Parallel Archive (PA, www.parallelarchive.org) is a space where scholars and students in the humanities and social sciences can upload, store, study, and share their digitized archival sources. It is designed to facilitate individual scholarly research and publication; cross-border and cross-disciplinary collaboration; and a critical approach to documents.

Millions of digitized archival documents collected by scholars in the course of their research currently sit on private desktops. PA is envisioned as an alternative space where scholars can store online and make public their digitized copies of material from archives. In this sense, PA exists in parallel to traditional archives. Moreover, PA provides parallel access to material, cutting across traditional archival description with item-level access to documents, library style search criteria, full-text search, and networking and communication tools.

PA as a workspace...
Users can:

• upload and store archival documents for easy access
• create virtual collections
• add descriptions and tags
• view and edit text versions, generated using OCR
• annotate pages while reading
• download documents or email citations
• link to original documents in published works
• keep documents private or make them public

PA as a collaborative space...
Users can:

• participate in forum discussions on specific documents or general research issues
• network around documents by adding tags and comments
• find colleagues working on similar research topics
• share documents with fellow researchers

PA as a trusted repository...

PA guarantees the integrity and permanence of uploaded material by attaching a secure digital signature and permanent handle to every public document. PA further ensures the quality of the material and descriptive information provided with a strong curation policy reinforced by the informal peer review of its users. Information provided on the source of each document enables researchers to locate and verify original copies and discover other relevant collections. PA also offers guidance on international archival copyright and data protection practices to educate scholars in the appropriate use of archival materials.

Parallel Archive (PA, www.parallelarchive.org) is being developed by the Open Society Archives at Central European University.  The system is currently in beta development.