Amanda,

If you have a chance to go to the Midwest Archives Conference in late March/early April, there is going to be a half-day workshop on this very topic.

Personally we went with Archon because we wanted a way to make our finding aids searchable across all collections at once, by patrons from our website. I like both products, but this was the determining factor for us.

Sammie Morris
Purdue University


-----Original Message-----
From: Encoded Archival Description List on behalf of amanda robillard
Sent: Fri 2/27/2009 12:30 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Archon or AT: How did you choose?
 
Hello,

We currently are working to choose an archival content management system,
largely as a means of simplifying the creation of EAD so that more people in
our libraries can contribute to writing finding aids that adhere to the same
basic standards.  We have narrowed our choices down to Archon and
Archivists' Toolkit, and would very much like to gather feedback from others
who have chosen one of these systems.

Which are you currently using?  What were the most important factors in your
decision?  Have you integrated use of the system with your institutional
repository (Fedora, DSpace, etc.), and in what ways?  Did you alter the
system's standard EAD output template to accommodate your schema or DTD?
Have you otherwise customized or extended Archon or AT, and in what ways?
Looking back, would you still choose the same system?  Have you had the need
to remove all data from one system and move to another? If so, what problems
did you encounter?

I really appreciate any and all information you are willing to provide.
Thank you in advance.

Amanda


Amanda Robillard

Electronic Archives Librarian

Digital Collections  I  Northwestern University Library

3646, East Tower  I  1970 Campus Dr.  I  Evanston, IL 60208

P: 847.467.4761  I  E: [log in to unmask]

www.library.northwestern.edu/dc