On 3 March 2010 the new ‘Archives Portal Europe’ (APEnet) was presented during an event hosted by the EU Spanish Presidency. The portal, which will be based in Spain, will provide common, standardised online access to documentary and archive information from the national archive administrations of 14 European countries: Spain, Portugal, Malta, Slovenia, Greece, France, Germany, Poland, Finland, Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Ireland and Estonia.
This gateway, which can also be accessed through the Europeana initiative, will provide access to:
- Information about archival repositories, both private and public
- Multilevel descriptions of documents and archives
- Digitised objects kept by these institutions.
Archives Portal Europe aims to facilitate the access to documents and records in a variety of cultural heritage institutions, whether they are public or private.
APEnet Project
The portal is developed as part of the APEnet (Archives Portal Europe) project, a Best Practice Network project supported by the European Commission in the eContentplus programme.
The overall goal of the APEnet project is to gather the existing digital archival content of Europe and make it available on-line. For this purpose, it pursues three main objectives:
- To create an Internet Gateway that can provide descriptions of archival materials in European archives, libraries and museums. based on information on the archives creators – corporate bodies, persons and families – with basic data on their records and collections,
- To develop a set of converting engines and plug-ins to be integrated in national and institutional archives portals and systems to facilitate their contribution to Archives Portal Europe and in the end to Europeana,
- To support and encourage archival repositories to contribute descriptions of their respective holdings to the Archives Portal Europe and Europeana.
For further information, please check http://www.apenet.eu/