promotion, training in best practices in the management of digital materials, and the preservation of digital memory. In order to achieve such objectives, the Foundation aims at establishing a reference point on: defining standard methodologies and working modalities and practical tools for long-term preservation of digital memory; developing effective strategies on digital memory preservation of culture heritage; selecting and developing 'good practice examples'; investing in training activities to facilitate optimal use of new languages and technologies by culture heritage operators. The Digital Renaissance Foundation launched in 2005 some strategic projects on digital memory preservation for a co-funding total of around 1.7 M€. For example, the FRD is supporting the establishment of an Italian national network, involving different actors interested in digital memory preservation, such as cultural institutions, e-government bodies, research community, industry, multimedia content producers to bring coordination to action at national level. It is participating in supporting the development of a national testbed for the OAIS model implementation organised by the National Library of Florence. The FRD has cooperated with the EU projects PRESTOSPACE, DELOS, MINERVA and others to co-fund initiatives aimed at creating a map of risks for sound and musical archives in Italy; producing technical guidelines, linked to the IASA ones (International Association of Sound Archives); and developing a training programme for Italian professionals. The FRD also brings experience in managing Technology Watch activities to the project (e.g. it is leading a study on risks of ICT technology ageing and fragility; in particular, mass memory supports like CD, DVD and magnetic disks will be tested).
Vilnius University Faculty of Communication (VUFC)
VUFC is the leading Higher Education establishment working for the broad field of information and communication professions in Lithuania. Established in 1991, VUFC is led by an integrated approach towards information and communication, looking at libraries, museums, archives, media, publishing enterprises, information agencies and information businesses as parts of the information infrastructure of the society. Currently, VUFC offers five BA and ten MA study programmes, has 40 FTE. employees, ca. 1200 BA and MA students and 26 PhD students. International cooperation and participation in EC and other international projects is a strategic priority for VUFC, enabling the institution to create a critical mass of intellectual capacity for education and research in the knowledge-based society. The Faculty has contributed to several European Union funded projects including PubliCA, Pulman and Cultivate-CEE.
FernUniversität in Hagen (FUH)
The FernUniversität in Hagen (FUH) is currently one of the biggest universities in Germany, with some 45,000 students and 1,700 courses. The FUH is the German centre for distance collaborative teaching and learning in virtual communities, including development and use of respective solutions. FUH's role in DPE is twofold: as representative of the German Nestor initiative for long-term preservation, it is on the one hand itself contributing with RTD-oriented activities focused on integrated information, content and knowledge management, peer-to-peer based memory systems, dynamic location knowledge management, task, context, resource and process modelling, information and knowledge visualisation. Furthermore, it is disseminating and coordinating additional contributions of other NESTOR members, e.g. Staatliche Universitätsbibliothek Göttingen, Humbold Universität Berlin and Deutsche Bibliothek, and others. FUH is contributing directly through its Department of Computer Science represented by the Chair for Multimedia and Internet Applications: This research group, led by Professor Dr-Ing. Matthias L. Hemmje, is involved in research on Virtual Information and Knowledge Environments with special focus on distributed collaborative digital libraries, multimedia archives, information retrieval, filtering, linking, enrichment, personalisation and information visualisation. In addition, the group has a strong background in middleware design for Mobile Computing with an emphasis on distributed, e.g., peer-to-peer, architectures and the management of distributed location data.
Goettingen State and University Library (SUB)
The Goettingen State and University Library (SUB) is one of the largest scientific university libraries and leading institutions in the development of digital library services in Germany. In close cooperation with national and international partners it provides infrastructure for research and education. Parts of the library’s developments in this area are virtual workspaces for scientists and repository infrastructure (DRIVER, Digital Repository InfrastructureVision For European Research). With TextGrid the SUB is actively involved in building the national GRID-Infrastructure in the area of the humanities. As a cultural heritage institution which intends to ensure long-term access over time SUB is engaged innational projects such as nestor (Network of Expertise in Long-Term Storage of Digital Resources), kopal (Co-operative Development of a Long-Term Digital Information Archive) and in different international standardisation activities like PREMIS, METS, TEI or DC. Another important topic of its digital library developments is digitisation, represented by one of two national digitisation centres (GDZ).
Humboldt University in Berlin
The university was founded in Berlin in 1810, and the foundation concept which Wilhelm von Humboldt had put forward made it the "mother of all modern universities". The Computer and Media Services and the University Library of Humboldt-University Berlin have a strong cooperation and carried out several projects within the following fields: E-Publishing, Digital Preservation and Digital Library. Both work together in the E-Publishing field since 1997 and have established a joint working group in 2002, which maintains the Institutional Repository (edoc-Server).
Recent activities include the participation within the German nestor project; the coordination of the nestor working group on Trusted Digital Repository Certification and coordination of the nestor working group Media as well as the participation within several German projects on repository infrastructure under the umbrella of DINI, such as Open Access- Network of Certified Institutional Repositories, Open Access-Statistics for Institutional Repositories, Open access Policies, CARPET (Development of an Information Platform for Electronic Publishing based on Generic Publishing Tools) and Dokupedia (see more). Aside those projects, Humboldt-University is a very active partner within the German Initiative for Networked Information (DINI).
