March 26, 2024

ArchivesSpace Virtual Member Forum - Session A

1:00pm UTC

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Welcome and Announcements

Jessica Crouch, Community Engagement Lead, ArchivesSpace

1:05-1:30pm UTC 

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Training and Managing Multiple ArchivesSpace Repositories at a Very Large Institution

Bri McLaughlin, Indiana University

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

Indiana University’s ArchivesSpace instance hosts 31 repositories across 7 campuses. Each campus has its own needs, and each repository’s needs are even more specific. Contemplating how to introduce a new application to dozens of collection managers while training myself was overwhelming, to say the least. I relied on the documentation shared by other institutions, but the majority included recommendations for 1-3 institutions. I will present a use case of how to address the specialized needs of multiple institutions while providing broad instruction. Training materials span written documentation, tutorial videos, and consultations. After almost four years of creating documentation, I have streamlined the training process so it can be done mostly independently. This presentation will be useful for any ArchivesSpace member institution getting started creating local workflows, but especially for very large institutions. The primary ArchivesSpace modules covered in this presentation are Resources, Accessions, Agents, and Subjects. In addition to practical training recommendations, I will also express the importance and benefits of cultivating and maintaining relationships with collection managers. I will also share my experience with managing the impossibly large amount of metadata shared by all repositories.

1:30-1:55pm UTC

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Found in Translation: Update on Multilingual Description Task Force from the Usability Sub-team

Cory Nimer, Brigham Young University and Susannah Broyles, Texas State University

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides 

This session will review the results of a community survey on multilingual description, and the development of use cases based on these results. This initial work, undertaken by the Usability Sub-team with the assistance of an advisory group of community volunteers, seeks to identify and document staff and public user needs. The resulting use cases will serve as the basis for a specification for future development work. This session will present the survey results and use case drafting process to solicit community feedback.

1:55-2:05pm UTC 

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BREAK

Return from Break 

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace 

2:10-2:35pm UTC

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Creating Actionable Feature Requests

Thimios Dimopulos, ArchivesSpace

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

A major part of the interaction between Users Developers and Testers of ArchivesSpace happens through Feature Requests. In this session we will talk about what makes an Actionable Feature Request and introduce Behavior Scenarios as a way to describe features. Relevant links: https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/19202060/How+to+Request+a+New+Feature

2:55-3:00pm UTC

Closing Remarks and Thank You

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace

5:00-5:05pm UTC

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Beyond Boxes: Managing Spaces and Containers in ArchivesSpace
Tiffany Cole, Kate Morris, and Grace Thomsen, James Madison University

2:00pm-2:30pm UTC

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MARC to ArchivesSpace: Migrating Without Scripting
Sarah Newhouse, Science History Institute

Presentation recording

Before ArchivesSpace, all archival collections at the Science History Institute’s Othmer Library were described in our library catalog (Sierra), with at least a MARC record and potentially either an attached PDF or Microsoft Word document of some additional description (box and folder lists, inventories, etc.) of varying adherence to standards. We started using ArchivesSpace in 2017, but only used it to create EAD-compliant PDF finding aids, which were then attached to a MARC record in the library catalog, following previous practice. The Digital Preservation Archivist position was created in 2021, with one of its immediate goals being turning on and using the ArchivesSpace PUI for public finding aid access. As part of that process, we wanted to make the PUI the one-stop shop for all archival collections, which meant transporting over decades of MARC records from the Sierra library catalog into ArchivesSpace. This talk will describe our migration project, including the kinds of data clean-up that had to be done, troubleshooting tips, impacts on processing and description workflows, access considerations, and what tools we used (notably, not the API).

2:30pm-3:00pm Welcome and Announcements

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace

5:05-5:30pm UTC

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5:30-5:55pm UTC

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Pathfinding Toward ArcLight: The Journey to Discover Our Next Website Framework

Corey Schmidt, University of Georgia

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

In 2023, the UGA Libraries reaffirmed our decision to implement ArcLight as our next framework for our publicly available finding aid website. This decision came after beginning to implement an early version of ArcLight and the ArcLight community gaining new traction with significant code development and interface changes. With a year to monitor community contributions, evaluate the landscape of what frameworks were available, and interview and compare what other institutions were doing with ArcLight, we based our decision on customizability, maintainability, and user experience. In this presentation, we will dive into these factors more deeply, along with evaluating our analysis between using the ArchivesSpace PUI versus ArcLight and the next steps of the project. ArchivesSpace users who are interested in learning more about the differences between the two platforms and what it takes to get a customized version of ArcLight running are encouraged to attend.

5:55-6:05pm UTC

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Three's Company: Sharing a Unified ArchivesSpace instance
Julia Corrice, Elizabeth Parker, and Katerina Dimitriadou-Shuster, Cornell University Library

5pm UTC

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5:05pm-6:00pm UTC

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6:00pm-6:30pm UTC

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From Cleanup to Ingestion: Migration of Indiana University Archives Accessions
Jeremy Floyd and Bri McLaughlin, Indiana University 

Presentation Recording
Indiana University Accessioning Documentation
Migrating data from outdated software is never simple. Indiana University’s ArchivesSpace instance is home to 30 repositories across 7 campuses. We migrated 3,000+ finding aids from all repositories in 2020. Indiana University exclusively used EAD for finding aid creation, which at least gave us a uniform format to import into ArchivesSpace. Accession records, however, were an entirely different situation. Most Indiana University repositories use different, unrelated methods of accession record creation. Many of the repositories have their own custom spreadsheet or word document template. However, University Archives at Indiana University Bloomington had been using AskSam for over 30 years to create and manage accession records. AskSam was a free form application adopted in the 1990s. While the application was ahead of its time 30 years ago, it no longer met our needs. The last version was released 15 years ago, meaning our collection managers have been using an application without support for almost as long. After implementing ArchivesSpace for finding aids, collection managers at Indiana University were very interested in the Accessions module as well. As can be imagined, migrating content from an application that hasn’t been updated in 15 years wasn’t as simple as exporting and importing into ArchivesSpace. This presentation will cover the process of migrating 7,000+ accession records from AskSam into ArchivesSpace using the bulk accession importer and supplemental API calls. We will discuss the lessons we’ve learned during this process including the significant amount of data cleanup that was required for a successful migration.
6:30pm-7:00pm BREAK

6:05-6:35pm UTC

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Connecting Metadata and Digital Assets: ArchivesSpace and Preservica

John Dewees, University of Rochester

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

Bringing together a metadata management system like ArchivesSpace and a digital asset management system like Preservica so that they can communicate with each other can be a complicated process. This presentation will discuss how the University of Rochester developed their workflow to create digital objects within ArchivesSpace efficiently at scale, as well as provide access to the digital surrogates or born digital assets that researchers want to have access to. This process utilizes the catalog sync option that Preservica developed, and specifically discusses how to create SIPs suitable for ingest into Preservica, after which they are synced with ArchivesSpace. These SIPs are difficult to create manually but can be generated more easily with programmatic intervention like Python scripting. This workflow was ultimately unlocked by using the Digitization Work Order Plugin developed by New York University Libraries to pull out the necessary data from ArchivesSpace to satisfy all the needs of the Preservica catalog sync. Ultimately this allows for the import of digital assets into Preservica in such a way that the metadata held in ArchivesSpace could be pulled over to Preservica (and then kept in sync over time) as well as populate ArchivesSpace with digital objects associated with each relevant archival object. These Python scripts were then also turned into a small graphical utility, opening the possibility of leveraging these workflows without having to work in the command line, and instead just being able to press a few buttons to generate SIPs that satisfy both platform’s needs.

6:35-6:55pm UTC

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A Matter of Scale

Kate Herbert, Maine State Archives

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

Presenting the Maine State Archives perspective on working in ArchivesSpace when your institution has Very Large collections: how this changes some uses of the platform, and its effects on workflows and data entry. This is a case study of the roadblocks MSA has come up against and how we have overcome them, and a conversation with others with Very Large resources, to share issues and solutions.

In 2020 the Maine State Archives had to move its collection from its building into temporary storage, while major building repairs were performed. This required a push to quickly enter our entire collection into ArchivesSpace (something we have been done slowly for several years to this point). At this point our system has 200,000 archival objects in 31 resources and just under 60,000 top containers. We also launched the PUI, as having the collections stored off site requires an appointment-only reading room.

Rather abruptly, the API was our best option for updating and tracking our large resources, for adding new locations to all of the top containers., and even for running some reports. Data clean-up, which was a must after a massive data dump, became harder. At the same time the resources were just too big for parts of the system to handle.

6:55-7:00pm UTC

Closing Remarks and Thank You

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace 

3:00-3:05pm UTC

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Welcome Remarks and Introduction

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace

3:05-3:55pm UTC

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ArchivesSpace Governance and You

Julia Novakovic, ArchivesSpace Governance Board; Rochester Institute of Technology

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides 

As a member-driven organization, ArchivesSpace relies on the insight and contributions of users from member institutions to drive the nation's leading Archival Information System platform forward. In this session, members of the ArchivesSpace Governance Board, with support from the Chairs of the Technical Advisory Council (TAC) and User Advisory Council (UAC), will present an overview of the Governance Board and its member representatives. The Board Chair will talk about recent initiatives and discussions among the group. Then, the speakers will hold a panel discussion about the benefits of participating in Governance and other ArchivesSpace community opportunities (like the TAC and UAC). There will be additional time for an open Q&A from attendees.

3:55-4:05pm UTC

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4:05-4:10pm UTC

Return from Break 

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace

4:10-4:30pm UTC

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Accessioning Small Accruals More Efficiently via the API
Michelle Paquette, Smith College and Althea Topek

3pm Modernizing the ArchivesSpace Codebase

Brian Zelip, ArchivesSpace Program Team

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

This lightning talk provides a high-level technical overview of recent and ongoing upgrades to ArchivesSpace that improve security, performance, and other modernization efforts.

4:30-4:55pm UTC

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ArchivesSpace Metadata Sub-team discussion

Join members of the ArchivesSpace Technical Advisory Council's Metadata sub-team for a discussion about using subject headings in ArchivesSpace.  Bring your use cases and preferred thesauri for a discussion of what you like about the subjects module and what you hope to see in the future. 

4pm UTC

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ArchivesSpace Board Discussion

Join members of the ArchivesSpace board for a discussion about the ArchivesSpace governance structure and functions. This is a great session for members newer to the ArchivesSpace community to learn about the program’s development and how to get involved.

5:00pm Tobar an Dualchais and the ArchivesSpace API

Scott Renton, University of Edinburgh

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides

Tobar an Dualchais (Kist o' Riches)- https://tobarandualchais.co.uk is one of the most important Scottish cultural heritage collections, gathering together audio recordings of songs, stories, poems, radio shows and beyond, in English, Scots and Gaelic. Recently, the University of Edinburgh Library took on the job of providing data to a new (third party) front end for TAD, and opted to use the trusted and reliable ArchivesSpace infrastructure to store this. Interactions between the website and ArchivesSpace take place through the API, and I would like to demonstrate the workflows we've undertaken to make this possible, including making audio recordings playable on the site, and allowing a multi-lingual aspect to the content.

4:55-5:05pm UTC

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5:05-5:10pm UTC

Return from Break

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace 

5:10-5:30pm UTC

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ArchivesSpace Documentation Discussion

Liz Caringola, University of Maryland (Tech Docs), Margaret Turman Kidd, Virginia Commonwealth University (User Docs), Eden Orelove, Smithsonian Institution (User Docs)

Join members of the ArchivesSpace Technical Advisory Council's Technical documentation sub-team and the User Advisory Council's User documentation sub-team for a joint discussion on documentation related to ArchivesSpace.

In this session, learn about two types of ArchivesSpace documentation that will help you to get the most out of the system: 1) the User Manual, and 2) the Technical Documentation.

1) Have you ever wondered what *that* button does? Or how to use *that* strange records module you're currently not implementing? The ArchivesSpace User Manual is here to dispel the mystery. The User Documentation Team (part of the User Advisory Council) keeps the documentation up-to-date. Learn more about the manual and how it can supplement your in-house documentation.

2) The ArchivesSpace Technical Documentation isn’t just for developers. Members of the Technical Documentation team will present some examples of how archivists with any level of technical comfort might find this documentation useful for themselves or when communicating with their hosting provider, developer, or IT staff. Simultaneous Audio Collection Processing and Digital Library Uploading Using Python, ArchivesSpace, and Islandora 8

Paul Sutherland, American Philosophical Society

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides 

We recently received digitized audio from a vendor of several large unprocessed audio collections. We needed to find a way to simultaneously process the collection in ArchivesSpace, upload to our Digital Library, and associate the two, with minimal duplicated effort and tedious copy-pasting.

I will describe a new internal workflow for our archivists processing audio collections. The workflow involves using Python libraries to facilitate creating and updating CSV and XLSX files (ArchivesSpace's Bulk Import AO template, Bulk Update Spreadsheet and Islandora 8's Workbench), validating metadata, retrieving information from file directories, and extracting and updating audio file metadata. The process is designed so that each of these steps can be applied individually and combined into other workflows.

5:30-5:55pm UTC

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Troubleshooting PDF Export Errors

Valerie Addonizio, Atlas Systems

Presentation Recording

Presentation Slides 

This presentation will include demonstration and troubleshooting of some common PDF export errors, guidance for understanding error log messages, and tips for identifying and resolving the encoding issues that are usually to blame.

Troubleshooting PDF Exports - Handout

5:55-6:00pm UTC

Closing Remarks and Thank You

Jessica Crouch, ArchivesSpace