- Email: [email protected]
Archival management software
Archival management software 2.1
2
Choosing the right type of information system
Aiming to support they daily archival tasks, many archival institutions are wondering which archival management system to choose. It is true that the factors which are influencing this decision are multiple and diverse. An information system is a combination of people, hardware, software, computer networks, and data used to manage daily and long-term operations (Paradigm Publishing Inc., n.d.). Based on this definition, it is obvious that all these stakeholders have to be in an agreement, available and functioning. As stated in (Spiro, 2007), the decision on which information system to select has to be a collaborative effort to which all the related stakeholders must participate. Broadly speaking, the principles and guidelines on how to choose the most suitable information system are common for all types of organizations. Nevertheless, specialized features may be also required, depending on the business needs of each organization. Based on this, each organization has to define a comprehensive needs assessment that will cover its current and future needs. It is important that archival organizations involve all their stakeholders in the preparation of this assessment, such as IT staff, business units, archivists, and end users. As a result, each archival institution has to consider the following factors: G
G
G
G
G
Are the financial means available so as to support a new information system? Archival institutions may need to pay licenses, software installation and configuration set ups, training, and support. If they cannot afford these costs, they may have to choose an alternative solution, such as open source tools. Again, in the case of purchasing an open source product, the archival institution has to consider if they can afford the use and support of open source with internal means. Which are the business needs the information system has to may cover? Which is the added value that this information system will bring to its work? For example, does this system have to improve the speed of the work, the efficiency, the quality and/or has to be able to measure the results of the work (Paradigm Publishing Inc., n.d.)? Are there any customized needs that the new information system has to deal with? Will the vendor provide the archival institution with support, training, and/or documentation? Is the support provided by the vendor available during the hours the institution is likely to need support? How is the support offered (email, phone, forum, other) (Eburne, 2014)? Are the human and technological resources available in order to support a new information system? Is the staff capable of using the specific system? How much training is needed? Does the institution have IT support and the necessary tools, such as PCs, servers, network etc.? Does the institution have to migrate any existing data? If yes, in this case the institution has to make sure that these legacy data can be migrated to your new system, with minimal loss of information. Moreover, in such conversion services may be needed, such as the
Archives in the Digital Age. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-777-4.00002-5 Copyright © 2017 Lina Bountouri. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
24
Archives in the Digital Age
service provided by ArchProteus, which converts source material from a variety of formats to the XML EAD markup (ArchProteus).
Apart from these general guidelines, the archival organizations have to consider the more detailed features needed for an archival information system. Usually, the archival institutions need a Management Information System (MIS), which will help them to encode and integrate metadata and provide the administrative and statistical reports. In case of more sophisticated needs, additional features have to be added (such as support for long-term preservation of digital archival material). In this case, archival insitutions have to answer to the following questions: G
G
They have to clearly define their description, access, dissemination and reuse needs in a “features checklist.” For example, which is the type and format of the archival material to be described? Is it in an analogue format, hybrid or digital or it might belong to more than one of these categories? Which metadata schemas, content description rules, knowledge organization systems should be supported? Do they want to have support for multiple users to work in parallel? Do you need a cataloguing system or more than that? You might also need an information system that stores digital resources and/or acts as a long-term digital preservation archive.
More information about choosing an archival management system can be found at the wiki (Spiro, 2007) and in the web site of the National Archives of the UK (The National Archives, n.d.). Archival organizations must not forget that planning is everything and that they should take into account their future needs. As mentioned in (Schoenfeld, 2001), “the application that best meets your needs may be a function of flexibility and cost, rather than immediate needs.”
2.2
Archival description authoring tools
Many archival institutions are starting their efforts on describing their archival material through XML authoring tools, given that all the standards/metadata used in the archival community are expressed in XML schemas. Through the XML authoring tools, archivists can write their XML documents based on a specific DTD or schema (such as XSD or RNG) and perform well-formedness and validation control over them. Moreover, users can create XSLT files, do XPath evaluation, and be offered the autocompletion of XML tags and syntax highlighting depending on the encoding language (i.e., XML, XSLT, XSD, etc.). Most of the XML editors in the market are commercial. Some of the most recognized editors currently used by the archival community are: Altova XML Spy (Altova, 2016), Oxygen XML Editor (Syncro Soft, 2016), XMetaL (JustSystems Corp., 2016), and Stylus Studio (Progress Software Corporation, 2016). A very detailed comparison of the available XML editors is available in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2016a). It is worthy of note that users can also use XML authoring tools that are customized in order to create archival descriptions. One of the most well-known is the
Archival management software
25
EAD Cookbook (Society of American Archivists, n.d.), which currently supports the previous version of EAD. What is more, big cultural heritage institutions, like the California Digital Library (California Digital Library, 2016), provide and/or prepare for users web templates, where they can generate the EAD XML markup description of their archival material.
2.3
Archival management systems
2.3.1 Open source systems As mentioned in (Ferreira, 2013), archival management systems offer many features that can help the archival organizations to have more control over their collections. These features are authority control, usable user interfaces for data entry and search/retrieval, generation of administrative/statistical reports that can provide an in-depth view of the data, and web publishing capabilities. AtoM stands for “Access to Memory.” It is a web-based, open source application for standards-based archival description and access in a multilingual, multirepository environment (Artefactual, 2015). AtoM is built on open source software and its code is also open source. AtoM has replaced the well-known software of the archival community called ICA-AtoM. ICA-AtoM was one of the most successfully implemented archival description software. It is currently being developed by Artefactual Systems in association with the ICA Program Commission (PCOM) and several international partners. ICA-AtoM was first released in 2006. AtoM is really popular among archival institutions for the following reasons. First of all, it is open source software and it was supported and developed up to recently by ICA, which is the organization having the most significant role in the archives’ world in terms of scientific consulting and orientation. Secondly, it is fully compatible with the ICA standards, such as ISAD (G), ISAAR (CPF), ISDIAH, and ISDF, supports SKOS and can be customized to support other standards as well. Besides, it has a powerful community of users and an active user discussion forum (AtoM Users, 2016). The list of AtoM and ICA-AtoM implementers includes organizations in a worldwide context such as the UNESCO (UNESCO, 2016), and the Dumbarton Oaks (Dumbarton Oaks, 2016). AtoM makes possible to the archival repositories to online disseminate their collections with minimal cost and effort. Moreover, AtoM can be easily used for teaching purposes or locally tested and customized, since it can run as a virtual machine on any operating system, using Virtualbox (Oracle, 2016) and Vagrant (HashiCorp, 2016). A widely implemented information system both in the archives and libraries’ world is the CollectiveAccess (CollectiveAccess community, 2016). CollectiveAccess is free open-source software that can be used for archives but also for museum collections. By now, some cultural heritage institutions, which may have archival and/or museum collections, are using CollectiveAccess for the management of their resources. In a survey of 2009 (Spiro, 2009), the users of CollectiveAccess are mentioning that this software is very easy to use and to
26
Archives in the Digital Age
customize, especially if you are not a trained archivist. Although users in this survey complain on the limited provision of support, it seems that since 2009, the support provided by the CollectiveAccess team has been ameliorated, since they provide to users a forum to ask questions and share tips, a wiki with detailed information on the configuration and help on troubleshooting as well as a bug tracker and a consulting team. Another well-known information system implemented mostly for the management of archival material is the ArchivesSpace (LYRASIS, 2016). ArchivesSpace is “open source archives information management application for managing and providing web access to archives, manuscripts, and digital objects.” It has replaced both Archon and Archivists’ Toolkit. Although it is open-source software, it charges for membership in order to support the operational expenses and the human resources budget. ArchivesSpace has started as a project in 2009 by a partnership among the New York University Libraries, the University of California, San Diego Library, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2013, it became a member-support program of LYRASIS. Most of the users of ArchivesSpace are located in the USA; nonetheless, it is also used in some organizations in Europe (e.g., the University of Edinburg), Africa (e.g. American University in Cairo), Asia and Australia (e.g., the National Library of Australia). A complete presentation of ArchivesSpace users’ can be found at (ArchivesSpace, 2016a). ArchivesSpace is a web-based system and its big advantage is that it has been designed by archivists for archivists. This is one the main reasons that it has been implemented by many archival repositories. ArchivesSpace integrates the core archival tasks such as accession, description and arrangement of the archival material, management of authorities and rights metadata, and reference service (ArchivesSpace, 2016b). The application can be used to create metadata records based in various international schemas such as EAD, MARCXML, MODS, Dublin Core, and METS. ArchivesSpace is not a digital object or document management system. It gives the option of describing digital objects and linking to their files stored elsewhere. These metadata can be exported to standardized metadata records, such as MODS and DC, and re-used by other systems.
2.3.2 Commercial systems Currently, there are also available in the market commercial information systems, such as the ones described above. Two of the most well-known are: G
Archeevo (KEEP Solutions, 2016a). Archeevo is an archival management software produced by KEEP SOLUTIONS, which is a Portuguese company that provides diverse services related to the management and preservation of digital information. It has a strong community of users in Portugal that provides often feedback to KEEP SOLUTIONS; as a consequence, new major versions are released almost every 2 years. Archeevo is compatible with the archival standards for the description of the fonds and the import/export of data. One of its big advantages is that it can manage a large number
Archival management software
G
27
of digital resources and it also has many features related to their management and access, such as text indexing of digitized and born-digital documents and automatic extraction of technical metadata, which are very important for the long term preservation of digital resources (KEEP Solutions, 2016b). Soutron Digital Archive. Soutron Digital Archive is a product of the Soutron company, which is a UK-based company that serves mostly special and corporate libraries in the UK. With this system, Soutron is willing to enter the archives’ world. The Soutron Digital Archive is currently implemented for the management of archives and collections, mainly in the United Kingdom. Some of its users are The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide and the Egypt Exploration Society.
2
Choosing the right type of information system
Aiming to support they daily archival tasks, many archival institutions are wondering which archival management system to choose. It is true that the factors which are influencing this decision are multiple and diverse. An information system is a combination of people, hardware, software, computer networks, and data used to manage daily and long-term operations (Paradigm Publishing Inc., n.d.). Based on this definition, it is obvious that all these stakeholders have to be in an agreement, available and functioning. As stated in (Spiro, 2007), the decision on which information system to select has to be a collaborative effort to which all the related stakeholders must participate. Broadly speaking, the principles and guidelines on how to choose the most suitable information system are common for all types of organizations. Nevertheless, specialized features may be also required, depending on the business needs of each organization. Based on this, each organization has to define a comprehensive needs assessment that will cover its current and future needs. It is important that archival organizations involve all their stakeholders in the preparation of this assessment, such as IT staff, business units, archivists, and end users. As a result, each archival institution has to consider the following factors: G
G
G
G
G
Are the financial means available so as to support a new information system? Archival institutions may need to pay licenses, software installation and configuration set ups, training, and support. If they cannot afford these costs, they may have to choose an alternative solution, such as open source tools. Again, in the case of purchasing an open source product, the archival institution has to consider if they can afford the use and support of open source with internal means. Which are the business needs the information system has to may cover? Which is the added value that this information system will bring to its work? For example, does this system have to improve the speed of the work, the efficiency, the quality and/or has to be able to measure the results of the work (Paradigm Publishing Inc., n.d.)? Are there any customized needs that the new information system has to deal with? Will the vendor provide the archival institution with support, training, and/or documentation? Is the support provided by the vendor available during the hours the institution is likely to need support? How is the support offered (email, phone, forum, other) (Eburne, 2014)? Are the human and technological resources available in order to support a new information system? Is the staff capable of using the specific system? How much training is needed? Does the institution have IT support and the necessary tools, such as PCs, servers, network etc.? Does the institution have to migrate any existing data? If yes, in this case the institution has to make sure that these legacy data can be migrated to your new system, with minimal loss of information. Moreover, in such conversion services may be needed, such as the
Archives in the Digital Age. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-1-84334-777-4.00002-5 Copyright © 2017 Lina Bountouri. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
24
Archives in the Digital Age
service provided by ArchProteus, which converts source material from a variety of formats to the XML EAD markup (ArchProteus).
Apart from these general guidelines, the archival organizations have to consider the more detailed features needed for an archival information system. Usually, the archival institutions need a Management Information System (MIS), which will help them to encode and integrate metadata and provide the administrative and statistical reports. In case of more sophisticated needs, additional features have to be added (such as support for long-term preservation of digital archival material). In this case, archival insitutions have to answer to the following questions: G
G
They have to clearly define their description, access, dissemination and reuse needs in a “features checklist.” For example, which is the type and format of the archival material to be described? Is it in an analogue format, hybrid or digital or it might belong to more than one of these categories? Which metadata schemas, content description rules, knowledge organization systems should be supported? Do they want to have support for multiple users to work in parallel? Do you need a cataloguing system or more than that? You might also need an information system that stores digital resources and/or acts as a long-term digital preservation archive.
More information about choosing an archival management system can be found at the wiki (Spiro, 2007) and in the web site of the National Archives of the UK (The National Archives, n.d.). Archival organizations must not forget that planning is everything and that they should take into account their future needs. As mentioned in (Schoenfeld, 2001), “the application that best meets your needs may be a function of flexibility and cost, rather than immediate needs.”
2.2
Archival description authoring tools
Many archival institutions are starting their efforts on describing their archival material through XML authoring tools, given that all the standards/metadata used in the archival community are expressed in XML schemas. Through the XML authoring tools, archivists can write their XML documents based on a specific DTD or schema (such as XSD or RNG) and perform well-formedness and validation control over them. Moreover, users can create XSLT files, do XPath evaluation, and be offered the autocompletion of XML tags and syntax highlighting depending on the encoding language (i.e., XML, XSLT, XSD, etc.). Most of the XML editors in the market are commercial. Some of the most recognized editors currently used by the archival community are: Altova XML Spy (Altova, 2016), Oxygen XML Editor (Syncro Soft, 2016), XMetaL (JustSystems Corp., 2016), and Stylus Studio (Progress Software Corporation, 2016). A very detailed comparison of the available XML editors is available in Wikipedia (Wikipedia, 2016a). It is worthy of note that users can also use XML authoring tools that are customized in order to create archival descriptions. One of the most well-known is the
Archival management software
25
EAD Cookbook (Society of American Archivists, n.d.), which currently supports the previous version of EAD. What is more, big cultural heritage institutions, like the California Digital Library (California Digital Library, 2016), provide and/or prepare for users web templates, where they can generate the EAD XML markup description of their archival material.
2.3
Archival management systems
2.3.1 Open source systems As mentioned in (Ferreira, 2013), archival management systems offer many features that can help the archival organizations to have more control over their collections. These features are authority control, usable user interfaces for data entry and search/retrieval, generation of administrative/statistical reports that can provide an in-depth view of the data, and web publishing capabilities. AtoM stands for “Access to Memory.” It is a web-based, open source application for standards-based archival description and access in a multilingual, multirepository environment (Artefactual, 2015). AtoM is built on open source software and its code is also open source. AtoM has replaced the well-known software of the archival community called ICA-AtoM. ICA-AtoM was one of the most successfully implemented archival description software. It is currently being developed by Artefactual Systems in association with the ICA Program Commission (PCOM) and several international partners. ICA-AtoM was first released in 2006. AtoM is really popular among archival institutions for the following reasons. First of all, it is open source software and it was supported and developed up to recently by ICA, which is the organization having the most significant role in the archives’ world in terms of scientific consulting and orientation. Secondly, it is fully compatible with the ICA standards, such as ISAD (G), ISAAR (CPF), ISDIAH, and ISDF, supports SKOS and can be customized to support other standards as well. Besides, it has a powerful community of users and an active user discussion forum (AtoM Users, 2016). The list of AtoM and ICA-AtoM implementers includes organizations in a worldwide context such as the UNESCO (UNESCO, 2016), and the Dumbarton Oaks (Dumbarton Oaks, 2016). AtoM makes possible to the archival repositories to online disseminate their collections with minimal cost and effort. Moreover, AtoM can be easily used for teaching purposes or locally tested and customized, since it can run as a virtual machine on any operating system, using Virtualbox (Oracle, 2016) and Vagrant (HashiCorp, 2016). A widely implemented information system both in the archives and libraries’ world is the CollectiveAccess (CollectiveAccess community, 2016). CollectiveAccess is free open-source software that can be used for archives but also for museum collections. By now, some cultural heritage institutions, which may have archival and/or museum collections, are using CollectiveAccess for the management of their resources. In a survey of 2009 (Spiro, 2009), the users of CollectiveAccess are mentioning that this software is very easy to use and to
26
Archives in the Digital Age
customize, especially if you are not a trained archivist. Although users in this survey complain on the limited provision of support, it seems that since 2009, the support provided by the CollectiveAccess team has been ameliorated, since they provide to users a forum to ask questions and share tips, a wiki with detailed information on the configuration and help on troubleshooting as well as a bug tracker and a consulting team. Another well-known information system implemented mostly for the management of archival material is the ArchivesSpace (LYRASIS, 2016). ArchivesSpace is “open source archives information management application for managing and providing web access to archives, manuscripts, and digital objects.” It has replaced both Archon and Archivists’ Toolkit. Although it is open-source software, it charges for membership in order to support the operational expenses and the human resources budget. ArchivesSpace has started as a project in 2009 by a partnership among the New York University Libraries, the University of California, San Diego Library, and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library, with support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. In 2013, it became a member-support program of LYRASIS. Most of the users of ArchivesSpace are located in the USA; nonetheless, it is also used in some organizations in Europe (e.g., the University of Edinburg), Africa (e.g. American University in Cairo), Asia and Australia (e.g., the National Library of Australia). A complete presentation of ArchivesSpace users’ can be found at (ArchivesSpace, 2016a). ArchivesSpace is a web-based system and its big advantage is that it has been designed by archivists for archivists. This is one the main reasons that it has been implemented by many archival repositories. ArchivesSpace integrates the core archival tasks such as accession, description and arrangement of the archival material, management of authorities and rights metadata, and reference service (ArchivesSpace, 2016b). The application can be used to create metadata records based in various international schemas such as EAD, MARCXML, MODS, Dublin Core, and METS. ArchivesSpace is not a digital object or document management system. It gives the option of describing digital objects and linking to their files stored elsewhere. These metadata can be exported to standardized metadata records, such as MODS and DC, and re-used by other systems.
2.3.2 Commercial systems Currently, there are also available in the market commercial information systems, such as the ones described above. Two of the most well-known are: G
Archeevo (KEEP Solutions, 2016a). Archeevo is an archival management software produced by KEEP SOLUTIONS, which is a Portuguese company that provides diverse services related to the management and preservation of digital information. It has a strong community of users in Portugal that provides often feedback to KEEP SOLUTIONS; as a consequence, new major versions are released almost every 2 years. Archeevo is compatible with the archival standards for the description of the fonds and the import/export of data. One of its big advantages is that it can manage a large number
Archival management software
G
27
of digital resources and it also has many features related to their management and access, such as text indexing of digitized and born-digital documents and automatic extraction of technical metadata, which are very important for the long term preservation of digital resources (KEEP Solutions, 2016b). Soutron Digital Archive. Soutron Digital Archive is a product of the Soutron company, which is a UK-based company that serves mostly special and corporate libraries in the UK. With this system, Soutron is willing to enter the archives’ world. The Soutron Digital Archive is currently implemented for the management of archives and collections, mainly in the United Kingdom. Some of its users are The Wiener Library for the Study of the Holocaust and Genocide and the Egypt Exploration Society.