[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Agent Relationship Associative Relator

[Collopy, Peter S.]

Hi all. Here at Caltech we’re experimenting with using ArchivesSpace agent records in order to link together our information and holdings related to Caltech people across several digital and tangible repositories. One key piece of information is what relationship each individual had to Caltech (typically one or more of faculty, student, staff, trustee). It makes sense to us to do this using Related Agents subrecords of the agent, with an associative relationship between each individual and a Corporate Entity agent record representing Caltech as an organization. It also makes sense to us to use the Relationship Type field as a controlled vocabulary of these specific relationships individuals have with Caltech.

The agent_relationship_associative_relator controlled value list, though, is one of the ones which is configured to be uneditable in ArchivesSpace. I understand from past emails in this list (specifically Adam Jazairi and Alexander Duryee’s emails on March 8, 2018) that it’s possible to make these uneditable lists editable. I have two questions I’d appreciate help with from anyone knowledgable, then:

1. How does one make these lists editable? I don’t see anything in config.rb. Does it require more direct interaction with the database? Am I overlooking something?

2. Would extending this particular controlled value list cause any problems for exports to standard formats? Agents only export to EAC-CPF. It looks like the exporter puts the relator (currently the default, “is_associative_with”) in cpfRelationType, which doesn’t look right from the EAC-CPF spec to me, but it doesn’t seem like it would cause problems to put “is_faculty_of” or the link there instead—if we even have a reason to export EAC-CPF.

Thanks for any thoughts!

Peter