2014-03-12 Meeting Notes

Owned by BradleyW (Unlicensed)
Apr 18, 2014
6 min read

Notes from ArchivesSpace User Advisory Council 3/12/2014 Conference Call

Wednesday March 12 at 12 pm PT, 1 pm MT, 2 pm CT, 3 pm ET

Notetaker: Julie May

 

Roll Call

Steven Bookman, Mark Custer, Gordon Daines, Nancy Enneking, Christopher Geissler, Linda Hocking, Mary Manning, Julie May, Brad Westbrook, Chris Fitzpatrick, Lynda Kachurek, Sybil Schaefer, and Katherine Kott

 

Excused: Julie Patton and Sasha Griffin

 

1.     Program update (Brad Westbrook)

 

Current development contract is winding down:

  • Monday 3/17 = internal release 1.0.9 -- their last sprint in this contract
  • Last week of March = testing all their work
  • Early April = publicly release 1.0.9

Migration tools

  • More work to be done
  • Archon migration tool is released to charter members
  • AT migration tool released to all members
  • By mid-summer both will be released to all members

Migration activity

  • Most has to do with AT users
  • Some other institutions have started Archon migration
  • Question:  why are institutions not moving more rapidly toward migration? hoping to pose that to board members next week
  • Discussion of migration activity
    • How they know migration has been done.
      1. Conversation with Brad or contact with Nathan or someone on AS staff
    • Test migrations at the Getty, University of Houston, and Brigham Young University

Presentations on ArchivesSpace

  • Curate Gear 
  • NY state library of resources council 
  • NDSA working group
  • Another presentation coming up on Tuesday at University of Texas
  • Chris and Nathan Stevens are doing something at Code4Lib:
    • basic overview going over the app and how to install quickly and some of the deployment options that people have (windows vs. linux)
    • migration from both AT and Archon to AS
    • then a group on extensions and writing plugins and working on a good example use case to shows 

Training

  • Finally have basic approval from Board of Trustees and NYU (grant money) to start building a training program for AS.
  • Brad is meeting with colleagues in Cambridge to map out the program that will mushroom to include more people and hopefully some of the council will be interested in being trainers and presenters
  • 2 major components to the training:
    • Several types of Workshops:
      • 2-day basics and a few advanced (developed first)
      • Digital object
      • Rights
      • Collection management
    • Video tutorials
      • 5 minute, primitive, unprofessional using google hangout or Adobe connect of how to do a certain thing like link a name record and then move on to another task
      • They are not explaining why you do it within archival theory or best practice; just how-to
      • Illustrations to the Workshops
  • Hoping to have a broad crew of presenters for this, who will offer time to 1-3 videos and there is money to support this. you can get a stipend of about a BMW? or part of one as compensation ;)
  • 2 day workshops already scheduled at Middlebury ,Berkeley, U of Baltimore, and Boston Library Consortium and probably a lot more interest

Membership

  • Continues to increase at a "pleasing " rate
  • 122 new members as of last Friday
  • 86 in the beginning of 12/2013
  • Big increase over 2 months
  • 3 new members this week and about 6 inquiries

No questions for Brad about his updates.

2.     Subteam progress reports (brief report on plan of action and steps taken)


a.     Feature Prioritization (Julie Patton) -- Julie is on jury duty so Gordon is doing the updating

  • Focused on testing user stories that have come out of the development work
  • 2 rounds of user testing and will have an additional round next Monday
  • We've done 2 things:
    • how the process functions and how we'll contribute user stories to the process
    • also learned what's involved to test the functions
  • Sometimes testing reveals additional functionality that is wanted or needed

b.     Documentation (Linda Hocking)

  • Started with a gap analysis
  • Divided it up to determine what is there so they can decide what's missing

c.     Help Desk (Mark Custer)

  • Brad organized a Skype call for us on Feb. 19th
  • Brad explained that feedback that the helpdesk needs to respond to comes in via three different channels right now:
  •  
    1. ArchivesSpace Membership listserv
    2. JotForm (ArchivesSpace feedback form)
    3. Direct emails to Brad and Chris
  • Mark offered to lead this group first, and then will rotate.
  • Brad set things up so that Steve, Julie, and I also receive JotForm feedback… and we can confirm that we do receive this feedback now, thanks to Christine Di Bella using it earlier this week to report on some errors with the migration tool (as an aside: I sent that information to Nathan Stevens, but I haven’t responded to Christine yet).
  • Brad also wanted us to think about how we might create a Knowledge Base, to make answering these questions easier, and to ensure that we provide consistent and accurate responses.  One option floated around was whether or not we could get a community of software questions related to ArchivesSpace up on system like StackOverflow.  Right now, I don’t think that there is a very good list for us already created in StackExchange, but we could try to get one going (though I don’t know how successful that would be; proposals go up here: http://area51.stackexchange.com/; SharePoint, for example, has a StackExchange site, but it has HUGE community of users).
  • The help desk is not a replacement for technical / sysadmin types of questions, however, and that should all be handled on the ArchivesSpace Google Group, https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/archivesspace, which Chris and members of the Hudson Molonglo team monitor.
  • Brad thinks we have to train ourselves to send these help desk requests to the council  and will try to be mindful about sending to the group something to chew on

d.     Reports (Mark Custer)

  • Marching orders from Gordon received in email on Feb. 12th, which broke our work down into 3 tasks:
    • Review AT reports and decide which ones work and which should be modified
    • Design new reports specific to ArchivesSpace
    • Work with Chris Fitzpatrick to gain an understanding of how Jasper iReports functions, and to document how to create ArchivesSpace reports using iReports.
  • Organized a conference call and met on Feb. 12th…. Nancy, Chris, and I will share leadership responsibilities -- with Mark starting out
  • To address task 1, so far:
    • We’re reviewing the AT reports now:  Chris is looking at the Accessions reports, I am looking at the Resources reports, and Nancy is looking at all the rest.
    • We created a directory on Google drive to share our work, which we’ve also opened up to Gordon and Brad.  If anyone else would like access to this directory, just let me know. 
    • Nancy drafted an email, which we’ll send to Sasha to send out to the ATART listserv.  The email will see how folks use the reports in the AT:  what they find useful, what they don’t, what they’d like to be able to do.
    • Chris has added the questions from the email to a Google Form, so we’ll also try to seek feedback beyond the ATART listserv.
  • To address task 2, so far:
    • Nancy has started at looking at designing new reports in ArchivesSpace for locations, providing an example of how the AT’s “General Accession Note” does not display in the “Locations with Resources and Accessions” report, etc.
  • To address task 3, so far:
    • Mark has taken a look at the 4 reports currently offered by ArchivesSpace.
    • We’ve installed local copies of JasperSoft Studio (since it appears that iReports is being phased out, and is in maintenance-only mode until December 31, 2015) but haven’t done much more than that just yet.

e.     Product Comparison (Steven Bookman)

  • Brad gave access to google doc for AS features matrix and list all functionalities
  • First task is to see if all of the functionality of the Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon has been incorporated into AS
  • Second task is to create a draft product comparison for the next meeting in May

Next meeting is scheduled for May

  • Will schedule that via Doodle poll
  • Problematic days in May:
    • Brad will not be available most of May
    • Nancy will be on vacation week of the 26th. 
  • Hoping to shoot for first week of May
  • If there are problematic days, email Gordon as he is building that poll
  • Will try to meet with the majority of people, maybe not everyone

3.     Meeting at SAA annual (Gordon Daines)

  • Heard back from Nancy Beaumont about finalized schedule
  • Times available
    • Noon on Wednesday
    • Lunchtime 11:30 on Thursday
  • Nancy asked if we would be interested in having a room at the hotel and happy to help accommodate
  • Other option is to do a lunch meeting outside the hotel
  • The Thursday lunchtime is the best time according to the doodle poll
  • Brad to throw complication into the mix: is it a vigorous meeting or meet/greet?
    • If it iss a meet and greet he wants it to be open to the most number of council
    • Sybil doesn't have a number on who on the council is attending SAA
    • Most of the meeting will be to touch base and most of the work will be done away
    • Way of holding our feet to the fire because we have to report at the meeting
    • Will probably luncheon in a private room in the hotel
  • Gordon will let Nancy know that we want to use a room. Brad will figure out the lunch aspect of that meeting.
    • Between 2 groups, there are 25 members so set up for 20 people would be enough 
    • Would be good to have a long banquet table
    • 5 task members who said they would go to SAA
    • Who is not planning on being at SAA: 0 people, majority attending
  • Katherine won't be at SAA because she'll be done on the project beore that meeting, but Lynda will attend
  • Second piece to SAA is the general meeting
    • We had thought about doing it on Friday night social
    • No discussion with Nancy about it, but Gordon will follow up about both the meeting and the social event

Notetaker for next meeting is Julie Patton