Setting the Stage and Keeping Sane: Implementing ArchivesSpace at the University of Minnesota

ABSTRACT

As the University of Minnesota's Archives and Special Collections began the daunting task of migrating into ArchivesSpace over 5,000 finding aids from fifteen different units, a clearly defined workflow provided clarity and success. This article outlines how staff developed an implementation timeline and workflow, harnessed support from partners in IT, provided training, and what the benchmarks to success were. By sharing this well-documented and thought-out implementation workflow, it can provide guidance as others try to navigate the many moving parts of implementing new collection management technology.

KEYWORDS:

• archival description
• archival management systems
• ArchivesSpace
• EAD
• encoded archival description
• online finding aids
• University of Minnesota

Notes

1. For more information on the University of Minnesota's adoption of EAD, see Leslie Czechowski and Lara Friedman-Shedlov, “Tales from the Shoulders of Giants: Collaborative Implementation of Encoded Archival Description at the University of Minnesota Libraries,” Journal of Archival Organization 5, no. 3 (2007): 9–29.

2. DLXS was a tool developed in 1996 by University of Michigan to make collections searchable online. See http://www.dlxs.org/about/aboutdlxs.html.

3. The ASC Implementation Team Charter can be viewed as a Google Document at https://z.umn.edu/ASpaceCharter.

4. See Appendix 1 for detailed timeline.

5. Max Eckard, “Implementing ArchivesSpace” last modified April 20, 2015. http://archival-integration.blogspot.com/2015/04/implementing-archivesspace.html.

6. ArchivesSpace@Yale, accessed December 2017. https://campuspress.yale.edu/yalearchivesspace/.

7. Paromita Biswas and Elizabeth Skene, “From Silos to (Archives)Space: Moving Legacy Finding Aids Online as a multi-Department Library Collaboration,” The Reading Room 1, no. 2 (Spring 2016): 65–84. p. 69.

8. Similar issues were encountered by the Bentley Historical Library and Harvard Library. Dalla Pillen, “Legacy EAD Import into ArchivesSpace” last modified April 28, 2015. http://archival-integration.blogspot.com/2015/04/legacy-ead-import-into-archivesspace.html. Dave Mayo and Kate Bowers, “The Devil's Shoehorn: A Case study of EAD to ArchivesSpace migration at a large university,” Code4Lib Journal, 35 (January 30, 2017).

9. Please contact the ArchivesSpace Implementation Team for more information on the user guides. [email protected]

10. For more information on the University of Minnesota's EAD practices and legacy, see Kate Dietrick, Lara Friedman-Shedlov, and Caitlin Marineau, “A Long and Twisted Road: The Journey from EAD to ArchivesSpace Implementation,” Journal of Archival Organization 13, no. 3–4 (2016).

11. Society of American Archivists, Describing Archives: A Content Standard (Chicago: Society of American Archivists, 2004), 8.

12. Access to the Implementation List is available as a Google Document. https://z.umn.edu/ImplementationList

13. For more information on changed collection processing and workflows, see Kathryn Hujda, Caitlin Marineau, and Amanda Wick “Maximum Product, Even Less Process: Increasing Efficiencies in Archival Processing Using ArchivesSpace,” Journal of Archival Organization 13, no. 3–4 (2016).