[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Migrating from Archives Toolkit

[Corey Schmidt]

Nigel,

We went from AT to ASpace last year, so I can speak a little bit to your situation. You might want to try creating a new repository for your University Archives in ArchivesSpace, exporting all the resources from AT in EAD, and using ArchivesSpace's EAD import tool to import all the resources into that repository. I would suggest trying this on a staging or dev instance of ArchivesSpace first, so you can play around with the imports before making changes in production.

Some things to note, batch importing EADs into ArchivesSpace is tricky because you can queue up a lot of imports but if any one of those EADs fails, the whole background job for importing will fail. The way to get "around" this is to import one EAD at a time and catch any jobs that fail. If you want to automate this, using python + the ArchivesSpace API would be perfect for creating a bunch of background jobs for individual EAD imports. I've thought about making a script like that, but it's tricky and can hit the ArchivesSpace server hard if not coded properly.

Another thing to note is other data in AT won't be transferred using EAD imports. Info like controlled vocabulary lists, users, locations, subjects, names, and assessments won't be included. You can import Accessions, Digital Objects, Locations, and Assessments into ArchivesSpace similarly to resources, but using CSVs, not EADs. Importing subjects and agents (names) into ArchivesSpace would have to be in MARCXML. How you get those out of AT I'm not sure off the top of my head.

If you were not trying to import the data into an existing ArchivesSpace instance, I would recommend the AT --> AS Migrator Tool<https://github.com/archivesspace/at-migration/releases>, which copies all the data from AT into an empty ArchivesSpace instance.

If you want to talk about it more, feel free to reach out to me and I can try to help in whatever way I can.

Sincerely,

Corey

Corey Schmidt
ArchivesSpace Project Manager | University of Georgia Libraries
Email: Corey.Schmidt at uga.edu<mailto:Corey.Schmidt at uga.edu>
Phone: +1-706-542-8151
From: archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org <archivesspace_users_group-bounces at lyralists.lyrasis.org> On Behalf Of Nigel Bond
Sent: Wednesday, July 7, 2021 6:05 PM
To: archivesspace_users_group at lyralists.lyrasis.org
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Migrating from Archives Toolkit

[EXTERNAL SENDER - PROCEED CAUTIOUSLY]
Hi everyone,
Looking for some assistance if possible.

What is the best way to migrate/import legacy data from Archivist's Toolkit into an existing and active ArchivesSpace production environment.  Our University Archivist has been using Archivist's toolkit and would like to upgrade to ArchivesSpace but as the University Special Collections is already using ArchivesSpace we would like to create a repository  within the existing production environment for the University Archives rather than  separate production environment.

Any suggestions very welcome.

Nga mihi nui..


Dr. Nigel Bond, Team Leader, Cultural Collections (Special Collections)

Cultural Collections | Te Tumu Herenga - Libraries and Learning Services | The University of Auckland
5 Alfred Street, Auckland 1010
Private Bag 92019 | Auckland 1142 | New Zealand | Telephone (649) 9237168
Blog: http://www.news.library.auckland.ac.nz/tag/special-collections/

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/pipermail/archivesspace_users_group/attachments/20210708/2aa1fb72/attachment-0001.html>