Using ArchivesSpace to create a subject guide?

[Paul Sutherland]

Hi all,

I'm curious if anyone has used ArchivesSpace to create a subject guide, or knows of one. We have a guide (here, and several other examples) with entries describing specific kinds of materials in each collection, built using Drupal. Being separately created and maintained, we need to maintain links to ArchivesSpace resources and maintain controlled vocabularies in both places, and easily miss things.

It strikes me that there would be some benefit to moving this into ArchivesSpace, but I am not finding any examples, and it's not clear to me how it would fit into the existing data structures. I'm envisioning automatically linking to associated subject guide entries from a resource, and from one page browsing all subject guide entries with faceted searching.

It may not be possible to do this without major plugin development beyond our capacity, but I'm curious to know if anything remotely similar exists.

Thanks,

Paul

--

Paul Sutherland

Archivist of Indigenous Materials
Center for Native American and Indigenous Research

Library & Museum
American Philosophical Society
105 S. 5th Street, 2nd Floor
Philadelphia, PA 19406

Lenapehoking

215-440-3408

amphilsoc.org/library/CNAIR

I am currently on a reduced schedule working Tuesdays-Thursdays. Me and my colleagues at CNAIR can be reached at cn...@amphilsoc.org.

I respectfully acknowledge that I work and reside in Lenapehoking, the homeland of the Lenape people in past, present, and future generations. I am grateful for the past and ongoing generosity of numerous Indigenous communities and individuals who have offered guidance, expertise, and opportunities for collaboration that make my work possible.

Learn more about ...

- The Indigenous Subject Guide to our Indigenous collections, updated frequently
- Blog posts by CNAIR staff & fellows
- Fellowships (residential and non) for working with our collections and elsewhere.
- Scheduling a visit to our Reading Room to view our collections

- Our Museum's current exhibit Philadelphia: The Revolutionary City, open through the end of 2025

[James Truitt]

Hi Paul,

There's the Subject browse in the ASpace PUI (e.g., for things at APS tagged Ahtna). I'm not sure if that gets you everything you want, but maybe it's somewhere to start?

Best,

James

[Gates, Irene]

Hi Paul, 

We use a subject guide here at Northeastern - if you click into the two categories, you'll see the different subcategories that exist for each one. These get assigned through the Classifications field in both accession and resource records. This was set up before I started working here, but if you have questions about it I can try to find an answer for you.  

All best, 

Irene 

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From: archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org> on behalf of James Truitt <jtru...@swarthmore.edu>
Sent: Friday, August 1, 2025 11:43 AM
To: Archivesspace_Users_Group <archivesspac...@lyrasislists.org>
Cc: Paul Sutherland <psuth...@amphilsoc.org>
Subject: [ArchivesSpace Users Group] Re: Using ArchivesSpace to create a subject guide?

 

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[Paul Sutherland]

Thank you both very much, and sorry for the delay. "Subject" and "Classifications" are both able to bring up entire collections tagged this way (and we could productively use categories to distinguish our collection areas - I really like seeing that in use, Irene), however what is missing in these is the extra layer - independent descriptions of specific materials within a collection, directing researchers to one part of the collection, and with other faceted search terms. For example this describes one record within a collection, but there are ones that describe a great many:

I imagine it could be possible to make something similar as an artificial "collection" of guide entries, with related resource links, maybe with modifications to the display and search options, but it would be very hacky.

Paul