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After attending this month’s ArchivesSpace Hackathon (which was an amazing event, by the way, which deserves its own blog post or two!), I started mucking about with the new reporting features in ArchivesSpace. So far, I’ve been tackling reports in three ways:

1. Adding new reports to ArchivesSpace that I authored in JasperSoft Studio
2. Editing prepackaged ArchivesSpace reports with JasperSoft Studio
3. Adding a print.css stylesheet to ArchivesSpace to emulate those “print screen” reports from Archivists’ Toolkit

Long story short, it was actually a lot easier than I expected to add new reports to ArchivesSpace (tested on versions 1.4.x).  If you can write a new report with a tool like JasperSoft Studio, then you’ll be able to upload it to ArchivesSpace with ease.  That said, I still wonder what other changes might be required to load new reports into ArchivesSpace that are parameterized (and so, require additional user interactions before running), but I hope that those features will be added to new releases of the ArchivesSpace reports module if they aren’t already there.  In any event, those types of reports will be my next steps of exploration.  In the meantime, this post is about what I have up and running right now.

Continue reading Reports, in three phases

Training Session #1: Getting Started in ASpace is coming up on Thursday at 10am. If you would like to join us from afar, use this link to access the session: https://zoom.us/j/118485618

We will be using a web-based videoconferencing service called Zoom to broadcast the session. When you click on the link, Zoom will quickly install on your computer before joining the session – see this video for instructions. Note that you will need headphones or speakers to hear the session. The session will also be recorded – we will send out a link after uploading.

Also, please note that info about further trainings will be posted on our Libguide, rather than on this blog. Thank you!

After a couple of years of planning and countless hours of discussions, compromises, development and testing, the first seven of Yale University’s nine ArchivesSpace repositories went live on Monday May 11.

In the final weeks of preparation…

The committee finalized (well mostly) our policies and procedures; the controlled values lists; and the system configuration.

Maureen Callahan and Mark Custer (aka the dynamic duo), with welcome assistance from Mike Rush, Adam Shahrani, and the folks at Hudson Molonglo ran several test migrations and methodically worked through data errors, developed and ran pre- and post- migration scripts and SQL updates, and finalized the workflows that will be undertaken for the next two migrations (the largest). I am hoping Maureen and Mark will share more of about their experiences with migration in a future blog post.

Meanwhile…

Rachel Chatalbash and Mary Caldera took the lead on finishing up the Yale ArchivesSpace User Manual and handling logistics for the training sessions. We ran into system performance issues during the test run, so Steve DiSorbo (with help from Mark Triggs) worked overtime to give us more computing power and optimized performance. It worked, and our first training session (18 folks from 7 repositories with two teachers and two floats) went without a hitch. We have several more regular sessions scheduled and will follow up with forums and special topic training in the summer.

Development continues as our IT team, Melissa Wisner, Yue Ji, and Steelson Smith finalize the programs that will allow automated locations updates and integration with Aeon. Both are requirements for the last two repositories.

It’s a work in progress and we’ll wait until we are all in production before we really CELEBRATE, but thanks to the Yale special collections community, the ArchivesSpace community, and all the others who provided support and assistance throughout the process.