Upcoming: posts on integration of Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon

During the SAA Annual Meeting, Twitter was buzzing with the news that the popular software applications Archon and the Archivists’ Toolkit would be “integrated.” (And fellow blogger Jason Fowler at NeoArch also discussed it here.) Here’s the official annoucement (as posted on the AT site):

In response to an invitation from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the New York University Libraries, University of California, San Diego Libraries, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Libraries have agreed to submit a collaborative project proposal for the purpose of combining the best features of the Archivists’ Toolkit and Archon into a single hybrid application that will support description, collection management, and access of archival materials.

It is intended that the development process for this integration be shared with, and input be solicited from, the archival user and developer communities during the project work.

AT and Archon have been highly successful in their short product lives. We anticipate that this integration project will capitalize on those successes to build a more sustainable application and one more satisfying to a broader segment of the archives community.

An important element of the Mellon Foundation proposal will be a request for bridge funding to ensure the continuing support of both applications and their respective communities during the transition.

I thought this would make an interesting topic for a series of guest blog posts, giving some more information on the two systems and the integration. If you have questions about either AT or Archon or the integration, please post them and hopefullly our guest bloggers can address them. I hope to have those posts running next week.

4 Comments

• 

  By Christine Di Bella, September 3, 2009 @ 1:16 pm

  Archon and AT joining forces is a very promising and long overdue development, in my opinion. One of the big questions for me is what will be done to make sure that users can get their legacy data — either pre-system or from these systems themselves — into the new system. I think this will be particularly an issue for AT users, because I perceive the Archon development team to be in a much stronger position to push for their wants, and advocate on behalf of their user community, for the new system.

  This is also being advertised as an attempt to pull from the best of each of these systems to create a new one. How will “the best” be determined? Who will be involved?

• 

  By Bob Sink, September 3, 2009 @ 7:57 pm

  I also think this is a good step for the profession. Since AT & Archon have a large presence in university settings–all of which have a Intergrated Library System (ILS) provided by one of the few major vendors–I hope that there will be a concerted effort to entice those vendors and the heads of the university libraries to incorporate the final open source product into the university’s ILS system to create a truly integrated system.

  Archon, AT, and others such as the the RFP issued by the Center for Jewish History in 2002 have spelled out the archival requirements for a collection management system. The ILS vendors have been unwilling to incorporate archival needs into their systems, but this new open source solution may present a road map for them to easily (hopefully) use the new Archon/AT solution in their products. That in turn will allow archives to draw upon the vast investment that libraries have made in authority control and integrate the archival materials into a results list for users searches.

  That would be a true breakthrough.

• 

  By Chris Prom, September 7, 2009 @ 5:39 am

  I am glad there is strong support, I also agree it is the right time to do it.

  Just so it is clear, the plan we are developing will include the development of methods for migrating data into the system from either Archon or AT. I would expect that there will also be other import tools for data in other formats. That is something that both tools currently support and it must be included since there are established standards (such as EAD and, soon, EAC, in the mix, not to mention other structured data such as CSV, etc.)

  I would also note that we are including, in the initial planning grant that is currently under development, a closely defined consultation mechanism so that we include the right set of functions without limiting or curtailing (in a functional sense) what either tool currently supports. Obviously, that is easier said that done, and we have not yet settled on the exact mechanisms, but we are in agreement that clear consultation from both user communities as well as the profession as a whole, are absolutely essential throughout the process of both planning for, then building, the tool. As our plans evolve, we will publicize and seek comment on all aspects of the development process.

• 

  By Peter Rabl, November 23, 2009 @ 9:50 am

  Even as a Guest Visitor, I´d like to participate on this threat. I´m from Autria and the Austrian State Archive had a similar problem. Especially because of some new statutory amendments, require that contents of all *.at – Domains (about 900.000) get saved in the State Archive. A big challenge because many of them are already based on Web 2.0 Technology. Another problem, and that´s similar to yours, we had to acquire / develop a new archive system. Functions like integration of Web 2.0 medias, direct and fast public access and standard ouput formats like XML, CSV etc. were mandatory. Also the data integration from old standard archive system into the new one was debated.
  In the Meantime we are currently working on it. Till end of 2009 we should have a specific concept.
  So my question is, how is the current situation? Or how it ended?

  Best Regards from Austria,
  Peter Rabl
  Information Manager
  Vienna, Austria

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