Besides creation and management including preservation, providing access to an item in the archive is the ultimate goal and has implications on all other topics discussed previously. As for any organisation offering an information service, it is in the interest of the archive to enable convenient usage. To achieve this differing means of access are conceivable.
A good solution fits the demands of the addressed target group at best. However, the patrons of an archive preserving the digital cultural heritage of a whole nation is preferably the general public. Yet, the views of users have not been sufficiently inquired at this point of time [Mui01]. To conform to the requirements of such a diversified variety of people is an elusive, perhaps unattainable task, that is further complicated by the fact that demands will vary with the specific objective pursued and evolve in the course of the usage. Generally spoken, a user interface is aspired that offers intuitive, quick, and at the same time comprehensive access.
The data to be found in the repository and, consequently, the way it was selected in the first place controls the interface. If the data was manually selected, the collection items can be expected to be coherently sorted. Therefore, the archive forms a subject gateway with all documents assigned to a certain topic. When having bulk-collected on-line material using automatic harvesting, a navigable archive can be established, the granularity and completeness of which depends on the implementation of the active data acquisition. Regular navigation-tools for the Internet can be used to browse such a repository. As an additional dimension to the interface the user has the possibility to move back and forth in time. Thereby, the evolution of a web-site can be followed.
Digital technology yields effective means for searching certain documents. Indexing mechanisms as used by Internet search engines can be installed and extended by the additional dimension of time. In full text documents, a reader can seek after special sections by searching for keywords. Moreover, digital archives as presented here embrace functionality as it has been developed for digital libraries, including the state of the art in information access and retrieval systems.
As the network of national archives gets tighter, cooperations should be established in order to offer a more complete service. Whenever a site is chosen that is not in the domain of an archive, the user is automatically forwarded to the appropriate national initiative. For example, if there is a link from an Austrian web-page to a Czech site, the system should redirect a request directly to the Czech initiative. This should happen transparently, at best the user does not even learn where the document was retrieved from.
Already, scientists from various backgrounds have emphasised their interest in such a collection representing a valuable resource for their studies [Kah97]. In order to allow analysis of the material in the archive particular tools can be provided. Even though specialised tools will be required for the individual research projects, basic facilities can be provided from the outset, offering functionality as used in statistical analysis or data mining. Additionally, a framework for integrating specialised tools with the system environment should be established.
Access time is, obviously, highly dependent on the storage facilities. Thereby, not only the equipment used for retaining the digital material, also storage concepts play a role in how long it takes to access a collection item. Both issues are discussed in depth in Section 2.3. Yet, data retrieval is not the only aspect when requesting a document. A far greater impact could play the long-term preservation strategy applied as issued in Section 2.4. If a Conversion-strategy is followed, the document is at any time in an accessible format while the original looks-and-feel has most possibly been corrupted. However, for an Emulation-approach it can not be guaranteed, that the object can be displayed instantly. In fact, it could take a considerable time to get hold of an appropriate emulator and install the original software necessary to decode the data format. For this reason, it is beneficial to store a preview version of a collection item along with the encapsulated original document, which conveys closer information about its contents. If viewing the genuine form of the document turns out to be essential it can still be recovered, accepting the long time span and the effort to regenerate the original environment.
However, the person who uses the archive, by the library community called patron or reader, by the computing community simply user [Arm00], also has the status of a customer of the archive, the service provider. Terms of use will have to be defined, taking legal issues into consideration (cf. Section 2.6). Also, charging the usage of the archive will have to be considered (cf. Section 2.7).
Caring for instant usability of the collections is a paramount objective. Otherwise, substantial problems might remain undiscovered for a long time and, in the end, it will be impossible to recover losses. At the same time, it is in the interest of users benefitting from the offered services.