Developing a new Data Archive in a Time of Maturing Standards

IASSIST Quarterly Spring 2002 IASSIST Quarterly Spring 2002 5 this reason, evaluation was an important component during the early stages of development. The criteria we used in these evaluations were robustness, performance, and institutional support. Robustness means how much of the realm of all likely cases and circumstances the item could handle. For software, this concept includes its portability to a variety of platforms and programming languages. Performance means: first, has the item been implemented at all? and secondly, how well, how simply, and how quickly does the item work? Institutional support is a measure of how committed organizations are to the support and future development of the item in question.