The E-ARK Project: An Introduction to the European Archival Records and Knowledge Preservation Project

ABSTRACT This introduction for this special issue on E-ARK and digital archiving sets out the rationale, objectives and work program carried out by the E-ARK project, a pan-European endeavour supported by the European Commission as part of their FP7 PSP CIP pilot B program to standardize and create tools for consistently transferring digital records between business systems and digital archives. The E-ARK project's segue into the eArchiving Building Block as part of the European Commission’s Connecting Europe Facility’s (CEF) Program is also detailed, together with an update on current activities. As part of the impetus for Open Data and transparent government, the E-ARK/eArchiving approach can be extremely effective in simplifying and making consistent, diverse approaches to solving the issue of how to transfer information between the ICT systems in use in, for example, government, and the archives charged with the responsibility for ongoing and management of the information considered to be of long-term significance. They are also applicable to a much wider range of situations where users need to archive digital material.