ArchivesSpace is “an open source archives information management application for managing and providing web access to archives, manuscripts and digital objects”. In August 2022 we switched from hosting our own ASpace server on EC2 to a third-party-hosted instance at LibraryHost.
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Location | Type of technology | Number of collections described | Source | Example | Who can see it? | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Word documents | Roughly 270, dates 1997 – present. | This is the initial description we create upon accessioning a collection. |
| Institute staff | ||||||
ArchivesSpace public user interface (PUI) | MySQL-backed website | Same as below | Public | ||||||||
ArchivesSpace admin site | Same as above | Roughly 120 as of 2022 | Entered manually based on the P drive Word files. | Only logged in ArchivesSpace users | |||||||
Public EAD bucket | EAD (xml format) | Roughly 120 as of 2022 | Generated weekly from ArchivesSpace database | Public | OPAC | 460; see complete list | Exported manually as PDF from the ArchivesSpace site, then attached to the OPAC record for the collection | https://othmerlib.sciencehistory.org/articles/1065801.15134/1.PDF | Public | ||
https://guides.othmerlibrary.sciencehistory.org/friendly.php?s=CHFArchives | LibGuide | Most collections, categorized by subject. | Created and maintained by Ashley Augustyniak | Technically public, but does not appear to be linked from anywhere. | |||||||
WorldCat | Librarians manually update OCLC master records based on the metadata in ArchivesSpace. This is provided in the form of a MARCXML file by Kent and sent to Caroline. | Public |
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Finding aids are first written up as Word documents at
Shared/P/Othmer Library/Archives/Collections Inventories/Archival Finding Aids and Box Lists.Kent enters the data into ArchivesSpace. They finding aids are revised in the process.
Once they are in ArchivesSpace:
Our EAD export app in Heroku (see EAD export app ) retrieves public EAD files from ArchivesSpace’s API and posts them to the Science History Institute EAD bucket
Kent also exports them to a PDF, which he then sends to Caroline. These are entered into the OPAC. (see e.g. https://othmerlib.sciencehistory.org/articles/1065801.15134/1.PDF )
Note: the PDF has to be manually updated in the OPAC every time the metadata in ArchivesSpace changes.
The OPAC also points to a PUI URL at https://archives.sciencehistory.org/ .
Certain works in the Digital Collections also point to the PUI. Example: https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/81jkowj.
Finally, the exported EAD files are also ingested by University of Penn Libraries Special Collections and the Center for the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine (CHSTM).
Penn, in turn, processes these EAD files on a nightly basis and adds them to the Philadelphia Area Archives search portal, a service funded by PACSCL.
Likewise, CHSTM ingests these EADs and makes them searchable at its search portal.
OBSOLETE – Technical details about the server
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The current production version of Aspace is 3.0.1 .
Terminal access: ssh -i /path/to/production/pem_file.pem ubuntu@50.16.132.240
The ubuntu user owns all the admin scripts.
The relevant Ansible role is: /roles/archivesspace/ in the ansible-inventory codebase.
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Configuration for the Apache site is at /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf.
OBSOLETE – Startup
To start Archivesspace:
/opt/archivesspace/archivesspace.sh start(as userubuntu)
There may be a short delay as the server re-indexes data.
OBSOLETE –Restarting the server to fix Tomcat memory leak
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Both institutions harvest the EADs athttp://ead.sciencehistory.org/.
OBSOLETE – Backups
These consist of making backups of the sql database used by the ArchivesSpace program.
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