The development of software tools has been a significant part of the efforts of the EVIA Digital Archive Project. Three full-time developers have worked since 2003 to build tools that fit the Project's requirements. We have been very careful to avoid proprietary solutions or commercial software without a long-standing track record. As a result, we have developed several of our own tools to serve scholars and to support the various workflows of the Project. The bulk of our efforts have focused on the Annotator's Workbench and the Online Search and Browse Tool, but many other smaller applications have been created to address various parts of the production workflow.

EVIA Project developers have worked in close dialog with depositing scholars in the creation of software tools that meet scholarly needs. The applications were designed with a broad disciplinary base in mind so that they may be readily adapted to other disciplines. The developers also have worked closely with the Digital Library Program at Indiana University to build a platform that is compatible both with larger university efforts in time-based media and with library standards for metadata and object repositories. Primary software development will be released by the end of the Project as open-source.