SHAMAN

This project will develop and test a next generation digital preservation framework including tools for analysing, ingesting, managing, accessing and reusing information objects and data

The SHAMAN Integrated Project aims at developing a new framework for long-term digital preservation (more than one century) by exploring the potential of recent developments in the areas of GRID computing, federated digital library architectures, multivalent emulation and semantic representation and annotation.
The researchers' vision is: \"For the longer term, SHAMAN will develop radically new approaches to Digital Preservation, such as those inspired by human capacity to deal with information and knowledge, providing a sound basis and instruments for unleashing the potential of advanced ICT to automatically act on high volumes and dynamic and volatile digital content, guaranteeing its preservation, keeping track of its evolving semantics and usage context and safeguarding its integrity, authenticity and long term accessibility over time.\" (Project website)
The project plans to deliver a set of integrated tools supporting the various aspects of the preservation process: analysis/characterisation, ingestion, management, access and reuse. Work includes trials and validation of the tools in three application domains dealing with different types of objects: scientific publishing and government archives, industrial design and engineering (e.g. CAD), and e-science resources.
SHAMAN's dissemination and exploitation plans aim at actively fostering outreach and take-up of results and will be tailored according to the specific needs of the scientific / academic world and of industry users. SHAMAN's work will be coordinated with other digital preservation projects and initiatives at national and international level.