[Mirrored from: http://www.rlg.org/strat/projarch.html]

Project
To build the conceptual and physical foundation for collaborative projects that will create long-lasting, internationally accessible digital resources of all types. Arches involves both an online repository for digital files and the software environment that makes this repository accessible and maintainable.

Result
With the completion of this project and an operating archival server, RLG will have the capacity for new services based on providing access to whole information objects from RLG projects, from member sites, and from commercial providers. Arches will be the home for resources from the first RLG digital collections project, for some of the finding aids from the FAST project, and for some of the documents made accessible through the WebDOC project. It will also point to (and thus virtually include) resources on other, remote servers.

Strategic Objective
Goal 1. Transformed Research -- coordinated digital collections.

Related Strategic Value
Goal 1. Transformed Research -- delivery to the end user.
Goal 2. Global Resource -- primary research information.

Together, Arches and the Digital Collections Project specifically address the RLG Mid-Decade Planning Group's recommendations to:

• coordinate digital conversion of research materials;
• ensure quality, retain rights, and achieve critical mass in a reasonable time;
• complement, extend, and reinforce RLG traditional services and programs;
• provide leadership in establishing protocols and addressing intellectual control and access issues.

Project Tasks
These fall into three areas:

• Designing the layout of the resources in the repository. Some considerations: Will there be one or more databases? How will files be named? What will directory structures look like? What sort of handle server(s) will be needed to relate the files to universal resource names (URNs) and to links from outside systems?

• Continuing maintenance of the files in the repository -- and of access to them. These requirements involve familiar archival management issues: refreshment of files; migration to new media as technology evolves; tracking additions, deletions, changes, and other updates; reformatting and recompressing; use-based movement from online to nearline to offline storage; version control; security; and authentication of users.

• To be useful to researchers, a variety of software and other files is needed to interact with the repository. This software environment includes links to and from RLIN records, search and retrieval systems for intermediate data (such as abstracts, tables of contents, finding aids), access to and from thesauri and other authority files, and end-user client software, including World Wide Web browsers and viewers for all the types of data in the repository.

The Arches testbed approach puts these pieces together drawing on other, concurrent projects.

A modest first step links images to RLIN bibliographic records and provides access via a Web browser that communicates with RLG search and retrieval systems. Subsequently, SGML-encoded text files such as finding aids will be added to the repository, linked to RLIN records. At first, a user will view these finding aids and navigate within them using a viewer, such as Panorama. Links can also be made from finding aids to actual page images from the collections. When SGML-encoded full-text documents, with images of their illustrations, are added to the repository, software that takes advantage of the retrieval power of SGML will be integrated to support extensive searching facility.

Time Frame
The three deliverables targeted for late 1996 are:

• The archival server (hardware and software as well as maintenance procedures);
• An early version of the Web browser interface to RLG information resources;
• A test file.

• Full-text searching capability that can take advantage of SGML-encoded texts.

Additional Information
Other projects that intersect with Arches include: Digital Collections; FAST; Web Access; and WebDOC.

The recommendations of the joint RLG - Commission on Preservation and Access Task Force on archiving digital information will guide Arches design. You can also use the Contents or Search button to find background in other RLG Web pages.