Show 'Em What You've Got: Exposing Finding Aids with ArchivesSpace

Editor's Notes

1. Before 2014 -- Archives and Special Collections at the Criss Library University Archives Some monographs and serials cataloged in WorldCat Some paper finding aids or inventory lists for some collections Many collections with little or no documentation of any kind No online finding aids Special Collections (Rare Books and Manuscripts) All monographs and serials cataloged in WorldCat Some paper finding aids or inventory lists for some manuscript collections No online finding aids Arthur Paul Afghanistan Collection Everything cataloged in WorldCat U.S. Senator Chuck Hagel Archives All work done in Archivists' Toolkit
2. The need When I first started in Archives & Special Collections, whenever I was given a collection to work on, I tried to do a real finding aid, not just an inventory list. Minimal DACS/EAD knowledge, so I got a lot of things wrong. Still only as Word documents, not available online. New department director Amy Schindler keen to get things online as quickly as possible. Brief, collection-level online finding aid better than nothing. Starting point for future work.
3. ArchivesSpace Brief overview of what it is Marshall Breeding (2013) notes that archives have different collection management needs from libraries; lists several specialized automated systems for archival collections We selected ArchivesSpace because it was created by the merger of Archivists' Toolkit and Archon, two of the most popular, widespread archival automation products. Open source Hosting options available with LYRASIS ArchivesSpace is still new and feels like a beta system in many ways, but it is getting better. Example: at present, ArchivesSpace does not handle containers and shelf locations very well, but Yale is developing a container plugin, which will eventually be incorporated into ArchivesSpace. Small staff, but they are attentive to customer comments and respond quickly.
4. As of October 8, 2015, I noted 251 institutions on the ArchivesSpace member list (http://archivesspace.org/members), but only 10 of those displayed hyperlinks to live systems or implementation project blogs. That's just to show that this is still a new system, not yet deeply entrenched. Virginia Military Institute good example of a very well developed implementation. (We're hosted; they're not. They've got their own developers on staff, as I understand.) ArchivesSpace membership Membership not required, but there are advantages to paying to become an ArchivesSpace member Rates are on the ArchivesSpace website; cost is based on institution size. Members can: Vote on the board Vote on priorities for development Subscribe to support listserv Access training Support development of the product Non-members can still download and use ArchivesSpace, and get support from other sources, like the SAA list. LYRASIS membership By contract, we cannot share any information on cost Selected LYRASIS because Amy had worked with them before and had positive experience We paid for them to handle our data migration Migration of Hagel from Archivists Toolkit was straightforward LYRASIS wrote a script to migrate the data from our spreadsheet LYRASIS provides our hosting and support, including training videos LYRASIS manual is better than the ArchivesSpace manual
5. Loading data into ArchivesSpace Hagel Archive data from Archivists' Toolkit was imported into ArchivesSpace. Went smoothly. Still closed to the public, so not visible on the site. For University Archives and Special Collections, we did a big, quick, dirty collection inventory, and then I created an Excel spreadsheet of about 160 collection level "finding aids" (really, placeholders). One of the benefits of being hosted by LYRASIS was that they wrote the software to migrate our data from Excel. Overall, went smoothly. We did have to reload the data once, due to some entities generating Subject records when they should have been Agent records, but that was our fault, not LYRASIS’s.
6. Cleanup Personal/corporate names as creators, sources, and subjects--same agent record for all Library of Congress subject headings AAT genre headings
7. Ongoing New materials are accessioned directly into ArchivesSpace Record creation walkthroughs on the wiki Student workers are adding inventory lists (box and folder) to existing finding aids Still a work in progress, but it is growing
8. Now let's look at our public site: http://unomaha-public.lyrasistechnology.org/ Tabs across top Search Harry Duncan Harold Chenoweth Film Collection Resource record Side navigation Nested components Breadcrumbs for nested components Strange: Digital object is linked to component, so it looks like two separate records for the same thing. Now let's look at the staff interface (log in and show) Minor bug: doesn't retain my preferred repository Browse Accessions Linked to resource record Option to spawn resource record from accession record Subjects Facets limit to source or type Agents e.g.: UNO Office of Business and Finance Links to related agents Links to accessions, resources, archival objects, etc. Tangent: Those of you who are catalogers reading up on BIBFRAME and wondering "yeah, but what does linked data actually look like?" here's your answer--this is linked data. This isn't BIBFRAME, but I imagine BIBFRAME could end up working similarly to this. e.g.: Les Valentine Event record Search Oddity -- keyword searches will pick up records that do not appear to contain the keyword, because some linked record (such as an agent or subject) does contain that keyword. e.g.: Search for "Williamson" brings up "Hugh P. Cowden Papers," which has no reference to "Williamson," but which is linked to the agent record for the UNO Department of Communication, which in turn is linked to the agent record for Mary Ellen Williamson. Switch to test repository Create accession Create event Spawn resource Create instance If time, log into wiki and show walkthroughs
9. References ArchivesSpace. (2015). ArchivesSpace. Retrieved from http://www.archivesspace.org/ ArchivesSpace. (2015). ArchivesSpace members. Retrieved from http://archivesspace.org/members Breeding, M. (2013, November). Technology alternatives for special collections. Library Technology Guides: Document Repository. Retrieved from http://librarytechnology.org/repository/item.pl?id=18716 University of Nebraska at Omaha, Dr. C.C. and Mabel L. Criss Library. (2015). Criss Library Archives & Special Collections. Retrieved from http://unomaha-public.lyrasistechnology.org/