ArchivesSpace Governance Board 1st Quarter update
Matthew Neely
Dear ArchivesSpace members:
As the Chair of the ArchivesSpace Governance Board, I am writing to report on the group’s 1st Quarter meeting, which was held virtually on September 2.
We welcomed two new members, Hadiya Lee, of Davidson College, and JA Pryse, of University of Oklahoma (formerly of the Heritage and Research Center at St. Mary’s).
We reviewed an operations report that highlighted membership trends and the recent UK Users Forum at the University of Oxford, our first outside the United States. We discussed some ideas for sustaining and building engagement with this community and others outside the U.S. We also considered a report of the Annual Member Forum in New Orleans, which focused on community expectations around AI, and the plans for follow-up community discussions.
We heard from Bridget Almas, Director of Operations for Community Supported Technologies (CST) at Lyrasis, about some of the activities the Organizational Home with impact on ArchivesSpace. The first phase of its sponsored CST interoperability project has concluded, resulting in three specifications that focus on ArchivesSpace: support for easier linking of digital objects and metadata between ArchivesSpace and DSpace, adding support for the SWORD protocol to facilitate deposit of the files for digital objects into SWORD-enabled digital repositories, and support for shared discovery between CollectionSpace and ArchivesSpace. Implementation work will begin later in the year.
We learned about the activities of the Technical Advisory Council and User Advisory Council as they onboarded their new members to start the new term after a successful nominating cycle. We also reviewed the continued healthy financial position of ArchivesSpace.
For the benefit of both new and continuing board members, we reviewed the Board’s strategic roadmap. The strategic roadmap identifies priorities related to community engagement, governance, resources, and technology through FY2030. Its Technology section works in concert with the development roadmap. We considered areas of Board focus for the year, including expanding international outreach, building on the AI discussions to identify concrete goals to add to the strategic roadmap for this area, and making decisions about next steps for some activities that are currently term-limited, including the ArchivesSpace Diversity Partnership.
This is the first chair’s message of my term and I am looking forward to sharing the work we do on behalf of the community over this year. Please feel free to reach out directly to me or to your elected representative if you have feedback you would like to share.
Best wishes,
Matthew
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Matthew Neely
Senior Archivist
Special Collections
Bodleian Libraries
Tel: 01865 287158
Post: The Weston Library, Broad Street, Oxford, OX1 3BG
Web: http://www.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/weston