[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Empty space within a box

Fri Mar 1 11:49:16 EST 2019

What you are looking for is what we have in our local container management system, and that is a concept called “group box”. Many repositories have these, some call them shared boxes, or small collection boxes, or have other terms for this common practice that doesn’t have a common name.

A group box is a chimera that is not difficult to model in relational databse:

  *   Administratively, it is a shelving convention, so it has relationships to the archival containers that it holds
  *   Physically, it a box, so it also has characteristics of a box such as a container profile, and a relationship with a location.

We are unfortunately unlikely to see this concept  developed for ArchivesSpace any time soon.  At the Harvard University Archives  (HUA) we are planning to migrate our local container management system to ArchivesSpace, we are sad to say we have to choose only one of these types of records to try to hold this data. We are working on modeling these as locations. One reason is that we have about 9000 group boxes holding 85,000 containers. By sheer numbers, 85,000 is the worse impact.

The greatest reason we will model these as shelves is that we have extensive container information and if we were to transform containers to “subcontainers” in ArchivesSpace, we would lose all the container profile information on those 85,000 things. Modeling a “location” with essentially a box profile means we can eventually upgrade these group box “location” records to actual group boxes in some future system that accommodates group boxes or a future version of ArchivesSpace that has this concept.   Here’s a few screenshots from our test system showing how HUA is planning to model a shelf/location as a group box (this is in the planning and testing stages, not implemented yet).

The location profile for a document box size group box:
[cid:image003.jpg at 01D4D024.CB501450]

A group box expressed as a location
[cid:image004.jpg at 01D4D024.CB501450]

From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> On Behalf Of Olivia S Solis
Sent: Friday, March 01, 2019 10:25 AM
To: Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Empty space within a box

Thank you Paul and Laurel for your responses!

Paul, there doesn't appear to be any kind of note we can attach to the box itself as it relates to features of the box. We can attach a note about the box's location, as shown in the attachments to this email where "OD" represents "oversize drawer" — we still need to go back and number the specific folders within the drawer, which we treat as a location. But remaining extent isn't related to location, so I'm loath to document this information in the location note. And again in some cases, as in the second screenshot attached, there can be dozens different archival objects in a container, documenting this kind of info in archival objects is not feasible. Incidentally, we'd love to have a note for boxes themselves for instances e.g. when a box's name has changed or the box is dedicated to separated born-digital materials.

Laurel, that may be a solution. But as we already have 175 different container profiles, one that could be difficult to manage, particularly since our processors sometimes need to know that the box has 3 vs 1 inches remaining. Still, the primary candidates are bankers boxes and Hollingers, so it could be possible to restrict these kinds of container profiles to those container types. I will raise this option with my team.

Again, thank you for your input!!

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 9:57 AM McPhee, Laurel <lmcphee at ucsd.edu<mailto:lmcphee at ucsd.edu>> wrote:
Hi Olivia,

If I understand your problem correctly, it may be similar to something we’ve addressed using the container profile feature.

We recently completed a survey of our map case drawers, and wanted to express each drawer as a shared top container (each drawer can contain many oversize folders, of course, from different collections). The challenge was we also wanted to find a way to communicate if a drawer was full, or had space in it for more, so someone could be at their desk using ASpace and figure out a likely location to put something new (as opposed to going on a space-hunting expedition in the stacks).

Our solution was to create our 200-or-so map case drawer top containers (the unique indicator for each one is MC-XXX, X being the drawer number) , but based on our survey, also assign a profile to each drawer that makes the “status” of the drawer explicit: the name of the profile assigned to each drawer is either “Map case drawer – AVAILABLE” or “Map case drawer – FULL”. Using the assigned profiles, we always know what has space in it, and what is stuffed, because we can search on that profile name. And if a processor fills up a drawer, they simply change the profile from AVAILABLE to FULL. I’m not sure if this is a hacky work-around, or a brilliant solution, but it works for us, and got us away from having a separate, always out-of-date spreadsheet that told us the status of our drawers. It does require a fresh survey, for which we used undergraduate workers, to give you a snapshot of your container situation.

May all your containers be half full ☺,
Laurel

From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org<mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> <archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org<mailto:archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org>> On Behalf Of Olivia S Solis
Sent: Wednesday, February 27, 2019 12:46 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group <archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org<mailto:archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org>>
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Empty space within a box

Hello all,

We've been wondering if we are alone in this struggle. So we are a space-deficient archives. Our stacks are boxed to the brim and processors hunt for on-site space voraciously, particularly for collections that are just a few inches in extent. For this reason, we have a column in our spreadsheet shelf lists — which we're trying to wean off of now that we are increasingly utilizing the container management functionality of ASpace — that includes inches left in a box. There are some boxes that house 20 or so different small collections, so documenting this information at the archival object level seems, to put it mildly, inefficient.

Does anyone else have this problem? If so, have you found a way to address it in ASpace?

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
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--
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
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