Deprecating the Archivists' Toolkit DIP upload feature

[Sara @ Artefactual]

Hello Archivematica community!

It's been 5 years since Archivists' Toolkit was deprecated. Archivematica currently includes a feature where users can upload a DIP to Archivists' Toolkit, which was added in Archivematica 1.0. In Archivematica 1.5, the Rockefeller Archives Centre sponsored a feature enabling users to upload a DIP to ArchivesSpace, which mimics the Archivists' Toolkit functionality very closely. There are other DIP upload options as well: AtoM and ContentDM.

Now that five years have passed since Archivists' Toolkit was deprecated, I'd like to propose that the Archivists' Toolkit DIP upload feature is also deprecated. The Artefactual team does not test the Archivists' Toolkit integration, since we don't have an instance of Archivists' Toolkit to test against. This forum hasn't seen a lot of conversation about the integration since 2015. Deprecating the feature would be a ;lengthy process - in the issue filed suggesting deprecation, I've recommended that the plan to deprecate should be included in the release notes for the upcoming Archivematica 1.8, with the actual code disabling in Archivematica 1.9 or 1.10. Ideally, this will give the community enough time to see the notification and provide comments.

All thoughts and opinions on this suggestion are welcome (especially if you're still using Archivists' Toolkit!). I invite you to leave a comment on the issue in GitHub here: https://github.com/archivematica/Issues/issues/174

Regards,

Sara Allain

Systems Archivist

Artefactual Systems, Inc.