AS.org reorganization proposal
A Proposal to improve organization/presentation of technical documentation on ArchivesSpace homepage <http://archivesspace.org/>
Problem:
The official ArchivesSpace webpages do a poor job of describing what technical documentation exists and where it’s located.
In particular, the pages available from the “ArchivesSpace Application” drop-down seem to have some overlap and address a variety of different audiences (technical and non-technical).
The information linked from Technical Documentation page (above right) seems to exclude a lot of relevant documentation, but include some historical documentation that might be better served elsewhere.
Background:
To date, the UAC (according to Brad) has focused solely on user documentation available on the members site, not technical documentation or other documentation available on archivesspace.org
Both Brad and Chris administer the archivesspace.org pages and are amenable to making changes recommended by TAC. Brad suggests developing a proposal for reorganizing the site and sharing that proposal with UAC for comment.
Recommendations:
Here are some preliminary recommendations for changes to the “ArchivesSpace Application” portion of the site.
1. Revise Technical Documentation page: http://www.archivesspace.org/technicaldocumentation
Provide a short list (w/ links) of the major technical documentation resources for ASpace. Include a brief description of each resource. Basically, this page should serve as a high-level hub page for all publicly available technical documentation, but not necessarily replicate everything available from the GitHub wiki.
Links should include:
Primary hub for all ArchivesSpace technical documentation, including information about downloading, installing, and running the application, system requirements, release notes, changelog, etc.
Documentation, plugins, and mapping documents for use in migrating data from Archivists’ Toolkit or Archon to ArchivesSpace
Spreadsheets outlining import and export mappings for CSV, EAD, and MARCXML data.
Documentation for interacting with the ArchivesSpace application using the REST API.
ArchivesSpace PivotalTracker Project
The ArchivesSpace public PivotalTracker project site lists all ongoing and resolved bug reports, feature requests, and users stories. The site is used to identify, prioritize, and manage changes to the application.
Listservs and User Groups
-ArchivesSpace Users Group (members only) - primary email listserv for ArchivesSpace user community. Often includes discussion of technical issues
-ArchivesSpace Public Google Group - primarily for technical questions.
ArchivesSpace Founding Documents
Comments
Laura Hild 1:02 PM May 23 I had meant to ask you about this before and Sibyl's comment during the call today reminded me: I had thought we planned to have the github wiki as a hub for technical documentation -- do we have in mind a distinction between the two?
Noah Huffman 2:00 PM Jun 10 Good question. I'm still a little unclear about this, but I feel that we need some kind of hub page to the technical documentation that exists outside of github (on ASpace.org) and is a little more user-friendly than the github wiki. I think this can be really simple and doesn't need to replicate everything that's in the github wiki. We can treat the github wiki as a more exhaustive, and maybe up-to-date description of all of the tech. documentation, but I feel like folks will expect that ASpace.org at least gives an overview of the documentation available.
Terry Reese 12:13 PM Sep 10 I'm also wondering if the documentation can help to bring communities together. Some of my first questions when we joined were around projects being done with ArchivesSpace (plugins, etc.) and as far as I can tell, there is no way to find out if there is a group doing shared work. I'm interested in seeing how we might surface those connections and work.
Terry Reese 12:15 PM Sep 10 As much as I appreciate the Pivotal Tracker -- there doesn't appear to be a roadmap anywhere as well. Just within my own local institution, I'm asked again and again what the larger roadmap looks like now that the project is moving past initial development and migration scenarios.