ArchivesSpace Migration (Nearly Done) Nicole Smeltekop MSU Libraries

New librarian in a small Special Collections unit of a large academic library. Previously, an archivist for seven years SPC was using Archon (YAY!), but too customized for the Export EAD button We were already ASpace members and had a test instance up University Archives administered separately, but joint ArchviesSpace instance. So….we needed a different option.than the migration tools Some Background

New Workflow Export MARC records from the Library catalog → Transform MARC records in MarcEdit to EAD→ Create container listings and add them into the EAD file → Import the complete EAD files into ArchivesSpace Data wasn’t structured properly in Archon (example:container listing lived in the arrangement note with HTML formatting) Thus, I thought I’d go to the catalog for structured data

Container Listings Using Mail Merge <c02 level="file"> <did> <container type="Box" label="Mixed Materials">1</container> <container type="Folder">1</container> <unittitle>South Africa Basic Facts, Extras copies, 1977-1978</unittitle> </did> </c02> <container type="Folder">2</container> <unittitle>Boycott and Divestiture Histories, c.1978</unittitle> <c02 level="file"> <did> <container type="Box" label="Mixed Materials">«Box»</container> <container type="Folder">«Folder»</container> <unittitle>«Description»</unittitle> </did> </c02> Those needing container listings….got them into excel spreadsheets - typically Box, Folder, Description Used Microsoft Mail merge to get them into EAD Mixed success - the less hierarchy the better this worked (and the less editing I had to do) - meaning series, and subseries Also, Excel has an annoying habit of cutting of characters at a certain limit, so if your descriptions are long, beware! Why not OpenRefine? For me, I didn’t have the time to take to learn it, but the problems I outlined are very good reasons to use OpenRefine instead (and it’s a tool on my list to learn).

So….XSLT….. MarcEdit Marc → EAD stylesheet ArchivesSpace field mappings Trial and Error How I built my stylesheet Field mapping documentation - don’t assume your EAD will import properly even if it’s properly formatted EAD

Cataloging Issues Records in AACR, AACRII, and RDA formats Stylesheet also looks for “rda” in 040$e Stylesheet looks for 260$c OR 264$c 300 field: 109$fboxes ;$c27 x 40 x 13 cm. Removing punctuation with regular expressions repeatable fields too! (e.g., more than one 300 field if the collection was 2 letters) Dates field required in ASpace...not so much in MARC

Things that weren’t in the MARC Record Things added to Finding Aids through MARC record Immediate source of acquisition Some biographical historical notes Processing information note Subject headings Conservation information Other local notes Formatted names Data consistent across two platforms

Things that went wonky 700 notes Note tag Dimensions field Finding Aid Status field (Dear ASpace team, please add this to your mapping, kthnksbye) 700 notes - Added entry -Means it’s an added author (i.e, agent) OR a uniform title...so we have titles as peoople in ASPace

Batch Import into ArchivesSpace Batch imported records into ASpace However...if there’s an error in any file, it fails and you have to reimport everything (For example, collections I didn’t realize were missing a date field) The error report does tell you which file and which data point is missing

Finished! (Nearly) Still doing some data clean up, but 371 records are in! Moving some data to fields manually (such as making the 300 field human readable) Adding language information based on the MARC code in the 008 field (sadly, this was above my XSLT skill level to add into the stylesheet) Processors are currently doing their finding aids in ArchivesSpace, so next steps is finishing off a manual, getting things clean, and launching when the new public interface becomes public.

Thanks! Nicole Smeltekop MSU Libraries nicole@mail.lib.msu.edu XSLT Stylesheet on Github: https://github.com/MSU-Libraries/MARCtoEADforASpace