Features

Accession records in ArchivesSpace can store information about the receipt of materials, whether it be a single item or an aggregation of materials.

Accession records may also be linked to other types of ArchivesSpace records, such as existing Resource, Digital Object, subject, name, collection management, and other Accession records.

Data in an Accession record can also be transferred or “spawned” to create other record types to save time and cut down on time spent recording duplicate information.

ArchivesSpace supports both the arrangement and description of the archival material.

Resource records or in the instance of digital materials, Digital Object records, are where you place the bulk of information about the intellectual and physical characteristics of archival materials. An archival Resource may be comprised of one item, or, most typically, it will be an aggregation of items that can be of any extent or complexity.  Within a given Resource or Digital Object record, you can add a range of descriptive elements, as well as notes, rights statements, and linked repository records. The description of the archival Resource can be supplemented with certain context and content descriptors like linked authority records.

Note that ArchivesSpace is not a digital asset management system.  Digital Objects cannot be ingested into and do not reside within it. It can be used to create metadata about digital content, and to link to content stored on a web server or another system, serving a single point of access and system of record for both physical and digital materials.

Assessment records contain information about the quantitative and qualitative condition of surveyed material, its readiness for reformatting, housing, physical arrangement, intellectual access, and research value. This allows users to rank the material’s needs relative to the needs of other surveyed materials. Assessment can occur at various points in the life cycle of an archival collection and for many reasons.

Assessment records can be linked to Accession, Resource, Resource Component, and Digital Object records.

Location records describe any shelving locations—shelves, drawers, file cases, bins, walls, etc.—where archival materials are stored. Location records are intended for physical shelving space and not for web accessible locations. Locations for materials on the web are managed via URIs recorded as part of Digital Object records.

ArchivesSpace can track the location of materials but is not a circulation management system.  If you are interested in using ArchivesSpace in conjunction with a circulation management system, ArchivesSpace has the ability to integrate with other software via our API.

ArchivesSpace enables the ability to link material together through shared subject and agent tagging.  Linked authority tagging works best when standard thesauri are adopted at an institution.  ArchivesSpace enables the adoption of preferred shared thesauri or institutionally specific terms via Subject and Agent records.

Subject records record terms describing the principal themes, topical contents, and format characteristics of materials described in ArchivesSpace. Subject records may be linked to Accession, Resource, Digital Object records, and their component records.

Agent records in ArchivesSpace uniquely identify persons, families, corporate entities, or software that have a specified relationship to archival materials in the custody of a repository. Agent records can also be used to manage relationships among agents and to record variant name forms for an agent. Agent records may be linked to Accession, Resource, Digital Object records, and their component records.

ArchivesSpace is a standards based application and facilitates the adoption of archival standards through its use.  The underlying descriptive standard for ArchivesSpace is DACS (Describing Archives: A Content Standard) but the application can be adapted to support other archival descriptive standards.  ArchivesSpace also supports the import and export of a variety of metadata standards, including EAD, EAC-CPF, MARCXML, METS, MODS and Dublin Core.

ArchivesSpace maintains both a staff and public user interface.  The staff user interface allows for the creation of unlimited user accounts and the ability to apply a variety of granular permissions to each account.  Optionally, ArchivesSpace also contains a public user interface to facilitate access and discover of materials.  For those organizations electing to use the PUI, only those records deliberately published by a user will be made accessible in the public user interface.