Digital Project Demonstration by Katherine Kott
The ArchivesSpace community is building an open-source web application to manage descriptive information for archives, manuscripts, and digital objects, with generous support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Notes on the ArchivesSpace demonstration at the Center for Jewish History’s “From Access to Integration” conference:
Objective of ArchivesSpace: To build a “next generation” archives management tool
(A community effort, led by the libraries of New York University, the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and the University of California, San Diego)
During the presentation, Katherine Kott identifies the need for improved digital object management; more scalable solutions; and the opportunity to consolidate platforms.
She suggests ways to meet these needs: designing and developing software using a flexible technology framework; including digital objects in data models; including functionality of both Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon; attaching the product to an existing “organizational home” (which can provide access to both a standalone version of software for archives of all types and sizes, and a version for consortia, or large institutions, to host on behalf of their constituencies. “organizational home” can also facilitate ongoing maintenance and enhancements, including community contributions)
Goal: To sustain an open-source community
Starting development in January 2012.
Members of team: steering committee; technical architect; development manager; archivists; senior software developer; build/release management team; migration facilitators; end-user and systems documentation specialist; developer
Implications for integration of information about the Jewish experience:
Flexible support for varied archival workflows; compliance with standards allows for descriptive metadata export for aggregation (building websites that link disparate collections); Multi-tenant solutions (if several small organizations want to get together to run an instance of ArchivesSpace, that would also be possible)
groups.google.com/group/archivesspace/
You can volunteer to do beta testing! And there are other ways to get involved: http://www.archivesspace.org/get-involved/
Join the conversation: #cjh-a2i