project sponsors
International Council on Archives Center for Documentation and Research Archiefschool
Direction des Archives de France UNESCO
World Bank Group - Library and Archives of Development

About the ICA-AtoM Project

  1. Project Purpose
  2. Project Values
  3. Business Model
  4. Governance Model
  5. Software License
  6. Trademark
  7. Project Partners
  8. Project Funding

A. Project Purpose

 The purpose of the ICA-AtoM Project is to provide free and open-source software:
  1. that enables institutions to make their archival holdings available online, especially those who could not otherwise afford to do so
  2. that manages archival descriptions in accord with ICA standards
  3. that provides multi-lingual interfaces and content translation features
  4. that supports multiple collection types
  5. that is fully web-based, user-friendly and follows accessibility best practices
  6. that is flexible and customizable
  7. that is useful to both small and large institutions alike
  8. that supports single or multi-repository implementations

B. Project Values

 The values of the ICA-AtoM Project are to conduct its affairs in the spirit of open-source collaboration, including:
  1. openly sharing technical expertise
  2. promoting professional best practices
  3. nurturing an active community of users and developers
  4. leveraging existing open web technology to deliver best-of-breed archives software
  5. providing solutions to organizations with limited financial and technical resources
  6. engaging active participation from organizations that have the necessary financial and technical resources
  7. providing a common ground for cross-discipline collaboration with related communities
  8. generating revenue to support ICA-AtoM and other ICA activities through a business model that benefits from widespread ICA-AtoM adoption

C. Business Model

 The ICA-AtoM software will always be publicly available as free and open source software. In order to raise funds to achieve the project's objectives and values the ICA-AtoM Project will establish a business model that includes the following components:
  1. applying for grants and subsidies
  2. charging fees for delivering ICA-AtoM related training workshops
  3. creating a purely voluntary institutional membership model, based on fees or contributions in kind, to pool the resources of those institutions that are using ICA-AtoM
  4. charging a commission for brokering ICA-AtoM technical services between recommended third-party contractors and institutions seeking assistance with ICA-AtoM installation, hosting, customization, new feature development, etc.

D. Governance Model

 Users and developers of ICA-AtoM sofware are free to use it as they see fit under the open terms of the GPL v.2 license. However, the formal objectives and activities of the ICA-AtoM Project will be established by the ICA-AtoM Steering Committee within a governance model that is currently in draft form and under discussion (see diagram below).

The ICA Executive Board will discuss this model and the various project roles and responsibilities at its next meeting in October 2008.

While the governance model is under discussion, the ICA Secretariat continues to provide executive direction for the project while Artefactual Systems is currently the primary service provider:

Chair, ICA-AtoM Steering CommitteeDavid Leitch, ICA Secretary-General
Finance and Legal ManagerAnnick Carteret, ICA Secretariat
Communications and Marketing ManagerPerrine Canavaggio, ICA Deputy Secretary-General
Software Release ManagerPeter Van Garderen, Artefactual Systems
User Support and Training ManagerEvelyn McLellan, Artefactual Systems

E. Software License

 The ICA-AtoM software is released under the GPL v.2 license. It consists of a number of GPL v.2 compatible libraries, predominately the Qubit Toolkit and the Symfony web application framework. Due to the large number of contributors from these and other software libraries, it is not possible to assign copyright to a single person or organization. Therefore, copyright of all the software code used within ICA-AtoM remains with the original authors.

However, all the code used in the ICA-AtoM software is strictly verified for compliance with the GPL v.2 license, thereby making the entire distribution freely useable to any and all parties under the terms of the GPL v.2 license. This includes the ability to make changes to the source code and to redistribute free versions of the software. One can also charge a fee for copying, modifying and redistributing the software and any other related services as long as the software code itself and any modifications or derivative works created from it remain free and publicly accessible under the same GPL v.2 license.

F. Trademark

The ICA-AtoM Project will trademark the ICA-AtoM name, logo and related identity assets so that it can protect the integrity of the project as well as to promote and brand the ICA-AtoM software application and related services.

G. Project Partners

 The ICA-AtoM software project is the result of a dynamic collaboration between a number of key partners and sponors.

The International Council on Archives (ICA) is interested in a providing an open-source archival description application to the international archival community, in particular to assist with the automation of under-funded archival institutions and to allow them to make their collections available online. The ICA-AtoM software will also help to promote the standards and programs of the ICA.

The Dutch Archiefschool Research Institute is interested in the development of an open-source archival description application that is sanctioned by the ICA and compliant with its standards for use in classroom instruction. The Archiefschool is also interested in applying and extending ICA-AtoM as prototyping software in a variety of its research projects.

Artefactual Systems Inc. is leading the software development. Artefactual is a company dedicated to the development of open-source, standards-based technologies within the archival community.

Alouette Canada is a Canadian initiative to get digital heritage materials online and to provide tools to archives and related institutions to accomplish this. The ICA-AtoM and Aloutte projects have decided to work together to leverage time, knowledge and skills. Each of these projects is using and contributing to the underlying software toolkit (codenamed Qubit) to meet their project objectives.

H. Project Funding

Different phases of the software development have been funded thus far by financial contributions from: