ArchivesSpace 0.5 Released

Software Development Update

This week, ArchivesSpace released version 0.5 of its software. Since the 0.4 release, ArchivesSpace developers have enhanced or added support for the following features:

• Improvements to the staff user interface, based on community feedback, remote user testing, and in-person usability testing performed by the ArchivesSpace project team
• Support for digital objects and advanced search in the public user interface
• A basic reporting framework for the application with a small number of predefined reports
• Relationships between Agents (e.g. associative, parent/child, earlier later)
• Support for user-defined fields for Accessions, Resources, and Digital Objects
• Transferring components between Resources
• Support for “backups” of application data and configuration that can be easily redeployed
• Assigning Instances and Locations to Accessions
• Deployment documentation for large ArchivesSpace instances

A full list of all enhancements and bug fixes is available in the software change log. Please stay tuned for forthcoming information about testing the latest release.

ArchivesSpace 1.0 is scheduled for release in August 2013. Software development over the next few months will include:

• Refinements to import and export mappings
• The ArchivesSpace plugin architecture and associated documentation
• Improved user interaction and responsiveness, based on additional feedback received from the user community
• Improvements to the public discovery interface application
• Additional report definition:

The software is still in its “alpha” phase, and its first stable release is targeted for August 2013. ArchivesSpace is using Pivotal Tracker to help manage development using the Scrum methodology. Community members interested in tracking the software development process may view the user stories and programming tasks prioritized for development and awaiting prioritization. More information on Pivotal Tracker is available.

ArchivesSpace is open source software, and its source code is available on Github. For the technically inclined, build instructions and technical documentation are available. As a disclaimer, no technical support is currently available to software testers, but the developers are eager for early feedback. If you have trouble getting a test server running, feel free to ask for help or report problems to the ArchivesSpace Google Group email list.
ArchivesSpace is being developed by Hudson Molonglo in partnership with the New York University Libraries, UC San Diego Libraries, and University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign Library with funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and organizational support from LYRASIS.

Questions about ArchivesSpace development should be directed to the ArchivesSpace Google Group. Questions regarding membership should be directed to .

Official link to this announcement: http://www.archivesspace.org/archivesspace-0-5-released/

--
Kyle R. Rimkus
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign