[Archivesspace_Users_Group] ArchivesSpace Update - May 2021

Fri May 28 09:45:05 EDT 2021

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ArchivesSpace Update – May 2021

Development

ArchivesSpace is announcing the availability of v3.0.0, with a caveat. Due to an issue with the migration of Agent Contact Notes during upgrades, we are asking people to pause upgrades for a short time. We will be putting out a 3.0.1 release that fixes this issue in early June.

ArchivesSpace 3.0.0 (and its upcoming sibling 3.0.1) centers around changes to the agents module of ArchivesSpace to make it more standards-compliant with EAC-CPF and the MARCXML format for authority data, enabling deeper and richer description of people, families, and corporate entities, their relationships to each other and their relationships to materials held outside ArchivesSpace. This work is the result of a community specification involving the participation of many users across the ArchivesSpace community, mostly notably Cory Nimer, Sue Luftschein, and Brad Westbrook. Through this work new fields and sub-records have been added to the agents schema, and staff and public interface views, imports, exports, and auxiliary functionality like agent merging have all been updated. There is also a new Light mode, which provides the option for users to continue to work with agent records in the staff interface in a pared down view that is similar to that of ArchivesSpace versions prior to this one.

This release also contains improvements in some other areas of the application contributed by community developers and program team developers and contractors. While all are valuable, a few community contributions are of particular note:

  *   For spreadsheet fans, the developers and archivists at Harvard University have contributed a spreadsheet feature focused on adding top containers and associated information to existing archival objects. With this feature, a user will download a file of archival objects for a resource, add top container information outside the application, and then import the information into the resource record, from the Load via Spreadsheet area.
  *   There is a new Unpublish All feature, contributed by Nick Butler at the University of Cambridge. This feature allows for unpublishing everything in a resource or groups of archival objects within a resource and represents the conversion of this popular plugin to core code.
  *   Hudson Molonglo developers James Bullen, Mark Triggs, and Payten Giles contributed additional performance, backend and staff interface improvements. These derived from work HM did for Queensland State Archives as part of a larger project.

Thanks very much to all of our community members who contributed code for this release: Andrew Morrison, Blake Carver, Bobbi Fox, Brian Harrington, Corey Schmidt, Dave Mayo, Dee Dee Crema, Fred Reiss, James Bullen, Katie Amaral, Mark Triggs, Nick Butler, Noah Geraci, Payten Giles, Peter Heiner, and Steve Majewski. We were also pleased to work for the first time with contractors April Rieger and Braydon Justice of Notch8 on a small project.

Program team members Lora Woodford, Mark Cooper, and Brian Hoffman wrote and reviewed extensive code and supervised the work of Manny Rodriguez, our longtime contractor who devoted very substantial time to the expansion of the agents module. This is also the first release under Brian’s supervision as our new Tech Lead. This release would, of course, not have been possible without the hard work of our community groups, including our Development Prioritization, Testing, Metadata Standards, Technical Documentation, and User Documentation sub-teams, the API Documentation Ad Hoc Working Group, and the Core Committers Group. We’d also like to thank the SNAC Technology Infrastructure Working Group for reviewing and testing the changes for EAC-CPF at various points along the way.

ArchivesSpace 3.0.0 was a major undertaking and we appreciate everyone who has been involved along the way. Thanks to all for your help and support.

We have published an updated and simplified roadmap related to development for the ArchivesSpace application at https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/2634973195/Roadmap. This new version highlights work currently scheduled for the next 12 months. It also mentions priorities that are not currently scheduled for the time period but that could shift if additional resources or community partners are identified. We are aiming to put releases out three times a year, though we may have occasional additional releases in between larger ones to address specific issues (for example, to address the agent contact note migration issue in 3.0.0 mentioned above). As a release approaches we will provide more specific details about the work it will contain. The roadmap will be updated as releases come out or significant changes take place.

Membership Renewals

ArchivesSpace is developed by and for the community that uses it, and strengthened by services and activities that support our community and connect us to one another. As we get close to the end of another membership year, we want to give a special thanks to all of the institutions that have joined us as members. ArchivesSpace membership is our primary source of revenue and informs and sustains every aspect of the program, including software development, support and engagement. Thanks for all that your support makes possible.

ArchivesSpace membership renewals for 2021-2022 are currently being sent to all current members. If you have any questions, or if you would like to join as a new member for the 2021-2022 membership year, please let us know at ArchivesSpaceHome at lyrasis.org<mailto:ArchivesSpaceHome at lyrasis.org>. We look forward to another year working together.

Announcing the ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership Cohort

We are delighted to announce our inaugural cohort for the ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership, a new program designed to offer support for implementing the ArchivesSpace application to institutions that are themselves or primarily serve communities currently underrepresented in the ArchivesSpace community. The five institutions are:

Black Cultural Archives – a unique community archive based in the heart of Brixton, South London, that was established in 1981 to collect contemporary records of Black communities and seeks to transform the understanding of local, national and global Black history.

Detroit Sound Conservancy – deliberately rooted in and informed by Detroit's community activism, a community-based archive that tells Detroit’s story through the experiences of its musical people.

Spelman College – a liberal arts college in Atlanta that is one of the only two remaining HBCUs founded to educate women of the African diaspora. In addition to being the official college repository, the Archives also documents women of the African Diaspora broadly, and houses the Audre Lorde and Toni Cade Bambara papers.

Weeksville Heritage Center - a historic site, house museum, and cultural center in Brooklyn, New York, whose mission is to use education, the arts and a social justice lens to preserve, document and inspire engagement with the history of Weeksville, one of the largest free Black communities in pre-Civil War America.

Xavier University of Louisiana – the only Catholic HBCU in the country, with historic collections that focus on Black history, New Orleans and Louisiana history, Black Catholics, and the Gulf Coast region, in addition to XULA institutional history.

We were fortunate to receive many strong applications, from a fascinating group of archives and collecting institutions, which provided our review team with quite a challenge when putting together this relatively small cohort. I'd like to thank review team members Audra Eagle Yun of UC Irvine, Skyla Hearn of Cook County Historic Archives and Records Office, Lizeth Ramírez of UCLA, and Brittany Newberry of Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center (who chaired the group), along with ArchivesSpace Community Engagement Coordinator Jessica Crouch, for all their hard work.

We are excited to have such excellent partners in this new endeavor. These institutions will join our member community officially on July 1, but we are already working with them to make sure they have what they need to get started with the application and the community. Please join me in welcoming them to ArchivesSpace!

Webinar Announcement: Making the Most of the ArchivesSpace Classifications Module and Library of Congress Subject Headings at the University of Oregon

When: June 30, 2021
Time: 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. ET (11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. PT)
Where: Zoom

Registration: https://lyrasis.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9vyoqxiySM-UnKuHCnfexA

 This webinar will be recorded and made available on the ArchivesSpace YouTube channel.

Webinar description:

In March 2020, processing archivists in Special Collections and University Archives (SCUA) at the University of Oregon Libraries began experimenting with the Classifications module in ArchivesSpace, seeking a way to create interactive, browsable subject guides for new reference staff and patrons. Using existing controlled vocabulary in SCUA’s MARC records, processing archivists employed data exploration tools in OpenRefine (formerly GoogleRefine) to collate collections into subject areas based on Library of Congress Classifications. Using OpenRefine and additional subject analysis of the collections, processing archivists were able to create comprehensive lists of SCUA’s collections by subjects represented. These lists could then be uploaded into ArchivesSpace Classifications, giving staff and patrons a tool to browse archival collections as they would books on a shelf in the general stacks of the university library.

This webinar will explore the MARC-to-Classifications workflow in OpenRefine, as well as subject analysis methods used to assign both classifications and subclassifications based on numerical collection data. Classification Web, the primary tool used for subject analysis and classification, will be juxtaposed with other open-access tools in the hope that institutions may replicate aspects of the project regardless of subscription-based resources. Highlighted resources used for subject analysis will include Library of Congress Classification Web (subscription-based), Library of Congress Authorities (open access), and the Library of Congress Classification Outline (open access).

A Q&A will follow.

Presenter Information:

Liliya Benz is the Special Projects Processing Archivist for Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Oregon. She received her Bachelor of Arts in applied mathematics from the University of Oregon and her Master of Library Science with a concentration in archives studies from Emporia State University.

Alex Bisio (she/her/hers) is the Lead Processing Archivist in Special Collections and University Archives at the University of Oregon Libraries. She earned her MSLIS in Archives Management and MA in American History from Simmons College, and her BA in American History from Santa Clara University. Before joining SCUA at the University of Oregon, she served as the Associate Archivist of the Jesuit Archives: Central United States in Saint Louis, Missouri, and the Archivist for the Critical Theory Archive at the University of California, Irvine.

Who should attend:

Anyone using or interested in using the ArchivesSpace Classifications module.

Training Announcements

Thank you to trainers Nancy Enneking and Noah Huffman as well as everyone who participated in  the 4-session ArchivesSpace basics training held on May 11, 13, 18, and 20.  Recordings of this training are now available, linked from our community-wide training page.

Registration is currently full for the upcoming Digital Objects training on June 16, 2021.  A waitlist is available at https://forms.gle/tekMM63cdkcjeKAt9

Information about this ArchivesSpace community-wide training program, is available at https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/2331148319/ArchivesSpace+Community-Wide+Virtual+Training.

Webinar Recording Available: Managing AV Materials in ArchivesSpace

Thank you to everyone who attended our most recent webinar on managing AV materials in ArchivesSpace. In this webinar, archivists working with audiovisual materials and ArchivesSpace discussed how their shared experiences have led them to help and bolster one another’s work in ArchivesSpace and in managing audiovisual materials.  They also discussed the specific projects they have worked on to describe audiovisual materials in ArchivesSpace.

To watch the recording of this webinar, visit https://archivesspace.org/archives/6901.

Volunteer for the ArchivesSpace Member Forum Planning Team

We are currently looking for volunteers for the working group to plan our seventh annual ArchivesSpace Annual Member Forum<https://archivesspace.org/using-archivesspace/archivesspace-forums>! Just as in previous years, this forum will be a free opportunity for staff from ArchivesSpace member institutions to meet and share information with each other and the program team about all things ArchivesSpace.  While traditionally an in-person event, ArchivesSpace will be holding its seventh Annual Member Forum virtually. Although it will be held during the week of the Society of American Archivists Annual Meeting as in previous years, the Member Forum is not part of SAA and does not require registration for the SAA Annual Meeting.

This free event is a chance for ArchivesSpace members to come together to highlight the work they are doing in ArchivesSpace, show off new plugins or tools they’ve developed, and attend discussions and trainings on a variety of topics. All community members are welcome to volunteer for this working group.  We will schedule meetings and the forum itself in ways that allow for participation across time zones.

If you would like to volunteer, please respond by June 14, 2021.  And if you have any questions, contact Jessica at jessica.crouch at lyrasis.org. We look forward to another great event, with your help!

Membership Update

We are excited to welcome our newest members to our community! Our new members since April 30 include:

  *   Arkansas State Archives (Little Rock, AR)
  *   Brooklyn Public Library (Brooklyn, NY)
  *   Detroit Sound Conservancy (Detroit, MI)
  *   McKendree University (Lebanon, IL)
  *   Our Lady of the Lake University (San Antonio, TX)
  *   San Joaquin Delta College (Stockton, CA)
  *   Talladega College (Talladega, AL)
  *   Virginia Baptist Historical Society (Richmond, VA)
  *   Xavier University of Louisiana (New Orleans, LA)

As of May 28, we have 434 General members, 21 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.

________________________________

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 Section 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.

Jessica Dowd Crouch
Community Engagement Coordinator for ArchivesSpace
jessica.crouch at lyrasis.org<mailto:jessica.crouch at lyrasis.org>
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