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PREFORMA Tender Information Day

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PREFORMA – PREservation FORMAts for culture information/e-archives – is Pre-Commercial Procurement (PCP) project co-funded by the European Commission, under its FP7-ICT Programme. On April 4th, 2014, the PREFORMA project will organise an Information Day in Brussels to present the call for tender that will be launched as part of the Pre-Commercial Procurement.

The trouble with preservation formats

Memory institutions are facing increasing transfers of electronic documents and other media content for long-term preservation. Preservation models are often inspired by ISO 14721:2003, known as the OAIS model, where transfers and preservation are built on information packages containing both data and metadata. Data are normally stored in specific file formats for documents, images, sound, video etc. that are produced by software from different vendors. Even if the transferred files are in standard formats, the implementation of these standards cannot be guaranteed. The software implementing standards for the production of the electronic files is not in control - neither by the institutions that produce them nor by the memory institutions. Conformance tests of transfers are done, but are not entirely reliable. This poses problems in long-term preservation: data objects meant for preservation that pass through an uncontrolled generative process can jeopardise the whole preservation exercise.

Creating a win-win situation

The overall intention of PREFORMA project is to research critical factors in the quality of standard implementation in order to establish a long-term sustainable ecosystem around developed tools with a variety of stakeholder groups. The tools should be innovative and provide a reference implementation of the most common file format standards for the assessment of the collections to be archived and for the correction of the collections.

PREFORMA targets a wide digital preservation community, by providing specifications and feedback to developers, standard bodies and memory institutions. The pre-commercial-procurement (PCP), following the rules for tenders in the public sector, will match the memory institutions' professional knowledge and the suppliers' skills in development and promotion of products and create a win-win situation. Joint procurement will enable PREFORMA to build a sustainable network of common interest, where the public procurers can remain in contact and cooperate beyond the EC funding period. Results will be broadly disseminated during the project's lifetime and summed up at a final conference.

Procurement Information Day

On April 4th, 2014 the PREFORMA project will organise an Information Day at the Royal Institute for Cultural Heritage (KIK-IRPA) in Brussels to present the call for tender that will be launched as part of the Pre-Commercial Procurement. Participation is open to everybody who is interested in participating in the call and to become a PREFORMA supplier. Registration is required and limited to a maximum of 50 participants.

Draft Agenda:

  • 09,00 Welcome coffee
  • 09,20 Welcome messages (Christina Ceulemans, Erik Buelinckx, KIK-IRPA)
  • 09,30 Introduction to PREFORMA (B. Justrell, RA)
  • 10,00 Presentation of the tender (B. Lemmens, PACKED)
  • 10,30 Website, guidelines and help desk (A. Fresa, PROMOTER)
  • 11,00 Coffee break
  • 11,30 The design phase (P. Pharow, Fraunhofer)
  • 11,50 The testing environment (N. Ferro, UNIPD)
  • 12,10 The open source project (B. Lundell, HS)
  • 12,30 Questions and answers
  • 13,00 Lunch break
  • 14,00 Networking session and bilateral meetings. Participants are invited to share their ideas; representatives of PREFORMA will be available for bilateral meetings.
  • 15,30 End of the meeting

More info