A Long and Twisted Road: The Journey from EAD to ArchivesSpace Implementation at the University of Minnesota

ABSTRACT

This article will provide an overview of the implementation of EAD by the Archives and Special Collections Department, University of Minnesota Libraries, and the decision to implement ArchivesSpace, which necessitated addressing divergent and legacy practices. Some attention will be given to previous efforts to standardize description and accessibility at the University of Minnesota and how those efforts ultimately failed without a centralized content management system.

KEYWORDS:

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

Notes

1. Karen F. Gracy and Frank Lambert, “Who's Ready to Surf the Next Wave? A Study of Perceived Challenges to Implementing New and Revised Standards for Archival Description,” American Archivist 77, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2014): 96-132. The survey conducted by Gracy & Lambert found that of 324 respondents, 52% said their repository was “using EAD.”

2. Very little in the way of statistics or hard data on current adoption levels is available, but inferences made from the amount and type of discussion in the professional literature and conferences suggest that EAD is considered a mature and broadly accepted standard. See also “Society of American Archivists. Technical Subcommittee for Encoded Archival Description, “Preface.” “Encoded Archival Description Tag Library - Version EAD3” http:/loc.gov/ead/EAD3taglib/index.html#d0e115; Jenn Riley and Kelcy Shepherd, “A Brave New World: Archivists and Shareable Descriptive Metadata,” American Archivist 72, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 2009): 91-112.

3. The University of Minnesota is only a few miles down the road from the Minnesota Historical Society, which under the leadership of Michael Fox, implemented EAD in the late 1990s.

4. 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.

5. In 2003, Elizabeth Yakel articulated this problem when she pointed out that, “The very act of archival representation, designed to order and provide access to collections through finding aids, can also create barriers to use. Researchers must know the schemas and codes and understand the underlying systems of privileging, classifying, and selecting that comprise both arrangement and description.” “Archival Representation,” Archival Science 3, no. 1 (2003): 2.

6. Czechowski and Friedman-Shedlov, “Tales from the Shoulders of Giants.”

7. “Archivists’ Toolkit Overview,” http://www.archiviststoolkit.org/overview/phase2.html, accessed September 8, 2017.

8. See http://www.dlxs.org/about/aboutdlxs.html

9. Jill Tatem, “EAD: Obstacles to Implementation, Opportunities for Understanding,” Archival Issues 23, no. 2 (1998): 155-169. p.160.

10. See for example, Sonia Yaco, “It's Complicated: Barriers to EAD Implementation,” The American Archivist 71, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2008): 456-475.

11. For more information on the implementation process we undertook, see Lisa Calahan and Kate Dietrick, “Setting the Stage and Keeping Sane: Implementing ArchivesSpace at the University of Minnesota,” Journal of Archival Organization 13, no. 3–4 (2016).

12. See the implementation process described by Paromita Biswas and Elizabeth Skene in “From Silos to (Archives)Space: Moving Legacy Finding Aids Online as a multi-Department Library Collaboration,” The Reading Room 1, no. 2 (2016): 65-84.

13. More detail on our migration challenges and solutions in Calahan and Dietrick, “Setting the Stage,” 2016.

14. Biswas and Skene, “From Silos to (Archives)Space,” 2016, p. 77.