Long-term Electronic Archives: Modernization and Integration

Electronic archives are more than just “paper based” funds transferred into digital form. The task of forming a qualitative source base for historical research is solved in these projects on the basis of interdisciplinary interaction of computer science and humanities. One of the longterm projects at the IIS SB RAS is a creation of a methodology and technologies for the formation, use and support of electronic archives. Here are information systems of historical orientation that were created on the basis of the solutions described in this paper: the Electronic Archive of Academician A.P. Ershov, Photo Archive of the Siberian Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Archive of the newspaper “Science in Siberia”, Open Archive of SB RAS, etc. Each of these resources has its own specifics, but in general, their documentary and information fund is based on the general social and territorial basis of scientific and social activities of the Siberian Branch of Academy of Sciences of the USSR/RAS and Novosibirsk Akademgorodok. In this report we will look into the general problems of creating electronic archives, relevant technologies, and architectural solutions. Some approaches to the integration/disintegration of isolated electronic resources are given on the examples of our electronic archives and on the basis of generally accepted and created tools. We will also examine the experience of using proprietary and open source software, their advantages and weaknesses.