[Yale ArchivesSpace] Update on ArchivesSpace

[Frohlich, Raymond]

Greetings everyone,

With the recent transition of ArchivesSpace to new infrastructure and the ongoing upgrade to a new container management plugin scheduled for the remainder of the week, I have not provided an update since late last week.  There are several updates to provide you tonight and I have reorganizing the update categories based on importance.

ArchivesSpace Core Code Review
Hudson Molonglo completed work related to a second engagement with Yale that furthered the investigation into performance problems in both the core application code and our local environment.  The work is complete and they have reported to have found the causes of the significant performance problems we have been experiencing.  Our local environment has been discounted as contributing to poor performance.  The performance problems we have been experiencing result from Yale’s data exceeding the design parameters of ArchivesSpace, most particularly regarding the number of linked Agents and Subjects on larger Resource records.  Hudson Molonglo has provided a series of recommendations to remediate these issues that can be found in the report linked to below.  Given that this is a community supported open source project, Maureen Callahan has been working with others in the community to determine a best course of action through which to address these concerns and implement the proposed recommendations.  Many of the other institutions that form this collective have expressed a strong willingness and desire to see the product improved for current and prospective users.  More to come on this front in the coming weeks.

The full report from the second engagement with Hudson Molonglo can be found here - https://yale.box.com/s/t8pfllrfyqpnkqfprd78mn9otn05c9tz

Infrastructure
Library IT has received little in the way of feedback from users since moving ArchivesSpace to new infrastructure.  Based on our internal tests and survey results it would appear that performance is improved, but I would invite you to provide us with any and all feedback you may have.  Please send comments to Melissa Wisner (melissa.wisner at yale.edu). Going forward we anticipate purchasing and deploying a new set of dedicated hardware for the ArchivesSpace test and production instances from Dell and are in the process of finalizing the order details with the vendor.

Database Optimization
Percona is scheduled to begin performance analysis of the underlying ArchivesSpace database starting Monday, August 17.  There are some potential outcomes from the engagement that we may be able to act upon in the short term at Yale.  We may also decide to share the  report with the ArchivesSpace community in the event there are opportunities for improvement that should be considered for inclusion in the core ArchivesSpace product.

Hosting
Lyrasis has turned around a preliminary hosting/proof of concept project outline and has asked us to respond with comments.  Maureen Callahan, Melissa Wisner, and I responded with comments and we have received a response that will need to be discussed further with key stakeholders across Library IT and special collections departments on Tuesday, August 25.

Data Integrity
Based on the outcomes from the ArchivesSpace core code review and conversations with Hudson Molonglo and Lyrasis, we will defer further investigation into this area.

Future Work
As a potential next step once this phase of work is complete, discussions are underway to consider an upgrade of ArchivesSpace from the current custom release we are running locally to version 1.3.  Maureen Callahan has provided the following information about the benefits of moving to the latest version below.

"Some of you have noticed problems when components transfer from one resource to another — they sometimes become unavailable for editing. This is a problem that has been reported as greatly improved in version 1.3 of ArchivesSpace. Version 1.3 also allows for much more robust reporting, the option for default values in various fields, the ability to save a rapid data entry template, and a number of other features: https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v1.3.0.”


Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions or concerns.  Also, be on the look-out giving the all clear tomorrow that the reindex of ArchivesSpace completed in the overnight.

All the best,
Ray


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Raymond Frohlich
Director, Enterprise Systems and Services, Library IT, Yale University Library
phone 203.432.2965 | mobile 347.351.6008 | raymond.frohlich at yale.edu<mailto:raymond.frohlich at yale.edu>
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