=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-2616/paper24
|storemode=property
|title=Web Technologies and Effective Representation Tools of the Archival Resources of Ukraine
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2616/paper24.pdf
|volume=Vol-2616
|authors= Natalia Kushnarenko, Natalya Korzhyk, Alla Solianyk, Andriy Peleshchyshyn
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/coapsn/KushnarenkoKSP20
}}
==Web Technologies and Effective Representation Tools of the Archival Resources of Ukraine==
https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-2616/paper24.pdf
Web Technologies and Effective Representation Tools of
the Archival Resources of Ukraine
Natalia Kushnarenko [0000-0003-1168-0446 ], Natalya Korzhyk [0000–0002–0305–2864],
Alla Solianyk [0000-0002-7167-6695] and Andriy Peleshchyshyn2 [0000-0002-5022-0410]
1
Kharkiv State Academy of Culture, Bursatski Uzviz, 4, Kharkiv, 61057, Ukraine
2
Lviv Polytechnic National University, Lviv, Ukraine
andrii.m.peleshchyshyn@lpnu.ua, nktvlya@gmail.com,
nataliyanikkush@gmail.com,allasolyanik164@gmail.com
Abstract. The results of the content analysis of the websites of national ar-
chives as the basic channels of representation of the composition and structure
of the National Archival Fund of Ukraine are highlighted. Website content is
analyzed using the following quality criteria: variety of information products
and services of archival institutions; clarity and comfort of services and the
structure of the site; search efficiency and the availability of user feedback.
Keywords: National Archives, Ukraine, Website, Content, Web Technologies,
Online Resources, Archival Industry.
1 Introduction
An important impetus for the digitization of archival industry of Ukraine was the
adoption in 2003 of the XXXII General Conference of the UNESCO Charter on the
Preservation of the Digital Heritage, which stated that digital heritage was a unique
treasure of human knowledge, created both digitally and on the basis of conversion of
existing resources supported by analog media [16]. The basic tool for representing
digital archival resources in the global communications space is the websites of ar-
chival institutions, which provide the society with a round-the-clock access to a wide
range of archival sources of information, significantly reducing the need for physical
appeals from citizens to government bodies. With the adoption in 2018 by the Cabinet
of Ministers of Ukraine “Concepts of development of the digital economy and society
of Ukraine for 2018 – 2020” [12] one of the priorities of the archival field is digitiza-
tion of all processes of acquisition, registration, storage and making available to the
National Archival Fund. In addition, the work on digitizing the most valuable funds of
national archives, creating electronic reference and search aids to archival resources,
exercising full access to them through the network information and communication
infrastructure is intensified.
Copyright © 2020 for this paper by its authors. Use permitted under Creative Commons
License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0). COAPSN-2020: International Workshop on
Control, Optimization and Analytical Processing of Social Networks
Despite this, the pace of digitization of archival sector of Ukraine remains unsatis-
factory: only 60% of state regional archives now offer a range of online information
products and services, the vast majority of which are the individual elements of the
scientific reference system rather than a collection of full-text archival documents.
This makes it necessary to scientifically substantiate the conceptual model of develop-
ing an optimal structure and meaningfulness of the website of an archive as a com-
munication tool for representing the components of the National Archival Fund in the
global information space.
2 2 Related Works
The research of the following specialists addresses the problems of introduction of
web technologies and services in the activities of archival institutions:
A. Alieksieienko [1], H. Boriak [4, 5], Federico Valacchi [6], M. Vasylchenko [7, 8],
L. Dubrovina [9], A. Kyselova [10], S. Lytvynska [13], L. Yaremenko [17] and oth-
ers. Thus, S. Lytvynska emphasizes that “electronic resources play an important role
in the implementation of the information and communication function of the archive
and have significant advantages over traditional means of communication, namely,
the formation of a positive image of the institution; a round-the-clock information
access for users from all over the world; time-sensitive updating of information; time-
ly consideration of users’ requests and offers; providing large amounts of information,
including multimedia; personalization of information intended for a specific target
audience; multidimensional and fast search of the necessary data files; retrieving data
on website traffic, that is, its effectiveness as a means of communication [13].
The first step in developing the theoretical and methodological and organizational
principles of forming the electronic archival resources of Ukraine was a thorough
work of L. Dubrovina [9], which back in the late 1990s substantiated the need to de-
velop specialized software to create automated archival systems.
Among the thesis research the most relevant from the point of view of solving the
problems of optimization of the functioning of archival resources of Ukraine in the
context of integration into the global communication space are considered the works
of M. Vasylchenko [7] and A. Kyselova [10]. These experts have stressed the im-
portance of content websites of archival institutions as comprehensive “electronic
reference prompt guides”. As A. Kyselova emphasizes: “The existence of such a site
is a prerequisite for the further development of prompt archival information for con-
sumers, innovative activities of archival institutions, the development of the theory
and practice of archival affairs under the conditions of informatization of society”
[10].
The technological aspects of the effective representation of archival resources on
the Internet were successfully developed by Т. Bilushchak, A. Peleshchyshyn,
M. Komova, U. Yarka, Zh. Myna [2, 3], H. Boriak [4, 5], F. Valacchi [6],
L. Klymchuk [11], L. Yaremenko [17], emphasizing that the creation of a web portal
of the National archives of Ukraine “Archives of Ukraine” has been an important step
in the informatization of the industry, which is a powerful integrating information
resource that contains a vast array of diverse information about the documentary her-
itage of Ukraine. But despite the wide range of scientific research on solving the prob-
lems of formation of archival Internet resources and services integrated into the global
communication space, the content and search capabilities of the websites of most
national archives of Ukraine require significant improvement.
3 Methodology
The most successful solutions to the problems of the effective representation of ar-
chival resources in the global communication space are socio-communication and
systematic approaches. An attempt to put these approaches into practice has been
made in the “Basic Rules of Archives of Ukraine”, approved by the Board of the State
Committee of Archives of Ukraine 03.02.2004, which regulate the issue of archival
information on the Internet. They state that the mandatory members of the archive
website structure are: historical background, data on the composition and content of
repositories, the list and features of corpus, information on unique and especially
valuable documents, the performance of reference aids, information on the opening
hours of the archive and reading room and arrangements for the access to documents
[15, p. 228].
However, this list of website components is now outdated because it is focused
primarily on a representational rather than a search-and-communication feature. Stud-
ying foreign experience in developing effective and interactive archival Internet
communication shows that the strategic focus of the national archives of the world is
to provide online access to full-text archival resources, which are equipped with au-
tomated information retrieval systems.
Many websites of archival institutions of the national level (Archivia Net, Reposi-
tories of Primary Sources, National Archives of Canada, UK, Sweden, Czech Repub-
lic, US National Archives Service, Australia, Latvian National archives system, Di-
rectorate General of National archives of Poland, Central National archives of Prague,
etc.) publish powerful databases and integrated archive materials on the Internet. Each
archive necessarily provides options for an interactive user feedback in order to
measure the level of satisfaction with the quality of information services.
4 Results
The results of the content analysis of the websites of 23 state regional archives of
Ukraine indicate that only 60% of them actively master modern web technologies and
tools, giving an access to the users to online information retrieval systems and full-
text archival document collections. In the other 40% of the national archives, the con-
tent of the websites, unfortunately, performs predominantly a representational func-
tion.
In comparison with the figures of the last three years, archival institutions of
Ukraine have stepped up their work to expand remote access to a digitized scientific
reference device. The information on existing funds and collections is submitted on
the websites as a bibliographic archived record of the case as a PDF file. Only 10 of
the 23 regional archives have a small collection of unique documents, digitized and
published as djvu, doc, jpg, pdf, rar files. National archives of Volyn, Kirovohrad,
Kyiv, Odesa, Rivne, Sumy, Kharkiv regions are among them. A significant problem
with the implementation of a multidimensional archival search is the fragmented rep-
resentation on the websites of electronic scientific reference aids, which are dominat-
ed by guides and electronic registers of document descriptions.
Thus, digitized descriptions of archival cases are available on the websites of na-
tional archives, Vynnytsia, Donetsk, Zhytomyr, Kirovohrad, Kyiv, Mykolaiv, Odesa,
Poltava, Rivne, Cherkasy, Chernihiv regions.
Fig. 1. Structural features of the archive website
According to the content analysis, only 52% of archival sites offer an online search
for archival information, mainly it is the search using the site tools through a browser,
another 22% through Google tools.
Unfortunately, 26% of regional archival sites do not provide any capabilities for in-
formation retrieval.
Fig. 2. Search capabilities of the websites of archival institutions
In recent years, the work on creating full-text electronic archives has been intensified
by the national archives of Vynnytsia, Kyiv, Kirovohrad, Rivne, Kharkiv, Odessa
regions. The typological composition of collections of full-text archival documents
also needs improvement: in addition to digital copies of unique text documents, the
national archives of Zaporizhzhia, Poltava, Chernihiv regions provide access to digital
collections of unique photo documents, the national archives of Odessa region – to
cartographic documents, Dnipropetrovsk region – to video documents. Archival pub-
lications of scientific and historical and regional studies are posted only on 56% of
sites of state regional archives of Ukraine. Thematic online exhibitions of archival
documents contain 80% of the websites of archival institutions, among them the photo
exhibitions and exhibitions of unique digitized archival affairs prevail, but unfortu-
nately, their documentary content is still insignificant – from 3 to 10 percent of unique
full-text documents.
The number of archival institutions that offer the option of online user feedback on
websites remains inconsiderable; these include the archives of the Kyiv, Poltava and
Rivne regions providing online communication via social networks, and the State
regional archive of Kharkiv – also via Skype.
Only 60% of regional archives websites show a monitoring of the linguistic com-
ponent of content provision on the websites of national archives of Ukrainian regions,
their readiness to integrate into the global information space, the content of which is
available in more than three languages (Cherkasy (6 languages), Dnipropetrovsk (4
languages), Ternopil (4 languages)); the web-sites of the national archives of Rivne,
Volyn regions provide information in only two languages (Ukrainian + English); oth-
ers provide information only in one language – Ukrainian, which is very insufficient
for a full implementation of the communication function of the archive site.
Fig. 3. The language component of the websites of national archives of the regions of Ukraine
The content of the websites of most state regional archival institutions contains main-
ly administrative and management information and nomenclature of services, infor-
mation about the historical stages of development of the archival institution, scientific
and information legislative resources, archival periodicals, the information on the
conferences and chronicles of current events. Against this background, the infor-
mation on the funds and archival documents is clearly insufficiently covered, mainly
providing brief case descriptions, preventing electronic search of information in the
fund and access to full-text resources.
As for the content structure of the site, it remains unchanged for the last 15 years,
among the priority headings of the main menu of websites of state regional archives:
─ «About the archive» (history, structure, management, main tasks, organizational
documents);
─ “Funds” or “Resources” (storage, databases, scientific reference aids);
─ “Network of archival institutions of the region” (archival departments of city coun-
cils, labour archives, etc.);
─ “Services” (prices, procedure for provision of paid services, sample applications,
etc.);
─ “Documentary exhibitions on-line” (mainly thematic representational photo exhibi-
tions);
─ “Recent Events”,
─ “Archive Posts” (articles, guides, etc.);
─ “Materials in the Media”;
─ “Useful links”;
─ “Announcements / News”;
─ “Regulatory framework”;
─ “Citizens’ Appeal”;
─ “Government Procurement”; “Anti-Corruption”;
─ “Contacts” (address, telephone, e-mail, opening hours);
─ “Portal / Site Map”.
Only the national archive of Dnipropetrovsk region has a content section “Video”.
Several archives (Dnipropetrovsk, Zhytomyr, Kyiv, Kharkiv regions) keep auto-
mated databases, but their names are only on the site.
Analyzing the structure and information capacity of the website content, it can be
stated that the organization and content of archive sites are generally similar and de-
veloped according to the same scheme. The most informative are 60% of websites of
state regional archives, which should be ranked as follows:
Kirovohrad region (dakiro.kr-admin.gov.ua);
Odesa region (archive.odessa.gov.ua);
Kharkiv region (archives.kh.gov.ua);
Chernivtsi region (cv.archives.gov.ua);
Rivne region (http://rv.archives.gov.ua/);
Poltava region (http://poltava.archives.gov.ua/);
Kyiv region (http://dako.gov.ua/);
Ivano-Frankivsk region (http://if.archives.gov.ua/);
Zaporozhzhie region (http://www.archivzp.gov.ua/);
Zhytomyr region (http://archive.zt.gov.ua/);
Dnipropetrovsk region (http://dp.archives.gov.ua/);
Volyn region (http://volyn.archives.gov.ua/);
Vynnitsa region (http://davio.gov.ua/).
The websites of these archival institutions have, in addition to the general ones,
additional information sections:
“Reference Aids” (submitted mainly as a PDF file);
“Electronic Archive” (descriptions of archival affairs, funds, full-text databases of
digitized metric books; digitized documents as a DjVu file);
“Internet Reception”;
“Order online” (national archives of Kharkiv and Kherson regions).
It is positive that the national archives of Dnipropetrovsk, Kharkiv, Cherkasy and
Poltava regions have a desire to meet the information needs of users with visual im-
pairments, for whom they offer a special version of the site, where they will be more
comfortable to perceive the information. In addition, the national archive of Cherniv-
tsi region offers audio hyperlinks.
It should be stated that the content is a unique component of every website. The
important criteria for the effectiveness of the organization of the functioning of ar-
chive websites are: content management and systematic updating; the ability to post
and view information in various formats (graphic, audio, photo, video, multimedia); a
comfortable, interactive interface for user feedback; providing multidimensional and
prompt search of archival information; a quick view of documents stored on the web-
site. The content and structure of the web site of a national archive should facilitate
the following basic functions: information (round-the-clock availability of infor-
mation for the user); advertising (effective promotion of the archive in the search
engines of the global network, presentable elucidation of the system resources and
services); communication (online communication with partners, users); image (for-
mation of a positive image of the national archive). In addition, it is important to meet
the general requirements for the organization and content of the website: under-
standability, convenience, ergonomics, informational contents, updateability.
5 Conclusions and Future Works
Thus, the conceptual model of developing an optimal structure and meaningful
content of a website of an archival institution as a communication tool for represent-
ing the components of the National Archival Fund in the global information space.
Fig. 4. Conceptual model of the website of the archival institution
The conceptual model should include the following basic components:
1. Full-text databases of archival text and non-text documents automated with a mul-
tidimensional search system;
2. An extensive scientific-reference aids for the archive fund;
3. Internet reception;
4. Ordering services online;
5. Archive publications;
6. Link directory to the network of archival institutions of the region.
Submitting information on websites in Ukrainian and English will help accelerate the
integration of national archival heritage of Ukraine into the global communication
space. The areas of further research are the development of a unified web platform
that will integrate the resources of all archival institutions of the region and the coun-
try as a whole.
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