[Yale ArchivesSpace] ArchivesSpace Public User Interface update (plus a video preview that's nearly as long as an American TV sitcom episode, circa 1990s)

Wed Aug 2 15:47:03 EDT 2017

Dear Colleagues,
I am writing to provide an update about the ArchivesSpace Public User Interface (PUI).
Short version:
The ArchivesSpace Public User Interface enhancement project, which I chaired over the past two years on behalf of the ArchivesSpace community, is now complete, and the updated PUI is available for production-ready use.  At Yale, we are working on an implementation plan that should have us ready to switch over to this new interface in January, 2018; Melissa Wisner, in Library IT, will lead the implementation. We will soon have a demonstration website available for staff to check everything out and provide additional feedback. In the meantime, here is a link to a video where I give an overview of some new features that will be available with this interface, while comparing it to our current Yale Finding Aid Database (YFAD): https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__vimeo.com_228080585&d=DwIFAg&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=nTeyk-U4CZBqtEsuDPTxMJ5Ukixi2letL2sC1p3IUMQ&m=ZuOP6ONMqo8_VTBCAgJeM8zhbyKcX2xDZWRhMQwraSc&s=a_izBPg6wNAsiEqvFI2tiDziatq3LvOvDraTF17fqk4&e= 

Longer version (but by no means comprehensive):
As some of you are aware, I submitted to YUL's Project Review Committee a proposal for developing a new PUI to replace YFAD, which was approved to start in April 2015. I had hoped that we would start development at that same time, but we delayed programming until early 2016 after the ArchivesSpace Board of Directors decided to fund a partnership with a design firm. The firm that we chose, The Cherry Hill Company, did a fantastic job of providing the project with design compositions, wireframes, and the overall look and feel for the new public interface. After that design phase was completed, we shifted into the second phase of development, which took just over a year once the programming work ramped up in the summer of 2016.  The development phase was funded by Yale University Library, with additional investments from Harvard University in staff time (including one developer!), as well as funding for usability tests and an accessibility review.
And now, I am pleased to announce that the newest version of ArchivesSpace, which includes the new PUI, was officially released<https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__archivesspace.org_archivesspace-2Dv2-2D1-2D0-2Dis-2Dout_&d=DwIFAg&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=nTeyk-U4CZBqtEsuDPTxMJ5Ukixi2letL2sC1p3IUMQ&m=ZuOP6ONMqo8_VTBCAgJeM8zhbyKcX2xDZWRhMQwraSc&s=kfgGnm1reBQZvybeXeIyG4eXev1ZXKT-htMybvRiFqw&e= > on July 19th, 2017!
Though the new software is available right now, we are planning a six-month implementation project so that our staff, data, and integration points will be ready for this major new platform. Melissa Wisner, in Library IT, will be chairing the working group to make sure that we consider all our implementation options. The overall working group will be composed of smaller teams that will be focused in different areas, including Staff Training, Public Outreach, and Data Enhancement. Additionally, starting in September the entire group will host monthly meetings, which will be open for anyone in the Library to attend, where we will discuss the progress of our implementation.
So why, you might wonder, would we want to enhance our data while preparing for the new PUI? The primary reason is simply because this new interface provides a lot more options than our current system:  more links, more landing pages, more access points, more ways to interact with our descriptions, more flexibility when it comes to integrating with other systems, and . . . well . . . just plain more!  I won't enumerate every new option in this first email, but here are few important ones, all of which were driven by the results of usability tests that we conducted during the project:

  *   Do you need to refer to a specific component of a finding aid, rather than the entire collection?  Now you can, since each component of a finding aid has a distinct URI, and each webpage in the PUI also has a new "Citation" action button.
  *   Have you ever wanted to search across multiple collections, or even within a single collection, and then sort your search results by date-i.e., in the order that the material was created?  The new PUI provides those options, but that feature will work even better after we enhance how we record dates in the ArchivesSpace staff interface.
  *   Just want to see a listing of what's in that box that you looked at a few weeks ago? Try out the new "Container Inventory" tab that's part of every finding aid page. With this view, you will be presented with a list of every box in a collection. Clicking on one of those box links will provide you a listing of every described component that happens to be housed in that box (and when I mention "box" here, what I really mean is any container-any item with a barcode-that we would check out to researchers in the reading room, such as a Hollinger box, an oversize folder, even a sculpture of a bucking bronco).
In the coming months, we will have a staff-only preview website available so that you will be able to see, search, and examine our descriptive records in this new interface, long before we turn on this new application for the public.
For those of you who are curious to take a closer look right away, here is a link to a video where I provide a comparison of a single finding aid in YFAD side-by-side with that same finding aid in an out-of-the-box version of the ArchivesSpace PUI:  https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=https-3A__vimeo.com_228080585&d=DwIFAg&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=nTeyk-U4CZBqtEsuDPTxMJ5Ukixi2letL2sC1p3IUMQ&m=ZuOP6ONMqo8_VTBCAgJeM8zhbyKcX2xDZWRhMQwraSc&s=a_izBPg6wNAsiEqvFI2tiDziatq3LvOvDraTF17fqk4&e= 
Please let me know if you have any questions, suggestions, etcetera.

Mark Custer
Archivist / Metadata Coordinator
Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library
203-432-2969

P.S. Speaking of "more," we just completed a small project with the vendor Backstage Library Works to add more URIs to the corpus of MARC records that correspond to each of our collection-level finding aids at Yale.  The total number of this subset of MARC records is small, at just under 6,000 records total. Before the project, we only had 131 URIs total in those records (those URIs were also added by Backstage, but that only happened with records created very recently).  After the project, we now have 55,313 URIs total in that same corpus.  That's a lot more!
This project did not change our description at all, but it enhances our data and allows it to connect with other resources at Yale and beyond.  In other words, it's not just a matter of searching for a specific publisher name and hoping that it hasn't changed over time-and hoping that another institution is also using the up-to-date authorized name string, if one even exists -but we can, for just one example, make connections unambiguously between our collections and across the world by using this URI, https://urldefense.proofpoint.com/v2/url?u=http-3A__id.loc.gov_authorities_names_n80020835.html&d=DwIFAg&c=cjytLXgP8ixuoHflwc-poQ&r=nTeyk-U4CZBqtEsuDPTxMJ5Ukixi2letL2sC1p3IUMQ&m=ZuOP6ONMqo8_VTBCAgJeM8zhbyKcX2xDZWRhMQwraSc&s=Bc-gtQWRhD-5wC1qfKbVsrGZ-TbGIrnz20GPRy5-87Y&e= , to enhance the display name of Little, Brown and Company.  Or Little, Brown & Company.  Or Charles C. Little and Company.  The point is:  names change; many names conflict with one another; and names don't provide reliable search strings, but these URI links allow us to have much more control when linking to resources beyond Yale.  And all these links will also be surfaced to search engines as Linked Data in the new ArchivesSpace Public Interface, which will provide a whole host of new options for the discoverability (and connectiblity) of our collections on the Web at large.

P.P.S.  If you watched that video, you will have noticed that I used an outdated heading for Rebecca West as an example-namely, "West, Rebecca, Dame, 1892-".  The good news is that our local authority record for her (and many others) have just been updated by Backstage for this project, so those connections will also be part of our Linked Data output in the near future.

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