[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Offsite boxes and ASpace

[Olivia S Solis]

Hello all,

We're trying to figure out a situation that can't be uncommon. We've got a
lot of onsite boxes. We've got a lot of offsite boxes. Researchers need to
request offsite boxes a week in advance. Many of our collections have
nebulous access restrictions like, "Portions of this collection are stored
offsite". I want clarity for our researchers.

We're slowly carrying out a shelf read project and soon will know exactly
where every box is. How have some of you all who have all of your
containers anchored to locations communicated that something is offsite to
researchers?

We publish EAD records to a regional consortium and are working on setting
up Aeon to integrate with it and, eventually, the ASpace public interface.

I have thought about adding a physical location tag for all archival
objects that have associated offsite boxes stating such, but I don't like
this for a couple of reasons:

   1. It will look horrible. Whole series and collections that are stored
   offsite will have this repetitive information in archival object after
   archival object.
   2. It will not automatically update when the box moves. For various
   logistical reasons, many of our boxes move around a lot or are slated to
   move to new locations. The whole point of having box location information
   in a database is that we only will have to change the information in one
   place.

Even if there's not a good EAD solution, we can point researchers to the
public interface. I've not much experience with the public interface, but
should it be difficult to customize the box display so that you can see
building information associated with a box?

I'm just curious how other institutions have tackled this problem. I'd like
it to be readily apparent to researchers when they need a week to access a
box.

Thanks!
Olivia

-- 
Olivia Solis, MSIS
Metadata Coordinator
Dolph Briscoe Center for American History
The University of Texas at Austin
2300 Red River St. Stop D1100
Austin TX, 78712-1426
(512) 232-8013
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20171117/9848e16c/attachment.html>