Orbis Cascade Alliance Northwest Digital Archives Program Archival Management Systems Working Group Recommendation 19 November 2014

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1 Orbis Cascade Alliance Northwest Digital Archives Program Archival Management Systems Working Group Recommendation 19 November 2014 AMS WG: Mark Carlson (UW), Eva Guggemos (Pacific), Bryce Henry (PSU), Stephanie Kays (UO), Tony Kurtz (WWU), Randy Stilson (Evergreen), Jodi Allison Bunnell (ex officio) Executive Summary: Since 2011, NWDA has hosted and supported instances of Archivists' Toolkit for all program members who chose to use that tool. During that time, NWDA members who used this service have realized significant savings from having the technical and infrastructure costs distributed into their consortial membership fees. As of this writing, 23 of the 41 NWDA program members use AT. Of those, the Alliance hosts 18 instances. In an effort to identify the best fit candidate in NWDA s migration away from Archivists Toolkit, the Archival Management Systems Working Group (AMSWG) conducted trials of archival management systems, a comparative analysis of those systems, a membership wide survey, and a review of financial data. In conducting its analysis, the AMSWG has sought a replacement for AT that would be most likely to deliver the same added value and overall costs savings that members have realized through the hosted AT instance. The AMSWG recommends that NWDA select ArchivesSpace as the successor to its hosted instances of Archivists Toolkit and adopt it as the preferred system for contributing data to the researcher portal. Further, the AMSWG recommends that NWDA not join the ArchivesSpace/Lyrasis community as a subscription service member. The transition period would comprise a year of pilot testing and best practices development (FY16) followed by a year of open enrollment and full scale implementation (FY17). AMSWG Charge: By 2014 December 31, find a successor tool for Archivists Toolkit for the NWDA program: Assess members' needs for a collection management tool Calculate financial impacts of a successor tool and make a decision in time for integration into FY16 budget Seek feedback from NWDA membership on option(s) developed Seek approval from the NWDA ST and endorsement by the Content Creation & Dissemination Team. Process Last May, the NWDA Committee approved the AMSWG s recommendation:

2 The AMSWG recommends supporting Archivists Toolkit (AT) for 1 2 more years as the AS system and community evolves. During this time, NWDA should: (1) support further testing through an ArchivesSpace pilot project (2) take a closer look at other options (AtoM, non AMS options) and (3) resolve the timeline for migration out of AT. Between July November 2014, the working group continued testing ArchivesSpace while researching other potential options. This led to a closer examination of Access to Memory (AtoM), a web based archival description software developed by Artefactual Systems. The AMSWG had access to both an AS and AtoM instance hosted on the NWDA server. For each system the group examined the user interface, backend administration, technical support and the overall business model. The AMSWG tested AS and AtoM to determine their advantages and disadvantages in relation to NWDA s current support of Archivists Toolkit. They ascertained the needs of NWDA members through the member s survey to help identify appropriate qualities for the new Archives Management System (AMS). Archives Management Systems Analyzed: Below are brief overviews of the two systems that were analysed by the AMSWG. For more detailed specifications, see Appendix A. (criteria spreadsheet) ArchivesSpace AS is a web based application that is intended for use by archives staff and the public. Its administrative interface is largely based on the architecture of Archivists Toolkit, and allows archives staff to manage and describe collections following American archival standards. For those who have used AT in the past, the admin interface for AS should feel familiar, but with a new browser based skin and some added functionality. Compared to AtoM, AS s technical systems for finding aid creation and management of accession records are more robust. AS has been actively working on supporting migration out of Archivists Toolkit and Archon systems, but the process needs additional improvements to be considered simple or easy. Importing EAD records other than those created by AT/Archon may require additional metadata cleanup. The public interface of AS allows users to search and view any records (both accessions and processed collections) instantly, without the need to export EAD to a separate system. However, the public interface continues to lag behind other features in terms of development and is not yet in use by any known archives as a researcher portal. As of version 1.1.0, it is not feasible to consider AS for use by multiple institutions within a single instance; adopting AS will require NWDA to run one instance per institution. AS cannot replace the current Researcher Site since it was not designed to host multiple institutions. Access to Memory (AtoM) AtoM is a web based application that is intended for use by archives staff and the public. While originally developed to conform with International Council on Archives (ICA), it has

3 grown to support a variety of descriptive standards including Describing Archives: A Content Standard (DACS). AtoM s administrative interface allows archives staff to manage and describe collections, though testing has demonstrated a less robust management of accession record, authority files, and collections management than either AT or AS. Unlike AS, AtoM is able to host a generous, though limited, number of digital objects directly within the system allowing for better accessibility of electronic records. Its public interface is much more developed than AS with features including in text searching of digital objects. AtoM has been successfully used as a multi institutional research portal by several other consortia in Canada. Use of AtoM is largely absent in U.S. based institutions though the adoption of AtoM s companion preservation system, Archivematica, has seen considerable interest and usage both in the U.S. and internationally. Whereas AtoM shines as a public portal, ultimately it was not recommended by AMSWG because its archival management capabilities lacked much of what is already supported by AT. Migration to such a system would necessitate the loss of pre existing and potentially valuable data within accession, authority, and digital object records as well as possibly collections management information. Artefactual Systems has no experience migrating from AT to AtoM and it appears, based on a preliminary estimate of migration costs, that migration could be lossy and expensive. Members Survey to Assess Needs: In October 2014, the AMSWG surveyed the NWDA membership to acquire information on the different ways in which institutions use their current AMS and the current needs of the membership concerning a content management successory tool. 67% of NWDA members (Twenty nine institutions) responded to the survey; twenty of those who responded use Archivists Toolkit as their AMS (twelve hosted by NWDA), six institutions do not currently use an AMS and one institution is using Star Knowledge Center for Archives (CuadraStar/Lucidea). All respondents make archival description available to users through the NWDA research site. Additionally, some offer descriptive resources through their library catalog, paper guides, institutional repositories or their institution s website. Descriptive resources made available to the public include finding aids, MARC records, and digital object descriptions; five institutions also make accession records available. Institutions utilize AMS for a number of different reasons. The top three uses reported were for accessioning (84%), collections management (76%) and EAD and finding aid creation (68%). Twenty respondents indicated they are currently considering migrating to another AMS with 79% of them seeking to switch within the next two years. Many comments suggested that the main reasons for considering migration are the obsolescence of AT and NWDA s plan for a successor tool. Out of sixteen responses, the surveyors received thirty four unique responses the most frequent of which included: all sixteen respondents said they were

4 considering ArchivesSpace, four are considering Access to Memory (AtoM) and three are considering a homegrown system. As member institutions consider their next AMS, the most important feature they are looking for are an uncomplicated batch import/export of accession and resource data (100%), improved search features across accessions and collections (90%), and AMS training tools (60%). There is also some interest in a system that better supports the management of digital objects (15%). According to NWDA s calculations to date, continued support of an AMS will yield increased costs.whether this cost occurs with the acquisition of a new system or through the increased interventions and support required to maintain the now obsolete AT, there is every indication that membership dues must increase. When asked if some increased costs would be acceptable approximately 83% of respondents agreed, though some noted that it would depend on which AMS was chosen by NWDA. In terms of how this increase should be handled, 48% supported spreading it equally across all program members, 32% supported charges that reflect institution size as with JSTOR/ARTSTOR and 20% support charging only the institutions that use the AMS service. See Appendix B: Members Survey Results for more detailed responses. Recommendations: The AMSWG strongly recommends the adoption of ArchivesSpace as the successor tool for Archivists' Toolkit. The recommendation is based on extensive testing and analysis of AS by the working group, analysis of survey responses, and the similarity between AS and AT in terms of architecture, functionality, and terminology (see Appendix A for details). While there is no seamless successor to AT, AS represents a significant step forward in terms of technology, capabilities, ease of use, and public interface. Because AS remains a work in progress, however, the AMSWG recommends that NWDA make a two year transition from AT to AS. Doing so will allow AS to continue to develop and improve while providing ample opportunity to conduct a complete production level pilot study to fully account for all costs; generate documentation and best practices; and provide the smoothest transition possible out of AT. It is further recommended that NWDA does not engage in a Service Provider relationship with AS, though members may subscribe to AS on their own. This decision will help NWDA mitigate large membership cost increases while necessitating that NWDA provide its own support, user documentation, and opt out of opportunities to provide input and requests into the future development of the system. The NWDA program and its members have a track record of providing quality in house support, training, and documentation collaboratively for the consortium which it has done both in development of the EAD database and in its use of AT.

5 Implementation Proposal: FY16: Pilot and Assess ArchivesSpace; Maintain Archivist s Toolkit The AS Pilot will include 3 to 4 member institutions of varying size; the institutions chosen will reflect the varied complexities of data migration that our membership face. NWDA will not engage in a service provider relationship with AS during the pilot, though pilot members may join AS on their own. Pilot participants will document their experiences running AS without training. The documentation will ultimately lead to an overall assessment of migration, time, costs and user experience. Pilot participants will rely on their own IT support as well as Alliance staff. If further support is required, external consultation should be made available and facilitated through the NWDA program manager at the program s expense. During the pilot, Archivists Toolkit will continue to be maintained through hosting, support, training and best practices. Pilot Costs: AT hosting and support: $14,000 (roughly the same as current costs) Hosting: $850 Personnel for support: 5% FTE each of Program Manager and IT Manager s time; about $13,150 AS hosting and support for pilot participants: Hosting: Personnel for support: 5% FTE each of Program Manager and IT Manager s time; about $13,150 External consultation for AS migration challenges: $2500 Cost Distribution DIstributed equally among all program members: $29,650, or $725 per member AT hosting and support: $14,000 External consultation for AS migration challenges: $2500 AS pilot personnel for support: $13,150 Borne by pilot participants: xxx or xxxx per participant AS hosting by Alliance: xxx AS membership (optional): See ArchivesSpace FY17: Pending Assessment, Implement ArchivesSpace for All Members Following the successful completion of the FY16 assessment period, NWDA will begin the full scale implementation of ArchivesSpace. Over the course of FY17, NWDA will offer open enrollment to all program members including training, documentation, support, and hosting options. During this period program cost adjustments will be implemented and NWDA will begin to phase out AT completely. Implementation costs can be accurately predicted as part of the pilot assessment and should be wrapped into the FY17 budget process.

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