Arrr-chivesSpace Migration at East Carolina University

About the series:

The East Carolina University Pirates are engaged in a large-scale migration project to evaluate, prep, and load data from several dispersed databases into ArchivesSpace. Over the next two years, ECU will share the journey from careening data to weighing anchor to sailing into production. By regularly posting progress ECU aims to empower you, the ArchivesSpace community, to know that you can do it, too!

Ahoy!

Everyone loves a migration narrative, but not everyone has the time to share. In poking around the internet, I found about 12 stories. Either I overlooked some secret lagoons or there just aren’t that many out there. Well, we’d like to add our adventure to the list.

In late July ECU kicked-off a two-year project to migrate our finding aids from a mix of Archivists’ Toolkit records, Excel spreadsheet container lists, a name and subject authorities database, and a digital object repository into ArchivesSpace. We have finding aids that I think are very user-friendly, but the code running behind them is highly interdependent and if it breaks we’re walking the plank!

For the next few weeks, our working group is focused on planning. We’re finalizing our scope, developing technical scenarios, and establishing the best method for the curators, archivists, catalogers, and digital team to continue their work during this transition. Check the ArchivesSpace blog in late September where we’ll be docked with our chartplotter. Ahoy Mateys!

Kelly Spring is the Project Manager of the ArchivesSpace Migration at East Carolina University

Cross-posted on the ArchivesSpace Blog. http://archivesspace.org/archives/3185