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J-Ark - European Jewish Community Archive

This project aimed to promote the adoption of eArchiving solutions and standards by the European cultural heritage sector, focusing on Jewish heritage.

Posted on Wednesday August 25, 2021

Updated on Monday November 6, 2023


1 September 2021 to 28 February 2023
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Five slim strips of stained glass
Title:
[Glas-in-lood raam westkant J. Obrecht Synagoge]
Creator:
Willem Bogtman
Date:
(1882-1955) - 1927
Institution:
Joods Historisch Museum
Country:
Netherlands

About the project

J-Ark - European Jewish Community Archive connected software components from three different initiatives funded by the European Commission (eArchiving, Europeana, eTranslation). It supported the long-term viability and sustainability of Jewish heritage archives in an integrated long-term preservation platform named J-Ark.

This online solution offers cloud services to ingest, preserve and distribute a wide range of heritage materials, including oral history interviews and recordings, historical photographs, documents and more. J-Ark is based on RODA, a mature open-source digital preservation platform.

During the project, a total of 12,389 Jewish Heritage records were ingested into Europeana.eu. The Jewish heritage content was provided by two pilot partners TNN from Poland and LZB from Lithuania.

The aggregation of the collections to Europeana.eu was made possible through the participation of these two partner organisations in hackathons and training sessions which developed and implemented migration plans.

Important features of J-Ark include a Data Anonymisation Service and a Machine Translation Service developed by project partner Pangeanic. The anonymisation feature uses AI to detect personally identifiable information within cultural heritage content and employs various anonymisation methods to replace sensitive data. The translation feature is specifically designed for cultural heritage content and reuses data from previous CEF telecom funded projects Europeana XX and Europeana Translate. This supports automatic translation specifically adapted to the nuances of heritage content enabling accurate and contextually appropriate translations.

The long-term sustainability of the system will be ensured through a combination of public funding, private funding (including from Jewish philanthropy) and usage fees.

This project was an eArchiving Generic Services project co-financed by the Connecting Europe Facility of the European Union.

Project partners

  1. Pangeanic - Spain (coordinator)

  2. Stichting Jewish Heritage Network - Netherlands

  3. Keep Solutions - Portugal 

  4. Europeana Foundation -  Netherlands

  5. Ośrodek “Brama Grodzka - Poland

  6. Jewish Community of Lithuania - Lithuania

Project news

  • Announcing the launch of the J-Ark platform
    Title:
    Stained glass window west side J. Obrecht Synagogue]
    Creator:
    Bogtman, Willem (1882-1955)
    Date:
    1927
    Institution:
    Jewish Historical Museum
    Country:
    Netherlands
    News Created: 22 February 2023 Alexander Raginsky

    Announcing the launch of the J-Ark platform

    J-Ark project partners are excited to announce the launch of J-Ark, an innovative new long-term preservation solution designed specifically for small and medium Jewish archives. J-Ark is a unique platform that connects the common European data space for cultural heritage and the European Commission’s eArchiving and eTranslation services.

  • Discover how the J-Ark project connects data aggregation with preservation
    Title:
    Show window west side J. Obrecht Synagogue]
    Creator:
    Elte, Harry (1880-1944) Bogtman, Willem (1882-1955)
    Date:
    1920 - 1925
    Institution:
    Jewish Historical Museum
    Country:
    Netherlands
    News Created: 23 January 2023 Pavel Kats

    Discover how the J-Ark project connects data aggregation with preservation

    The J-Ark project aims to explore how aggregation of cultural heritage content can be connected with its long-term preservation. Find out more about the project’s work, discover how its insights are relevant to data spaces, and join an upcoming event which explores this topic.

Project events

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