[Archivesspace_Users_Group] Migration from Archivists' Toolkit to ArchivesSpace
Geoff Edwards
Hi all,
We’re in the process of trying to migrate our archival collections database from Archivists’ Toolkit to ArchivesSpace. Better late than never…or so I thought. However, we’ve run into problems. The migration tool for transferring data from Archivists’ Toolkit only works with ArchivesSpace up to version 2.6.0. As advised, we’ve tried to install this older version as the basis for our migration, but my IT contact is struggling to get it working – he cites a lack of installation instructions for that particular version of AS and difficulties using the older versions of the required third party software.
So, I’d like to know if anyone has successfully used the AT to AS migration tool in the last few years and can offer any hints/tips/tricks/hope? Alternatively, are there other options we should consider, such as simply installing the most recent version of AS and migrating our AT data via some other method? I’ve thought about exporting our finding aids from AT as EAD files and then importing them into AS, but what about the other data sets such as accessions, digital objects, subjects, names, etc?
Any advice or guidance would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Geoff
Geoff Edwards
he/him/his
Archivist/Records Manager
Mary R. Schiff Library & Archives
geoffrey...@cincyart.org | 513-639-2977
953 Eden Park Drive | Cincinnati, OH 45202
Cincinnati Art Museum through the power of art,
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Corey Schmidt
Hey Geoff,
We here at the University of Georgia migrated from AT to ASpace back in 2020 with success. If you would like, I can reach out off-listserv to supply a docker file for your IT person to try out. We migrated when 2.7 was the latest/semi-latest release, so it wasn’t that much of a stretch to get 2.6 working (though I remember having difficulties going backward from 2.7 to 2.6, due to new language requirements if I remember correctly).
If you can get 2.6 up and running, I highly recommend going with the AT to AS plugin, since it will copy the data over completely and has a robust error log to record when things don’t migrate or changes are made. There is a 3-part video tutorial series on YouTube that walks through the steps on how to set up your environment pre-migration, using the plugin, and post-migration cleanup, as well as a bunch of resources elsewhere (Orbis Cascade’s AT Cleanup and Migration Prep Guidelines comes to mind). If you had to import to the latest ASpace version, I would look into using the Import Data background jobs for Accessions, Subject-Agents, Digital Objects, etc.. This comes with a caveat that background jobs (to my knowledge) fail once they encounter an error – so bulk importing is cumbersome unless you can develop a script to batch create background jobs and track them via the ASpace API, which comes with its own challenges. I also don’t recall what you can export from AT (EAD yes, but MARCXML subjects and agents too?).
I hope this is helpful. Please let me know if you’d like me to get you that docker file and if you have any other questions.
Sincerely,
Corey
From: archivesspace_us...@lyralists.lyrasis.org <archivesspace_us...@lyralists.lyrasis.org>
On Behalf Of Geoff Edwards
Sent: Monday, November 27, 2023 11:09 AM
To: archivesspac...@lyralists.lyrasis.org
Subject: [Archivesspace_Users_Group] Migration from Archivists' Toolkit to ArchivesSpace
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