Meeting Minutes, 2014-12-19

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Carolyn Runyon
Last updated: Dec 29, 2014
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ArchivesSpace User Advisory Council Reports Subgroup

December 19, 2014  11:00 EST – 11:50 EST

Attendees: Mark Custer, Nancy Enneking, Chris Fitzpatrick, Carolyn Runyon, Nathan Stevens, and Brad Westbrook

Nathan is currently working on migrating all the existing reports in The Archivists' Toolkit to ArchivesSpace using JasperReports:

  • He will migrate all and then have the group decide which reports to no longer use and which reports to enhance/modify
  • He wants to enable the existing reports, as is, and later develop the ability to parameterize the reports through the main ArchivesSpace interface
  • He is developing an app to allow testing of the reports outside of the ASpace interface, to increase the speed of report development
  • He will send a link to this new tool to the other members of the Reports Subgroupin the new year.

Chris will set up a separate instance of the demo database (to be called Reports) to provide a standard set of data for report testing purposes.  Access to the database will be limited to people working on developing reports.

Regarding ongoing work on the reports the team has been developing.  We will use the fonts that The Archivists' Toolkit reports use (use the Subjects report as an example) and not worry about branding too much, since institutions will want to add their own.

Mark asked if several Java libraries could be added to ArchivesSpace to enable the printing of barcodes on reports such as locations.  Nathan and Chris said yes.

Mark also suggested that we needed to replicate the print screen ability that currently exists in The Archivists' Toolkit– since that seems to be people’s primary current method of extracting their data – they bring back their own result sets and export them to The Archivists' Toolkit.  There is no timeline on something like this.

Nancy has been working on a data dictionary of sorts.  It was decided that it would really only be useful to people who were technically sophisticated enough to build their own anyway and it presented maintenance problems.  Nancy will maintain it for herself, and should the other encounter someone else who wants it they will direct them to Nancy and she’ll distribute it (with caveats as to precise accuracy) – it’s not an ArchivesSpace supported thing.

It was determined that there was a need for report members to develop conceptual reports for the modules and functions that do not exist in The Archivists' Toolkit.  These should be simple descriptions organized by module.  The deadline for having this list completed is the end of February.  The group should work through the wiki.

It was determined that we need to write up core, basic documentation about report generation primarily describing the methods of generating reports through ArchivesSpace, but also pointing out that there are other methods of generating reports and providing a few examples.  It should be stressed that the ArchivesSpace team will not support these additional methods, it will simply point out that such methods exist.

The Reports Subgroup will next meet in early February, Nancy will send around a Doodle poll.