[Archivesspace_Users_Group] ArchivesSpace Board update

[Carol A Mandel]

Dear ArchivesSpace members,



I am writing to report on the ArchivesSpace Governance Board 1st Quarter
meeting which was held Monday, September 19, 2016.    We met in person in
Chicago.



During the meeting, I was honored to be elected to another term as chair
for 2016-2018.



We were pleased to welcome three new board members:

•                  Alston Cobourn is the Digital Scholarship Librarian at
Washington and Lee University. She represents the small membership level.

•                  Gregor Trinkhaus-Randall is the new liaison to the
ArchivesSpace Board from the LYRASIS Board.  He was most recently the Vice
Chair of the LYRASIS board and a former SAA President.  Gregor succeeds Jay
Schafer as the LYRASIS Board Liaison. We thank Jay for his service.

•                  Audra Eagle Yun is the Head of Special Collections &
Archives and University Archivist from University of California, Irvine.
She represents the very large membership level.



We know that your highest priority is the continued improvement of the
functionality of the software and we are working to ensure the best
processes to achieve that.  In Chicago, we unanimously agreed to change the
budgeted Developer position to a Tech Lead position.  This will allow for
stronger technical leadership on behalf of and in engagement with the
community, more proactive code contribution from both the user community
and the Tech Lead Position itself, and better coordination with 3rd party
vendor code development. Upgrading this position will not slow down any of
the hiring process or the technical development process. The Board’s
continuing objective is to ensure that membership dues are invested in the
most effective way to meet the community’s needs.



We also approved a plan for increasing support for members.  The
ArchivesSpace staff and the ArchivesSpace member community are excellent
resources, but sometimes members have more advanced technical questions.
This fall, we will be working with LYRASIS Technology Services to offer a
part time support position to answer technical questions on a wide variety
of topics, such upgrading to v1.5, local installations, data migrations,
and more. We will be finalizing this arrangement in the weeks ahead and
will have a more formal announcement soon.



Other areas covered during the 1st Quarter Board meeting included:

•                  Reviewing training options - training videos were added
to the ArchivesSpace wiki in the last quarter and are seeing high use; we
continue to explore new ways to strengthen training opportunities

•                  Working to update the ASpace membership agreement

•                  Developing the process and timeline of the 5 year
organizational home review which will be coming due in June of 2018



In closing, while we are not resting on our laurels, I am very happy to
report that the ArchivesSpace program is fiscally sustainable, is vibrant
and is growing at a steady rate.   As of September, there are 301 members
across the five membership levels, 10 Educational members, and three
Registered Service Providers hosting 65 ArchivesSpace databases.



The Board welcomes your communications and comments to any and all of us,
and we extend our thanks to all of you for your continuing support and
ongoing contributions to the community we are building.



Respectfully,

Carol A. Mandel

Chair, ArchivesSpace Governance Board
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