Session Descriptions and Speaker Biographies

Owned by Christine Di Bella
Last updated: Mar 18, 2019
16 min read



BLOCK A

 

Welcome and Introduction to the Forum: A brief introduction to ArchivesSpace and the intent behind our first-ever Online Forum.

Christine Di Bella, ArchivesSpace - Christine is the Program Manager for ArchivesSpace and involved in all aspects of the program, working closely and collaboratively with the community, advisory groups, and Governance Board to set and implement the strategy and goals for ArchivesSpace. Christine has worked in archives for nearly 20 years, in a number of academic and non-profit settings including the Institute for Advanced Study, the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL), the 92nd Street Y, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, and Harvard Business School. She received an MSI from the University of Michigan's School of Information and a bachelor's degree in English from Wesleyan University.


We’re on the Road to Somewhere: Navigating Your ArchivesSpace Implementation: This presentation will focus on what institutions should consider when starting an ArchivesSpace implementation, including creating a project plan for the process and tools/resources for importing legacy data, training, and engaging with the ArchivesSpace community.

  • Anne Marie Lyons, Atlas Systems – Anne Marie Lyons is a training and library solutions consultant at Atlas Systems. She’s been with Atlas for nine years and works with special collections and archives customers on their ArchivesSpace and Aeon implementations. Before working at Atlas, she was the Digital Initiatives Consultant at BCR, a regional cooperative libraries network based in Denver, Colorado. Prior to moving to Denver, she worked as a cataloger at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C., and part-time in the NPR library.
  • Madeline Sheldon, LYRASIS – Madeline Sheldon is a member outreach representative for the Digital Technology Services team at LYRASIS. She works with institutions interested in hosting ArchivesSpace, Islandora, and/or CollectionSpace with LYRASIS. Her past involvement with academic, public, and government cultural heritage organizations included projects focused on digitization, digital asset management, archival processing, and marketing/outreach. Madeline holds a MSI from the University of Michigan School of Information and specialized in library science and preservation.

 

So Much Data, So Little Time: Prioritizing Manuscript Collections for ArchivesSpace: This presentation will explore the prioritization process undertaken at the Watkinson Library for Special Collections and College Archives at Trinity College (Hartford, Connecticut) for rewriting and entering approximately 45 manuscript finding aids into ArchivesSpace. The bulk of the manuscript finding aids at the Watkinson existed in the digital repository of Trinity College or in legacy print formats and did not conform to current standards such as DACS and EAD. This talk will examine the challenges presented to the Special Projects Associate charged with working on the project, as well as how she went about selecting collections for the project and contributing factors such as whether collections would require further processing.

  • Michelle C. Sigiel, Watkinson Library – Michelle C. Sigiel graduated from Simmons University (Boston, Massachusetts) in 2017 with an MSLIS in Library & Information Science and concentration in Archives Management. She has worked in several project/ grant-funded positions, including her most recent position at Trinity College’s Watkinson Library for Special Collections and College Archives where she undertook work on a data migration for manuscripts into ArchivesSpace. Sigiel also holds an MA from the University of Vermont where she focused on Central European History, and undergraduate degrees from Keene State College (Keene, New Hampshire).


“Where Did I Put That?" Using Locations in ArchivesSpace: A brief look at our pilot project to incorporate the location features in conjunction with our use of top containers in ArchivesSpace. Since our headquarters move in 2017, our two-thirds of our collections are stored off-site.  As we near the final stages of a full shelf reading and locator listing of both sites, we are evaluating the locations feature to determine if it will work for us. Will we be able to use ArchivesSpace as our sole repository for location information or will we continue to rely on an external spreadsheet to record this data?

  • Sarit Hand and Francesca Pitaro, AP Corporate Archives – Sarit Hand’s role includes oversight of acquisition of born-digital assets, digitization projects and digital preservation.  Among other things, Sarit is currently engaged in syncing the preservation system, Preservica, with ArchivesSpace and evaluating the viability of incorporating the locations feature in AS.
  • Francesca Pitaro’s work at the AP covers a range of archival activities including processing, reference, exhibitions and contributions to AP publications, highlighting the collections and work of the archives. I am also responsible for maintaining ArchivesSpace. Last year we rolled out the Public side, providing all AP staff with access to our collections. With the synching of ArchivesSpace with Preservica they will also be able to view our digital files.

 

Columbia University Libraries ArchivesSpace Migration: In 2017 Columbia University Libraries (CUL) undertook a multi-phase project to migrate archival data across several repositories into ArchivesSpace, hosted by LYRASIS. A main goal of the project was to consolidate description activities in the platform, which would serve as a single source of truth propagated out to the catalog, finding aids, and other discovery venues. CUL Columbia adopted a 3-phase roadmap: (1) migrate collection-level data and manage it solely in ArchivesSpace; (2) migrate finding aid data from an XML repository and merge with already migrated collection-level data, which will then flow out to a legacy publishing platform; and (3) adopt the PUI or a comparable front-end application, integrate it with discovery services, and decommission the legacy finding aid publishing platform. Along the way CUL developed custom tools and methods to review and remediate data as well as integrate AS with other applications. Completion of all phases is targeted for early 2020.

  • Kevin Schlottman and David Hodges, Columbia University – Kevin Schlottmann has been Head of Archives Processing at Columbia University's Rare Book and Manuscript Library since 2018. Among his first tasks was spearheading migration into ArchivesSpace. Previously, Kevin was Digital Archives Manager at the New York Philharmonic and Archival Processing Manager at the Center for Jewish History.
  • David Hodges is Special Collections Analyst in the Digital Collections and Preservation Services unit of the Libraries and served as project manager for the first phase of the migration project.

 

Integrations for Digital Objects

  • Venkat Srinivasan, National Centre for Biological Sciences - Venkat Srinivasan is a visiting researcher and archivist at the Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India (http://archives.ncbs.res.in/). The Archives at NCBS is a new public space for the history of contemporary biology in India. It opened in February 2019. In addition to the setting up of this archive, the team is developing templates to pull archival material into coherent stories, and connect personal stories to established records of a scientific process.
  • Mariella Soprano and Tommy Keswick, Caltech - Mariella Soprano is Senior Archivist for Collection Management at Caltech. She is responsible for collection management, including appraisal and selection of new collections. She has been playing a key role in the adoption and implementation of both ArchivesSpace and Islandora, and the continuing development, customization and integration of both platforms. She has also been project manager of large digitization projects, including the Paul MacCready collection.
  • Tommy Keswick is the Digital Technologies Development Library at the Caltech Library. He works closely with the Caltech Archives on their digital projects, which includes getting collections online with Islandora, participating in planning infrastructure needs for digital preservation, and contributing to other aspects of the Archives web presence.
  • Suzanne Chase and Terry Brady, Georgetown University - Terry Brady is a software developer based in Seattle working with the Georgetown University Library Information Technology team. Terry is the lead developer for DigitalGeorgetown, and a committer for the DSpace repository platform. Terry has built applications for higher education, government, non-profit, and corporate institutions including LexisNexis and the National Archives and Records Administration.
  • Suzanne Chase is the Head of the Digital Services Unit within Georgetown University Library's Information Technology department. Suzanne manages the DigitalGeorgetown special collections and institutional repository, and is responsible for coordinating digitization, digital curation, and digital preservation workflows across the Library.
  • Noah Huffman, Duke University - Noah Huffman is the Archivist for Metadata, Systems, and Digital Records in the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. He led Duke’s implementation of ArchivesSpace in 2015, served on the ArchivesSpace Technical Advisory Council (2015-2017), and teaches ArchivesSpace workshops as part of the ArchivesSpace Training Corps.


BLOCK B

 

Working with IT and ArchivesSpace: An Open Discussion: For many archivists, it is easy to get lost amongst the technical jargon within ArchivesSpace and for many IT professionals in libraries, navigating unfamiliar archival standards and terminology can be just as frustrating.  Panelists Laney McGlohon (Technical Lead for ArchivesSpace) and Blake Carver (Systems Administrator at LYRASIS) will be joined by Jessica Crouch (Archivist, University of South Carolina Libraries) and Patrick Milhoan (Archivist, Notre Dame) for this lightly moderated question and answer session about all things technical.  Please bring any questions you have ever wanted to ask about the technical side of ArchivesSpace or submit your question in advance to ArchivesSpaceHome@lyrasis.org.

  • Blake Carver, LYRASIS - Blake Carver is Systems Administrator at LYRASIS Digital Technology Services, where he manages the servers and infrastructure that support their hosted ArchivesSpace, Islandora and CollectionSpace. Blake holds an MLS from SUNY Buffalo, and has worked as an academic librarian, as a programmer at a dot.com startup, and as a records manager. He's also known as the guy behind LISNews, LISWire, and LISHost. Blake was one of the first librarian bloggers (he created LISNews in 1999) and is a member of Library Journal’s first “Movers & Shakers” cohort. Blake has presented widely at professional conferences, talking about open source systems, Drupal, WordPress, and IT security for libraries.  
  • Laney McGlohon, ArchivesSpace - Laney is an information scientist, software developer, librarian, and self-described data wrangler with seven years of experience working with special collections and institutional archivists. Most recently, Laney served as the Discovery and Access Engineer at Stanford University Libraries. Before that she served as a Software Engineer at the Getty Research Institute and as Technology Consultant at the Museum of Ventura County. She has also worked at the University of Georgia and Raytheon Systems Corporation. Laney earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematical Sciences from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a Master’s of Science in Applied Mathematics from North Carolina State University and her Master’s in Library Science from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.


Regional Discovery Networks

  • Mark Custer, Yale University - Mark Custer is an Archivist / Metadata Coordinator at the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library. Mark has served on the ArchivesSpace Users Advisory, helped oversee the redevelopment of the ArchivesSpace Public User Interface, and helped launch the Archives at Yale discovery platform at Yale University which uses ArchivesSpace.  Previously, he worked at the Smithsonian Institution, at East Carolina University, and at the Granville County Public Library in North Carolina.
  • Amanda Focke, Rice University - Amanda Focke is Asst. Head of Special Collections at Fondren Library, Rice University, in Houston. She is a certified archivist and digital archives specialist, and has served on the steering committee for Texas Archival Resources Online (TARO) for the past 8 years. TARO is a state-wide consortium for displaying archival finding aids online.


ASpace to Learn: Training Student Employees to Use ArchivesSpace: For many institutions, student employees play an integral part in processing of archival collections and data entry into collection management systems. In this presentation I will share some lessons I learned in the process of training student employees to use ArchivesSpace and the importance of having centralized training for ALL ArchivesSpace users.

  • Krista Oldham, Clemson University – Krista Oldham is the University Archivist at Clemson University, where her responsibilities include overseeing the acquisition, description, and preservation of University records, as well as supporting and promoting their use. Additionally, Krista is responsible for assisting in developing and managing a comprehensive, institution-wide records management program. She earned a M.I.S. from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and earned both a M.A. in History and a B.A. in History from the University of Arkansas, Fayetteville. Previously, Krista worked in Quaker and Special Collections at Haverford College as the College Archivist/Records Manager and the University of Arkansas Special Collections for 10 years as the Senior Archivist and the Senior Archives Manager. In addition to her archival work, Krista served as Co-Director of the Arkansas Delta Oral History Project, an initiative led by the endowed Brown Chair in English Literacy. She is a co-author of The Arkansas Delta Oral History Project: Culture, Place, and Authenticity, which was published in 2016 by Syracuse University Press.

 

The Implementation Roller Coaster: Danielle Butler, from the Central Arkansas Library System's Butler Center for Arkansas Studies will discuss the planning and implementation process for a locally hosted Windows Service instance of ArchivesSpace. This will include discussion of initial install, migration from Archivists' Toolkit, user guide creation, staff training, and data cleanup. 

  • Danielle Butler, The Butler Center for Arkansas Studies – Danielle Butler is an Archivist and ASpace administrator at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, the Arkansas history and genealogy department of the Central Arkansas Library System. Danielle earned an M.A. in Public History in 2016 from the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She joined the staff at the Butler Center in 2017, after serving as the project archivist for a CLIR Digitizing Hidden collections grant project and project archivist for a Japanese American Confinement Sites digitization project. In Spring of 2018, Danielle began working with the library system’s IT department and administration to implement ASpace at the Butler Center. The Center officially migrated to ASpace in August of 2018.

 

It’s All About the Fit: Engaging Student Assistants, Interns, and Volunteers with ArchivesSpace: Not every student assistant, intern, or volunteer is right for ArchivesSpace. The software is complicated. It requires deep knowledge of foundational archival principles and the ability to quickly adapt to a new lexicon of application-specific terms. Like many archival repositories, my repository relies heavily on the inexperienced shoulders of undergraduate students to build finding aids and manage collections in ArchivesSpace. In this presentation, I’ll share some of the selection, placement, orientation, and mentorship strategies we use to ensure high quality work in ArchivesSpace by our amateur team of student assistants, interns, and volunteers. 

  • Carolyn Runyon, University of Tennessee at Chattanooga – Carolyn Runyon is the Assistant Head of Collection Services and Director of Special Collections at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. She has managed student assistants and interns working on processing, description, and digitization projects for more than a decade, and has recently delved into volunteer engagement in archives. 

 

ArchivesSpace Implementation at University of Southern Mississippi Special Collections: In May 2018, Special Collections at the University of Southern Mississippi received the good news that ArchivesSpace was being implemented. The timeframe for converting legacy finding aids, however, was quite short – originally only six months. Due to time-saving initiatives, the conversion of 1,250 finding aids for processed collections was complete by February 2019. Head of Special Collections/Curator, Historical Manuscripts, Lorraine Stuart, will discuss decisions regarding the implementation and how the implementation has positively affected workflows.

  • Lorraine Stuart, University of Southern Mississippi – Lorraine A. Stuart joined the faculty of the University of Southern Mississippi as Head of Special Collections/Curator, Historical Manuscripts and Archives in August 2016. She comes to USM from the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she headed the archival program since 1995. Lorraine obtained a MLIS with an archival specialization from Louisiana State University and a B.A. in art history with honors from the University of Texas at Austin. She has been a member of the Academy of Certified Archivists since 2004, obtained her Digital Archives Specialization in 2014, and has served on the boards of local and regional professional organizations as well as committees for the Society of American Archivists. She is currently on the advisory board for the USM School of Library and Information Science.

 

Moving Up and Moving In: Last year, Pennsylvania State University opened a new off-site storage facility and moved approximately 13,000 containers of archival material into the new annex over the course of three weeks. The move resulted in thousands of rows of recently re-visited collections data. Historically, Pennsylvania State University’s archival location information resided in the local MARC record; however, during the move, location information for each container was exported from the Library’s catalog for batch updates. Following the successful completion of the move, the Head of Collections Management suddenly became the owner of a series of rows of recently corrected and newly re-usable data. Working with the help of the Cataloging Systems & Linked Data Strategist, the Special Collections staff is currently working to recycle thousands of rows of data to gain a new sense of control over local container management practices in ArchivesSpace. This presentation will detail how Penn State moved up from existing practices and is working to move in thousands of locations for top containers via the ArchivesSpace API. 

  • Caitlin Rizzo, Pennsylvania State University - Caitlin Rizzo recently came on board as the Head of Collection Management at the Eberly Family Special Collections Library at Pennsylvania State University in June 2018. In her position, she oversees ArchivesSpace use and development, manages training for staff, and provides guidelines for local practices for arrangement and description. 


BLOCK C

 

Series of Tubes: Moving Subjects from MARC to ArchivesSpace Records: Overview of the process being used at Penn State to update ArchivesSpace resource records with subjects found in their MARC records.

  • Ruth Kitchin Tillman, Pennsylvania State University - Ruth Kitchin Tillman is the Cataloging Systems and Linked Data Strategist at the Penn State University Libraries. She works with traditional and emerging technologies and develops strategies for integrating cataloging systems and reusing data. Her alternative EAD tag library, EADiva, lowers barriers to understanding the encoding language and is used in multiple library schools' metadata courses.

 

Moving Metadata and Boxes: ArchivesSpace Migration and an Off-site Storage Move: The University of Arkansas Special Collections migrated to ArchivesSpace as part of preparations for an off-site storage move. Move-related deadlines and logistical considerations shaped our implementation in a variety of ways, from spurring the involvement of library-wide volunteers to necessitating integration of ArchivesSpace data into our facility’s inventory management system, Caiasoft. This session will offer an overview of what worked well, what didn’t, and what we’re still working out!

  • Katrina Windon, University of Arkansas Libraries – Katrina Windon is Collections Management and Processing Head for the University of Arkansas Special Collections. She holds an MSIS from the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Information and is a Certified Archivist.


Keeping Tabs on ArchivesSpace: Our Present and Our Future - ArchivesSpace Program Manager Christine Di Bella will provide some background and a quick guide to resources that will help with the recurring question "What's going on with ArchivesSpace?"

  • Christine Di Bella, ArchivesSpace - Christine is the Program Manager for ArchivesSpace and involved in all aspects of the program, working closely and collaboratively with the community, advisory groups, and Governance Board to set and implement the strategy and goals for ArchivesSpace. Christine has worked in archives for nearly 20 years, in a number of academic and non-profit settings including the Institute for Advanced Study, the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries (PACSCL), the 92nd Street Y, the Bentley Historical Library at the University of Michigan, and Harvard Business School. She received an MSI from the University of Michigan's School of Information and a bachelor's degree in English from Wesleyan University.


Customizing the ArchivesSpace Public Interface: Some Simple How-Tos: ArchivesSpace’s public user interface (PUI) is a quick way to get started with making your materials web-accessible, but did you know that there are a number of easy customizations you can make to it, often with little or no development experience? In this session ArchivesSpace Tech Lead Laney McGlohon and Junior Developer Lora Woodford will walk through some ways you can get started on changing the look and feel of your PUI. Examples to be covered include deciding what should be included on the navigation bar, applying branding in terms of colors and logos, and enabling or disabling specific functionality.

  • Laney McGlohon, ArchivesSpace - Laney is an information scientist, software developer, librarian, and self-described data wrangler with seven years of experience working with special collections and institutional archivists. Most recently, Laney served as the Discovery and Access Engineer at Stanford University Libraries. Before that she served as a Software Engineer at the Getty Research Institute and as Technology Consultant at the Museum of Ventura County. She has also worked at the University of Georgia and Raytheon Systems Corporation. Laney earned a Bachelor’s of Science in Mathematical Sciences from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, a Master’s of Science in Applied Mathematics from North Carolina State University and her Master’s in Library Science from University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.
  • Lora Woodford, ArchivesSpace - As the Junior Developer for ArchivesSpace Lora Woodford is responsible for implementing features, extensions, and bugs fixes identified and prioritized by the ArchivesSpace community. Most recently Lora served as DevOps Specialist based in LYRASIS’ Digital Technology Services department, where she participated in a range of technical support activities including responding to ArchivesSpace support tickets, contributing code, and supporting DTS hosting services for ArchivesSpace. Prior to her roles at LYRASIS, Lora helped lead ArchivesSpace implementations at Johns Hopkins University and Colgate University. Having taught herself much about the technologies that the archival profession relies upon, Lora is passionate about building technological literacy in the archival community and getting archivists comfortable with tech tools that can make their lives easier.  She received her MLIS (Archival Studies) from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee; her MA in the History of Industrialization and Technology from the University of Delaware’s Hagley Program; and her BA in History from Susquehanna University.


Making the Case for ArchivesSpace

  • Stephen Innes, University of Auckland - Stephen Innes is the Team Leader, Cultural Collections (Special Collections) at the University of Auckland Libraries and Learning Services. He has over 30 years’ experience managing and developing New Zealand and Pacific-related collections, including archives and manuscripts, in a tertiary education environment. He was a key player in the transfer of the Western Pacific High Commission archives to the University in 2002. Stephen has a special interest in improving access to archival collections, which researchers have always found difficult to use to full effect. Adopting ArchivesSpace, an open-source web application for managing and discovering archival collections, has been a key focus in the last 10 years, culminating in the release of a public interface, Manuscripts and Archives, in 2019.
  • Emma Jolley, National Library of Australia - Emma Jolley is the Curator of Digital Archives at the National Library of Australia, working in the Pictures and Manuscripts Branch with a collection of more than 18,000 linear shelf metres of private records dating from the eighteenth century to the present day, which document people and organisations of national significance to Australia. Before joining the National Library in 2006, she was an Assistant Director at the National Archives of Australia, responsible for the transfer, appraisal and arrangement and description of Government records and held the Senior Archivist position at the Noel Butlin Archives of Business and Labour at the Australian National University. In 2013 Ms Jolley was seconded from her position as Curator of Manuscripts to lead a key strategic project of 18 months duration for the National Library to develop and re-engineer policies, procedures and workflows associated with the acquisition and management of archival collections. She was the project manager of several projects associated with the implementation of ArchivesSpace and predecessor collection management systems from 2007 to the present.
  • Venkat Srinivasan, National Centre for Biological Sciences - Venkat Srinivasan is a visiting researcher and archivist at the Archives at the National Centre for Biological Sciences in Bangalore, India (http://archives.ncbs.res.in/). The Archives at NCBS is a new public space for the history of contemporary biology in India. It opened in February 2019. In addition to the setting up of this archive, the team is developing templates to pull archival material into coherent stories, and connect personal stories to established records of a scientific process.
  • Leilani Dawson, University of Hawaiʻi - Mānoa - Leilani Dawson serves as the Manuscript Collections Archivist at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa Library. Leilani administers the staff and patron front-ends of the library's ArchivesSpace implementation, working closely with colleagues across the institution to support, maintain, improve, and populate the application. Past positions have included archival work at the Bentley Historical Library, the Brooklyn Historical Society, and the Bronx Zoo, as well as a stint volunteering at the Franklin Furnace Archives of performance art.