Alston & All,

Add an extra tally mark to “homegrown system” for us.  Here at WVU, we’re in a funny place.  Our finding aids are presented to the public through DLXS (which is no longer maintained), and we enter the metadata through a webform that our Systems Department built within our homegrown archival content management system, which is really more of a digital asset management system, called MFCS (Metadata Form Creation System).  Systems is helping us migrate our item-level digital content in MFCS from DLXS to Hydra, and we’ve decided to migrate our finding aids to ArchivesSpace (we may not choose to use all of its new bells and whistles though).

Thanks for posing this question—I’m very interested to hear what everyone uses!

-Jane

Hi Alston –

We use a “home-grown” Filemaker Pro database.  It’s pretty comprehensive; we use it to manage gifts, purchases, donors, patrons, overall collection information (locations, dates, processed level, level of description, etc.), collection usage, duplication requests, and more.  We also use the database to generate a number of reports (e.g. donations within the past year), to generate lists of our collections sorted by author (http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/ead/alpha_list_from_db.htm) and subject (http://library.syr.edu/digital/guides/ead/subj_list_from_db.htm), and to produce a shelf list for all our collections.

Our finding aids are encoded in EAD and linked to the database, but are neither imported into it nor generated by it.  MARC records are generated from our EAD finding aids using MARCEDIT.

Our University Archives, which only recently became part of our unit, uses AT.

Michele

+++++++++

Michele Combs | Lead Archivist

Special Collections Research Center
Syracuse University Libraries
222 Waverly Ave
Syracuse, New York 13244

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SYRACUSE UNIVERSITY
syr.edu

At Washington and Lee University we are currently using ArchivesSpace as our archival management system, which we use to generate EAD finding aids and provide information about our materials to the public.  It is a great system, and I believe the way to a better future.  But some upcoming developments to the system will expand its functionality and potentially make some aspects of it more complicated.  This has prompted a few of my colleagues to inquire as to whether ArchivesSpace is the best option for us as a small institution. 

My impression from professional conferences and reading is that generally institutions are using Archivists Toolkit or Archon (and are planning to migrate to ArchivesSpace), ArchivesSpace, or a locally grown system.  I’m hoping to confirm, disprove, or expand upon that impression by gathering some information from folks on this listserv regarding the systems you are using, so that I can create a list of other options to investigate and share with my colleagues in the sake of due diligence.

I appreciate your responses.

Sincerely,

Alston Cobourn

Assistant Professor and Digital Scholarship Librarian

Washington and Lee University

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