EEZU - Simple Description and Access System for Small and Medium Sized Archives as an Open-Source Software and Hosted Service

• Applicants: Professor Dr. Gerald Maier; Matthias Razum
• Term: from 2020 to 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 449727012

In Germany, archival sources are dispersed among a large number of different institutions. Access to these sources often poses considerable challenges for research. In particular, small and medium-sized archives often lack the IT infrastructure for digital recording and administration as well as online provision of their holdings. In order to improve this situation, the State Archives of Baden-Württemberg and FIZ Karlsruhe - Leibniz Institute for Information Infrastructure are planning the development of a web-based, intuitively usable software for archival description and the presentation of descriptive information and digitized archival objects with the project EEZU. A description component based on EAD(DDB) will enable an easy digital creation of finding aids. It supports the representation of complex hierarchies and an intuitive organization of archival tectonics and finding aids. Persistent identifiers are assigned to both units of description and nodes of the resulting hierarchies. In addition, descriptive information can be linked with index terms and enriched with the corresponding authority file identifiers. For this innovative feature a recommender function is developed, which automatically recognizes and matches relevant entities. Digitised material is stored by EEZU as files on an access platform, which automatically generates access files that are adapted for use on the web. An export component enables the descriptive information to be forwarded quickly and easily to DDB and Archivportal-D. The export to METS/MODS allows the presentation of digitised material in the DFG Viewer. For long-term archiving and preservation, EEZU provides a generic interface for connecting established archiving solutions (e.g. RADAR or DIMAG). EEZU will ultimately be made available as open source software. In addition, FIZ Karlsruhe will offer a hosted, fee-based service based on the developed open source software.

• DFG Programme: Research data and software (Scientific Library Services and Information Systems)