An Introduction to ArchivesSpace and the ArchivesSpace User Community—Recap and Recording

Webinar Recap by Nicole Font

SNAP 2022 Webinar Series:
An Introduction to ArchivesSpace and the ArchivesSpace User Community
Christine Di Bella, MSI, DAS, and Jessica Crouch, MLIS, DAS, ArchivesSpace

Hosted by John Claude Esh, MLIS, CA, SNAP Section Steering Committee Member;
Organized by Lourdes Johnson, MLIS, Provisional CA, Member-At-Large, SNAP Section Steering Committee

On April 6, 2022, SNAP welcomed Christine Di Bella, MSI, DAS, and Jessica Crouch, MLIS, DAS for an informative presentation about ArchivesSpace and the ArchivesSpace user community. We greatly appreciate Christine and Jessica for joining us to provide background on the ArchivesSpace information management system and sustainability model, the ArchivesSpace user community, and the resources available to learn more about using and implementing ArchivesSpace. From my experience using ArchivesSpace, many of the resources discussed (shoutout to the training videos!) are incredibly helpful, so hopefully you’ll find this presentation valuable as you begin your ArchivesSpace journey. 

You can view the recorded session below, but here are a few key points and takeaways from the webinar

1. This presentation is meant to provide background and context on what ArchivesSpace is. It is not a system overview or walkthrough of the application.
2. ArchivesSpace is an archives information management software application that supports a range of archival functions, including accessioning, arrangement, description, preservation, and access. It is not a digital asset management system – it can’t manage digital files. 
3. ArchivesSpace is also a community of people working together to create and improve the application. It is free to download and use but has membership and community-led governance for sustainability. Using the application does not require membership, but members have the greatest say in the application’s future and get benefits that help them use it and participate in the wider community.
4. Membership to ArchivesSpace is at the organizational level. If you work at an ArchivesSpace member organization you are entitled to certain benefits only available to members. If you are not affiliated with an ArchivesSpace member organization, there are still lots of resources available to learn more about ArchivesSpace. See the links below for member and non-member resources.

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Webinar Highlights:

0:00 Welcome and Speaker Introductions
– John Esh, MLIS, CA, SNAP Steering Committee Member
– Christine Di Bella, MSI, DAS, ArchivesSpace Program Manager
– Jessica Crouch, MLIS, DAS, ArchivesSpace Community Engagement Coordinator

0:53 What is ArchivesSpace? 
– Presentation by Christine Di Bella, MSI, DAS

14:00 Available Resources 
– Presentation by Jessica Crouch, MLIS, DAS

28:20 Q&A begins

Contact Information
Website: http://archivesspace.org 
Wiki: http://wiki.archivesspace.org 
Twitter: @ArchivesSpace
Contact ArchivesSpace: Contact us: ArchivesSpaceHome@lyrasis.org 

Resources for ArchivesSpace Members
– The ArchivesSpace Help Center: https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/917045261/ArchivesSpace+Help+Center 
– The ArchivesSpace Listservs: http://lyralists.lyrasis.org/mailman/listinfo/archivesspace_users_group 
– Technical Support: https://archivesspace.org/member-area/technical-support
– Member Match Program: https://archivesspace.atlassian.net/wiki/spaces/ADC/pages/2198568994/ArchivesSpace+Member+Match+Program
– ArchivesSpace Events: https://archivesspace.org/using-archivesspace/archivesspace-forums
– You can find a list of all member benefits at: https://archivesspace.org/community/member-benefits
– Educational Program Membership: https://archivesspace.org/community/educational-program-membership

Resources for Non-Members
– Getting Started Webpage: https://archivesspace.org/using-archivesspace/getting-started
– YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCxR6D-UlSx6N6UWTeqHTjzA  
– The ArchivesSpace Google Group: https://groups.google.com/g/archivesspace
– ArchivesSpace GitHub: https://github.com/archivesspace/awesome-archivesspace
– Video for Windows installation:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8sDok-eMFo

Christine Di Bella, MSI, DAS, ArchivesSpace

Jessica Crouch, MLIS, ArchivesSpace Community Engagement Coordinator

Christine Di Bella, MSI, DAS, and Jessica Crouch, MLIS, DAS, are both archivists with over 30 years of combined experience working in archives and libraries. On the ArchivesSpace team, they are involved in all aspects of ArchivesSpace development and outreach and work closely with the ArchivesSpace member community and governance to implement and execute goals for the application. 

[Note: The SAA does not endorse products or services; inclusion does not imply endorsement.]

Thoughts? Please let us know!

We would like to know your thoughts on the types of topics you would like to see and what days and times are most convenient for you to attend a live webinar. Please complete our short survey!

If you want to present in our webinar series, contribute with a blog post, share with a member a project you are working on, please contact us at newarchivistsrt@gmail.com. We want to hear from you! 

Laptop University: Adjusting to the Online MLIS

It’s 8:15 pm. After working until 5:00, I came home, played with my dog, made dinner, cleaned up my kitchen, and now I’m sitting down with my laptop and signing into my online class portal.

This scenario is becoming normal for me, but until this semester I had never done online graduate education. For my first master’s degree I packed up and moved my life for two years, attended all my classes in person, worked on campus, and completed an on-campus internship. Sometimes I felt that it would be simpler and save time to just sleep in my little shared office, and I suspect that some people in my cohort did so on occasion. Now, as I’m beginning my second master’s degree, in library and information science, I work full-time in a university archive at the same job I started before beginning my MLIS degree, and do all of my coursework from home. This transition has brought its own set of benefits and challenges.

SAA 2015: Session 106, Yes, I Google Better: How Technology Has Changed Archival Reference

In advance of the 2015 Annual Meeting, we invited SNAP members to contribute summaries of panels, roundtable and section meetings, forums, and pop-up sessions. Summaries represent the opinions of their individual authors; they are not necessarily endorsed by SNAP, members of the SNAP Steering Committee, or SAA.

As Dara Baker, Archivist for the Naval Historical Collection at the Naval War College Library and moderator for Session 106, said at the beginning of the panel discussion, this topic cannot offer a one-size-fits-all solution for how to incorporate new technologies into archival reference, but it offered a look at what several different institutions of varying scope and size do to best use the technology they have access to in order to best serve their patrons. There were three scenarios posed to the panel, each dealing with a current topic that allowed the archivists to reflect how they had responded or would respond.

SAA 2015: Session 707, Recordkeeping in the Cloud and the Advent of Open Data: Mission Critical or Mission Impossible?

In advance of the 2015 Annual Meeting, we invited SNAP members to contribute summaries of panels, roundtable and section meetings, forums, and pop-up sessions. Summaries represent the opinions of their individual authors; they are not necessarily endorsed by SNAP, members of the SNAP Steering Committee, or SAA.

Guest Author: Michael Barera, Archivist at Texas A&M University-Commerce

Luciana Duranti, the chair of the session, began with the provocative claim that “security is the new authenticity.”

The first presentation was “How Open is Open? Record keeping in the era of open data and open government: Citizen engagement initiatives in Canada”, by Jim Suderman of the City of Toronto and the InterPARES Trust. Suderman began with the question, “What is Open Government?”, noting that in 1957 Wallace Parks’ article “The Open Government Principle” was published in the George Washington Law Review, in 1980 the “Open Government” episode of Yes, Minister aired, and in 2011 the Open Government Partnership was created; prior to this, open data was the central focus of open government. He then dug into the implications of open government, first by discussing the geographical focus of his work, which is at the national (Canada), provincial (British Columbia, Alberta, and Ontario), and municipal (Vancouver and Toronto) levels.

SAA 2015: Session 308, Just Take Those Old Records Off the Shelf: Reconciling Legacy Digital Content with Current Preservation Practice

In advance of the 2015 Annual Meeting, we invited SNAP members to contribute summaries of panels, roundtable and section meetings, forums, and pop-up sessions. Summaries represent the opinions of their individual authors; they are not necessarily endorsed by SNAP, members of the SNAP Steering Committee, or SAA.

Guest Author: Michael Barera, Archivist at Texas A&M University-Commerce

The speakers for this session were Brian Wilson (from The Henry Ford), Katelynd Bucher (from the National Institute of Standards and Technology), and Kat Hagedorn (from University of Michigan Library). The session chair was Lance Stuchell (also from the University of Michigan Library).

Stuchell began by welcoming the audience and then outlining what he saw as the themes among the speakers: legacy materials vs. new materials (is there a competition for resources, time, etc.?), applying lessons learned (are we making the same mistakes?), and the idea that digital preservation is iterative (to which he asked everyone, “We cool with that? Really?”).

[Ask an Archivist] Q: “What programming languages are most helpful for a digital archivist to know?”

We had to reach out to those with programming experience for this question! Feel free to add to the conversation in the comments.