ArchivesSpace: Opportunities for Community Participation

Given the recent announcement regarding funding from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation for the development of ArchivesSpace, I am sure many of you are interested in learning how you can participate with the project. As the Technical Architect for ArchivesSpace, I am responsible for developing the agendas for the project's Technical Review Team, overseeing its technical development, and engaging with the wider archives development community. There are several opportunities for participation that are either available now or will be in the near future.

* Join our discussion group. This is an open discussion group related to the project. To sign up, visit the group's home page at http://groups.google.com/group/archivesspace.

* Participation in our technical review process (contact me via email if interested). We will be undertaking a technical review of the specifications developed for the project to determine any potential issues that may arise during implementation, including those related to performance and scalability. If you would like to assist with this, please let me know. The specification documents are available from the ArchivesSpace website, located at http://archivesspace.org/.

* Although formal review of the functional specifications is closed, the project team is still interested to hear about any current AT or Archon features that appear to be absent from the ASpace functional specifications and that either AT or Archon users consider indispensable.

* Participation in our technical planning process (contact me via email if interested). We're also going to be investigating potential modifications to the project that will allow it to better manage electronic records, better integrate with other systems (e.g. repositories), and better provide enhanced functionality, improved performance, or improved scalability. If you are interested in participating in this capacity, please let me know.

There will also be ample opportunities for your participation as the project moves forward, including user testing, documentation, and the like. Please feel follow up with me if you have any further questions.

Mark A. Matienzo - mark.matienzo@yale.edu
Technical Architect, ArchivesSpace