Archive Management System update

This is a regular monthly update about the Archive Management System project. We have been making great progress since the last Archive Management System update and here are the headlines.

Migrations

Migrations of University Library datasets are progressing well and we have been steadily refining the migration tool to reduce the number of errors generated during each migration of data. As anticipated, most of the issues have arisen from moving data from some of the unstructured fields in legacy data systems to the more structured data elements in ArchivesSpace. We have identified ‘homes’ in ArchivesSpace for all of the data fields from the legacy systems. Most of our external partners have already been in touch about supplying copies of their data to the University Library for the technical team to assess before attempting trial migrations. It is very helpful to have the data available to keep the migration process moving and we look forward to hearing from remaining partners about data supply shortly.

Training

Five Archive Management System training sessions have been organised for February and March. The first training session (fuelled by plenty of jelly babies and biscuits!) went well and we now have 8 new archivists set up to use the system for cataloguing and collection management. We hope they enjoy using the new system! If you have not signed up for a training session or need details of how to sign up, please do get in touch.

Discovery layer

The web team at the University Library have supported us by assessing the ArchivesSpace front end for accessibility issues and recommending improvements. We will have more to report on this soon.

Natalie Adams and Katrina Dean (ams@lib.cam.ac.uk)