ArchivesSpace 3.5.0 now available

[Christine Di Bella]

Hello ArchivesSpace members,

 

ArchivesSpace is announcing the availability of v3.5.0. You can download it at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v3.5.0.

 

This release includes bug fixes and feature enhancements. For staff interface users, some of the most significant may be the ability to set column preferences for the Manage Top Containers area, reset passwords (when the feature is enabled by the system administrator), and a small redesign and bug fixes for reorder mode. For public interface users, this release includes some improvements to scrolling and performance of the Collection Organization section on resource records, which are the first in a group of usability improvements planned for future releases. Users will likely also welcome formatting changes made primarily to the public PDF to make the staff and public side PDFs more consistent with each other.

For developers and systems administrators, this release also includes a fix for handling changeovers to/from Daylight Saving Time. Also, please note that while we are evaluating removing support for Java 8 in the near future, support for Java 8 continues with 3.5.0.

Thanks to all of the community members who contributed code for this release: Andrew Morrison, Garrett Armstrong, Joshua Shaw, Sam Sciolla, Mark Triggs, and Valerie Addonizio. ArchivesSpace team members Don Smith, Brian Zelip, and Mark Cooper, as well as contractor Manny Rodriguez, wrote and/or reviewed substantial code for the release, which is the first of Tech Lead Thimios Dimopulos’ tenure. Thanks also to our community groups, especially the Testing, User Documentation, Usability, and Development Prioritization sub-teams, for their efforts.

 

More information about what’s in the release and the link to download it are at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v3.5.0. Information on upgrading to a new version of ArchivesSpace is available at https://archivesspace.github.io/tech-docs/administration/upgrading.html.

 

Thanks as always for your support. If you have questions or need any assistance in upgrading, please let us know.

 

Christine

 

Christine Di Bella

ArchivesSpace Senior Program Manager

christin...@lyrasis.org

 

 

 

[Christine Di Bella]

Hello ArchivesSpace members,

 

ArchivesSpace is announcing the availability of v4.0.0. You can download it at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v4.0.0.

 

This release includes major upgrades to the technical infrastructure of the application, including newer versions of Bootstrap, Rails, JRuby, jQuery, and Jetty. The staff application's css has been migrated from less to sass, and Nokogiri and Sequel are also now on more recent versions. Many gems have been updated and specs have been ported to capybara. Beyond formatting changes necessitated by the Bootstrap upgrade, many of these changes will not be particularly noticeable for users of the application, but they represent significant progress for the ArchivesSpace tech stack and will put us in a better position for future development.

 

There are also useful functionality improvements for users of the interfaces of the application on both the public and staff side. On the public side, aligning with recommendations made by the Usability sub-team, there is now a configuration to move the collection organization sidebar to the right or left of the page. There is also an option to load all of the associated children for a resource at once rather than by working through the infinite scroll. Search terms are now highlighted in many types of results and a bug that caused extra lines to be introduced for some notes in the public interface display has also been addressed.

 

On the staff side, the functionality of the very popular bulk updater plugin developed by Hudson Molonglo for The New School is now part of the core application. Some additional time savers are options to duplicate a full resource record or archival object record, additions to the spreadsheet importers, and a new option to download a partially completed spreadsheet of digital object information.

 

We also have a new site for our technical documentation, with easier navigability and findability. Please try it out and send us feedback. For now, both our old and new sites will remain up, but updates will be made to the new site only.

 

Thanks to all the community members who submitted code for this release: Alexander Duryee, Andrew Morrison, Blake Carver, Brian Hoffman, James Bullen, Joshua Shaw, Kristina Spurgin, Laney McGlohon, Lora Woodford, Mark Cooper, and Martin Lovell. ArchivesSpace team members Thimios Dimopulos, Don Smith, and Brian Zelip wrote and reviewed most of the code for the release, and oversaw important work from contractors Manny Rodriguez, Vasilis Chouliaras, and the development firm SoftServ as well. The Hudson Molonglo team wrote the original code for the bulk updater functionality that was adapted for the core code as contracted work for The New School.

 

Thanks also to our community groups, especially the Testing, User Documentation, Usability, and Development Prioritization sub-teams, for their efforts in identifying, testing, and writing documentation for many of the features included in this release.

 

More information about what’s in the release and the link to download it are at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v4.0.0. Information on upgrading to a new version of ArchivesSpace is available at https://docs.archivesspace.org/administration/upgrading/.

 

Some important notes on technology for system administrators and others about installing this release:

• Because of changes that were needed for some of the other infrastructure upgrades, we are no longer able to support Java 8 as of this version. Please upgrade to Java 11 or 17 to continue using ArchivesSpace from version 4.0.0 forward. More information about supported versions is on our Getting Started page.
• Solr v9 is required to run ArchivesSpace version 4.0.0. See the Upgrading Solr documentation for more details.
• Because of the many upgrades to the dependencies of ArchivesSpace as of this version, we strongly encourage you to check your plugins before upgrading if they are essential to your work.

[Christine Di Bella]

Hello ArchivesSpace members,

 

ArchivesSpace is announcing the availability of v4.1.0. You can download it at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v4.1.0. Both our standard distribution and Docker distribution are available for this release.

 

This release contains a number of bug fixes and small feature improvements. Bug fixes include addressing issues with some mixed context in the staff or public interface, including a bug that prevented text tagged with <title> from displaying in the public interface; getting rid of translation errors in the search highlighting in the public interface; restoring datepicker visual focus in the staff interface; restoring the formatting of print styles for some records, including accessions; and addressing a memory leak issue experienced when using some kinds of plugins. Small improvements include a new button in the public interface to print a collection's finding aid from any of its archival objects and links to the user manual documentation for bulk updating from within the staff interface.

 

Thanks to all the community members who submitted code or translations for this release: Blake Carver, Brian Harrington, Brian Hoffman, Corey Schmidt, Joshua Shaw, Laura Sinhur, Lora Woodford, Mark Triggs, and Rubina Bazzani. ArchivesSpace member funds made possible the work of ArchivesSpace team members Thimios Dimopulos, Brian Zelip, and Don Smith, along with contractor Vasilis Chouliaras, in writing and reviewing most of the code for the release.

 

Thanks also to our individual community members and community groups, including the Testing and Development Prioritization sub-teams, for their efforts in identifying and testing many of the items included in this release.

 

More information about what’s in this release and the link to download it are at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v4.1.0. Information on upgrading to a new version of ArchivesSpace is available at https://docs.archivesspace.org/administration/upgrading/. As a reminder, members are eligible for technical support – if you ever need help upgrading from one version to another, please feel free to email us at Archives...@lyrasis.org.

 

Thanks as always for your support. If you have questions or need any assistance, please let us know.

[Christine Di Bella]

Hello ArchivesSpace members,

 

ArchivesSpace is announcing the availability of v4.1.1. You can download it at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v4.1.1. Both our standard distribution and Docker distribution are available for this release. Because of what it fixes, this release requires a rebuild and reindex of the Solr core.

 

This patch release contains a very small number of bug fixes and improvements. The main fix is to an issue in the public interface that caused mixed content in notes that was surfaced by the search terms in context feature not to display and affect other results.

 

There is also work on Italian and Ukrainian translations for the interfaces. These translations are not yet complete, but community members are making excellent progress by doing their work through Weblate. We always welcome additional contributions to our existing translations as well as translations for new languages. You can find instructions for participating in ArchivesSpace this way on our wiki.

 

Thanks to the community members who submitted code or translations for this release: Brian Hoffman, Laura Sinhur, and Rubina Bazzani. ArchivesSpace member funds made possible the work of ArchivesSpace team members Thimios Dimopulos, Brian Zelip, and Don Smith, along with contractor Vasilis Chouliaras, in writing and reviewing most of the code in the release.

 

More information about what’s in this release and the link to download it are at https://github.com/archivesspace/archivesspace/releases/tag/v4.1.1. Information on upgrading to a new version of ArchivesSpace is available in our technical documentation. As a reminder, members are eligible for technical support – if you ever need help upgrading from one version to another, please feel free to email us at Archives...@lyrasis.org.