Hi, Rachel,
Thank you very much for your feedback. I’ve added your comments to the
tickets for these issues and we’ll be sure to account for them.
One person expressed concern adding a Notes field to Top Container records when
the proposal went out last year. The Notes field is a candidate for adding as a
plug-in, so we’ll take a look at that.
I’m curious whether there were others of these proposals that would
particularly help you, or if there are minor changes to any that would make
them more valuable. I’d welcome any further thoughts.
Thanks again,
Robin
From: [email protected]
<[email protected]> On Behalf Of Rachel
Aileen Searcy
Sent: Tuesday, December 17, 2019 12:21 PM
To: Archivesspace Users Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Revised Proposal for Container
Management Enhancements - Call for Community Input
Hi Robin,
We wanted to provide some comments to this proposal for enhancements to
ArchivesSpace’s container management functionality. We’d like to thank Harvard
for their efforts to put this together to make ArchivesSpace a more useful
system for the broader community. We are also a large, multi-repository
institution with a single ArchivesSpace instance, and have encountered many of
the challenges outlined in this document, although we do operate slightly
differently (for example, our locations are shared across our repositories to
make the best use of the space we have).
We too have found it difficult to browse, filter, and sort through our large
number of location records, especially when linking top containers to
locations, and support the improvements specified in this document to more
efficiently perform these tasks. We would appreciate the ability to return to
an existing top container search, but would not want to sacrifice overall
system performance for this feature. While the ability to merge locations would
be useful in cleaning up obsolete or duplicate locations, we wonder if the
logic required to create this functionality might be more complicated than
other merging in the system, as there are currently measures in place to ensure
that locations cannot be deleted while holdings are linked to them. We think
this logic should remain in place to prevent deleting important data.
We might not use many of the proposed enhancements (e.g., barcodes for
container children, repositories for container profiles) but as long as they
are optional and unobtrusive to users who do not employ them, we do not have
strong feelings. We do have concerns about the proposal to add a Note field to
the Top Container record, especially without a compelling use case to justify
its inclusion, as there is such a high likelihood of this field being misused
to record information about the contents of a box (as opposed to the container
itself) more appropriate for specific EAD fields. It reminds us of boxes that
have labels with crucial information about the materials inside that is not
documented anywhere else, and we wouldn’t want to encourage that type of
practice. If there are compelling use cases for this field, we’d prefer values
to be controlled so that they can be structured, queried, and used somewhat
consistently.
Again, thank you for developing this proposal and continuing the conversation.
We’re eager to see how this work continues.
Best wishes,
Rachel
On Tue, Dec 10, 2019 at 1:19 PM Wendler, Robin King
<[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Dear ArchivesSpace Community,
The Harvard Library has been reviewing container and location management
functionality in ArchivesSpace and we are proposing to make enhancements to
this functionality that we would like to contribute to the core code. With
these enhancements, we hope to make finding, viewing, and updating information
related to containers and locations in the staff interface more efficient and
effective.
Some of you may remember a proposal we distributed this time last year. A
variety of factors delayed the work, so we have significantly revised the
proposal based on the valuable feedback provided by the ArchivesSpace community
and informed by Harvard archivists’ increasing experience with container
management in ArchivesSpace. Some proposals have been removed, while others
have been added or altered.
Additions include
* Return to Top Container search results from viewing an individual Top
Container record
* Bulk or batch function to create new Top Containers, associate existing
Locations with them, and link them to multiple existing archival objects.
* Bulk operation to delete barcodes from Top Containers
* File-upload function to add Locations to Top Containers
* Ability to merge Location records
The most significant changes to previous proposals include the following:
* The proposed additional indicator fields and ILS Bibliographic Record ID
field in Top Containers have been removed.
* The proposed Note field and Inactive checkbox for Locations, along with
all functionality associated with inactive status, have been removed.
* Automatic scoping of Container Profiles, Locations, and Location Profiles
by repository appears to be too complex, given the community request to make
repositories repeatable and the desire for it to be an installation
configuration option. In lieu of that, the revised proposal adds a repeatable,
optional repository field to container profiles and adds a facet for filtering
by repository to browse results for Container Profiles and Locations.
* Proposed functionality around Location status has been removed
The revised draft proposal is attached to this email and we are asking for
community review and feedback. The proposal includes the rationale for the
changes, a list of database fields to be added, user stories describing the
specific changes we are proposing, and mockups of the related updates to the
staff interface. Please note that the proposal represents a superset of the
work we may be able to complete in the next couple of months, and that not all
the proposed changes will be addressed at this time. Another caveat: some of
the desiderata require further technical design that will determine what
approach will be taken. These will be investigated in consultation with Lyrasis
ArchivesSpace staff.
If you have questions or feedback, please email me at
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>. We will be
accepting comments through Wednesday, December 18, 2019.
We look forward to receiving community input.
Best,
Robin
Robin Wendler
Library Technology Services
Harvard University
90 Mt. Auburn St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-998-5457
617-495-3724
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Robin Wendler
Library Technology Services
Harvard University
90 Mt. Auburn St.
Cambridge, MA 02138
617-998-5457
617-495-3724
[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
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--
Rachel Searcy
Accessioning Archivist, Archival Collections Management
New York University Libraries
212.998.2539 | [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
My pronouns are she/her
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