[Archivesspace_Users_Group] ArchivesSpace Update - November 2017

[Christine Kim]

[ASpaceOrgHome.jpg]

November 2017 Update

This month's update highlights many exciting developments that are underway. The Staff Interface Enhancement Working Group has drafted up recommendations and needs community feedback before we can move into development. We can still use some help testing the Archivists' Toolkit migration tool that migrates directly into ArchivesSpace version 2.1.2. There's also an Archon migration tool in the works but we need some test data to play with as we develop this tool. We're still accepting applications for a new DevOps Specialist to support the ArchivesSpace community. And read on for details on an open community call on Zoom in November as well as an upcoming webinar on Testing in December!


Development

The ArchivesSpace team is pleased to release version 2.2.1!

You can download the new release from Github at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v2.2.1. Please see the technical documentation for information on how to upgrade your ArchivesSpace installations.

This release includes a number of bug fixes and improvements, including contributions by community members Lora Woodford, Mark Custer, Mark Cooper, Steve Majewski, Dallas Pillen, Chris Fitzpatrick, and Brad Spry, as well as development work by our Tech Lead Laney McGlohon. Many of the bug fixes were prioritized by our Development Prioritization subteam, led by Jason Loeffler.

This release covers a number of different areas of the application. For those using the new public user interface, this release includes better relevancy ranking for search results, display of published accessions on subject and agent pages, and removes some idiosyncrasies related to search and search results pages. For those using classifications, there is now the ability to add and view linked records from classification terms as well as the top-level classification. For those using reports, this release corrects an issue in 2.2.0 where some reports were unable to run. A complete listing of what's in this release is in the release notes.

Thanks as always to all who contributed to this release, by identifying and prioritizing needed improvements, writing code, testing, and providing technical support. We appreciate all of the community efforts that make each release of the ArchivesSpace application possible and better.

If you have any question or difficulties upgrading, please just let us know.



Other development: OAuth single sign-in plugin

We are happy to share a new OAuth plugin that enables institutional single sign-on support for ArchivesSpace using Central Authentication Service (CAS) or Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML).

The plugin provides Identity Provider (IDP) sign-in link/s which redirects the user to the IDP login portal. With successful authentication, the user will have a user record created in ArchivesSpace. User group membership and permissions are handled within ArchivesSpace. The OAuth plugin handles authentication only.

The plugin and additional information is available here: https://github.com/lyrasis/aspace-oauth. Special thanks to Mark Cooper at LYRASIS for his work on this plugin.


Update from the Staff Interface Enhancement Working Group

On behalf of the Staff Interface Enhancement Working Group<https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/103454069/Staff+Interface+Enhancement+Working+Group> (SIEWG), we are pleased to share our draft recommendations for feedback and commentary.  Consisting of 34 volunteers from a broad array of member institutions, SIEWG was tasked to survey JIRA tickets and create recommendations to improve the usability and accessibility of the ArchivesSpace Staff Interface, taking into consideration the diverse experience levels and needs of staff, students, and volunteers who interact with the program.

The commenting period will be open until December 1st. We hope to submit our final recommendations to the ArchivesSpace program and publish them to Confluence in mid-December. To provide feedback, you can comment directly on the individual documents, add questions or comments to the Brainstorming and Feedback file at the end of this message, start a discussion on the User Group listserv, or email Lydia Tang, Chair of the Staff Interface Enhancement Working Group.

To view the recommendations, please visit: https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/232849469/SIEWG+draft+recommendations+open+for+feedback

Got feedback and additional ideas?  Please add it to "Brainstorming and feedback" (edit enabled) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZQwFowMnUx8AIiewqbqO08CO9TSGIe22AnYCUza9LEo/edit?usp=sharing

If you have any trouble accessing the files or would like to share your feedback in other ways, please feel free to contact Lydia at tang5 at lib.msu.edu<mailto:tang5 at lib.msu.edu> on behalf of the group.


Open Members Call on Zoom! November 29 at 2-3pm EST (11am-12pm PST)

It's been an exciting and busy year for all of us! As we approach the end of the calendar year, we would love to get a better sense of your ArchivesSpace experience, as well as give you a chance to ask the program team and each other questions.

We are hosting an informal Zoom call on November 29 at 2-3pm EST (11am-12pm PST) so we can hear updates from each other and encourage group discussion. You will be able to join by either computer or phone. Our hope is to provide a space to surface news, ideas, and challenges. This might be an especially good chance to talk about non-technical questions or ideas that you weren't quite sure about posting on the Users Group listserv but really would like help with from us or your peers.

Join from PC, Mac, Linux, iOS or Android: https://zoom.us/j/804518729. Please visit http://archivesspace.org/open-zoom-nov/ for additional information on joining the call. Please email Kim at christine.kim at lyrasis.org<mailto:christine.kim at lyrasis.org> if you have any questions. We look forward to "seeing" you there!


Webinar on Testing: December 14 at 1-2pm EST (10-11am PST)

Before we make any release or update widely available, we perform tests in every nook and cranny in ArchivesSpace. Testing applications plays an essential role in our workflow to ensure the application is growing in the right direction, and not breaking already functional working components. Join us on December 14 as we explore why testing is vital to our growth and process, as well as the testing methods our community implements to ensure new features and fixes are improvements.

Alexander Duryee (Metadata Archivist, New York Public Library) has been a major contributor in the ArchivesSpace Core Committers Group. He has taken a lead role to delve into test automation for ArchivesSpace releases. Alex will share how he runs unit testing so certain components of each release can be tested through automated commands.

Miloche Kottman (Head of Cataloging & Archival Processing, University of Kansas) is leading the Testing sub-team for ArchivesSpace. Once a pre-release version is available, Miloche and the Testing sub-team implement a workflow to run through basic functions inside ArchivesSpace, employing the diverse perspectives of archivists.  Miloche will share insight into how testing is carried out by the team before each release finally becomes available.

Please join us on December 14 at 1-2pm EST (10-11am PST) as Alex and Miloche share their experiences and insights on testing pre-release versions of ArchivesSpace. Please feel free to bring any questions you have.

The webinar will be available through: http://lyrasis.adobeconnect.com/rai0bzfc3h54/ and the recording will be available at a later date.

No registration required. The session is limited to the first 100 participants. Please feel free to host a webinar viewing group.

If you have any questions about this webinar, please contact Kim at christine.kim at lyrasis.org<mailto:christine.kim at lyrasis.org>. We look forward to seeing you at the webinar!


Webinar on the new PUI: Recording available

Thanks to all who joined our webinar on the ArchivesSpace public user interface. For those who were unable to make it, the webinar has been recorded and is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_rNXM8E-bs

Special thanks to Mark Custer (Archivist and Metadata Coordinator, Yale University), Susan Pyzynski (Associate Librarian of Houghton Library for Technical Services, Harvard University), Annie Benefiel (Archivist for Collection Management, GVSU) and Leigh Rupinski (Archivist for Public Services & Community Engagement, GVSU).


Regional Forums: Announcement & Request for Help

We have been looking forward to offering regional forums for the ArchivesSpace community. We envision these forums as opportunities for our diverse ArchivesSpace members to meet up more locally to share and learn from each other through workshops, focused discussion sessions, and presentations.

We are happy to announce the first regional forum will be coming to the Boston area during the week of April 23-27, 2018. Exact date and location will be announced next month.

In the meantime, we would love for the content to be shaped by the community. If you would like to join the working group to plan the ArchivesSpace Regional Forum in Boston, please email Kim at christine.kim at lyrasis.org<mailto:christine.kim at lyrasis.org>. This working group will focus on organizing the content and identifying presenters, and you do not need to be in the Boston area to be involved. The program team will take care of any details concerning cost and logistics.

We also need your help to come up with a creative and community-centric name for the ArchivesSpace regional forums. Please send any ideas over to Kim at christine.kim at lyrasis.org<mailto:christine.kim at lyrasis.org>. All suggestions are welcome, no matter how descriptive, punny, or bizarre.


Call for Testers - Archivists' Toolkit to ArchivesSpace Migration

The ArchivesSpace Program Team continues to look for people who haven't yet migrated from Archivists' Toolkit to ArchivesSpace to test updates to the Archivists' Toolkit migration tool.

We have developed a pre-release version of the Archivists' Toolkit migration tool that migrates directly into ArchivesSpace version 2.1.2. In addition to the updates we have already made, we are planning to add the assessment information from AT to the migration tool once the assessment module is available in a production release of ArchivesSpace.

If you're interested, please email Laney at laney.mcglohon at lyrasis.org<mailto:laney.mcglohon at lyrasis.org>.


Request for Archon Test Data -- Archon to ArchivesSpace Migration

We are currently working on an Archon migration tool but need additional test data from Archon users before we can share a pre-release version for public testing. If you have any test data you would like to contribute as we develop the Archon migration tool, please email Laney at laney.mcglohon at lyrasis.org<mailto:laney.mcglohon at lyrasis.org>.

Please note: We will send out a call for testers once the Archon migration tool is ready for testing.


We're hiring! DevOps Specialist supporting ArchivesSpace

We are still accepting applications for the DevOps Specialist position supporting the ArchivesSpace community and the ArchivesSpace program team.

LYRASIS, the organizational home for ArchivesSpace, recently approved an additional staff position based in Technology Services to support ArchivesSpace technical needs. The position description can be found at https://www.lyrasis.org/job/Pages/LYRASIS-Positions.aspx. While the position will report to the Director of Technology Services, the person in the position will work closely with the ArchivesSpace program team to provide technical support for ArchivesSpace members as well as coding and other technical assistance for the application. Over time the person will have additional responsibilities for supporting LYRASIS hosting clients.

This position is ideal for someone who is familiar with ArchivesSpace or other archival/collection management systems and likes to help people with their technical questions. Previous experience with multiple platforms (Linux, Mac, Windows), MySQL, Java, Ruby, and Apache Solr is required.

We are excited about this additional support within the organizational home for ArchivesSpace technical needs. If you are interested in applying, or know someone who is, applications, including a cover letter and resume, are being accepted via email at human.resources at lyrasis.org<mailto:human.resources at lyrasis.org>. If you have questions about the position, feel free to reach out to Christine (christine.dibella at lyrasis.org<mailto:christine.dibella at lyrasis.org>) or Laney (laney.mcglohon at lyrasis.org<mailto:laney.mcglohon at lyrasis.org>).


Membership Update

Our new members since October 16  include:

  *   Cal State University San Marcos
  *   Southern Illinois University School of Medicine
  *   National Library of Medicine, History of Medicine Division
  *   William Rainey Harper College
  *   Hope College Library -- Joint Archives of Holland
  *   San Francisco Symphony
  *   British School at Rome
  *   New-York Historical Society

New educational member:

  *   UCLA Graduate School of Education and Information Studies

As of November 17, we have 339 General members, 17 Educational Program members, and 3 Registered Service Providers. If you are interested in your institution becoming a member of ArchivesSpace, please email us at ArchivesSpaceHome at lyrasis.org<mailto:ArchivesSpaceHome at lyrasis.org> for more information.

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ArchivesSpace monthly updates provide news about ArchivesSpace community and program activities and are sent to our member listservs, the ArchivesSpace Google Group, and SAA's Collection Management Tools roundtable listserv, as well as being posted on the ArchivesSpace website. Please feel free to share this update with people you know who have an interest in ArchivesSpace but may not be on one of these lists.

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