Is DACS fully supported by AtoM?

[Lyn]

Hi.  Interested in AtoM but would like for DACS to be fully supported. I people complaining about having problems. Are 'hacks' currently required or is a compliant template now available for data entry?  Could I import the EAD exports into ArchivesSpace?

Thanks so much.

[Creighton Barrett]

Hi Lyn,

AtoM has a DACS archival description template for data entry. Here is a page on descriptive standards that are supported: https://www.accesstomemory.org/en/docs/2.3/user-manual/overview/descriptive-standards/

And here is a page on using the ISAD(G) CSV template for DACS data: https://www.accesstomemory.org/en/docs/2.3/user-manual/data-templates/dacs-template/

AtoM uses the EAD 2002 DTD not the schema. I think you would need to run some transformations on your ArchivesSpace EAD to get it into AtoM without errors or data loss. At the Dalhousie University Archives, we recently exported several hundred EAD files from the Archivists' Toolkit and created a custom XSLT process to transform the data so it could be imported into AtoM. An EAD export/import scenario comes with many challenges and considerations, but it's very doable.

Good luck!

Creighton

On 15 September 2015 at 13:51, Lyn <gbma...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi.  Interested in AtoM but would like for DACS to be fully supported. I people complaining about having problems. Are 'hacks' currently required or is a compliant template now available for data entry?  Could I import the EAD exports into ArchivesSpace?

Thanks so much.

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[Dan Gillean]

Hi Lyn,

Thanks for posting the AtoM user forum.

In the most recent (2.2) AtoM release, we have resolved a number of lingering issues with the DACS template, and its ability to crosswalk to different standards. A partial list of related bug tickets, now verified, includes:

• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/8489
• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/6143
• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/6961
• https://projects.artefactual.com/issues/6286 (fixed in 2.1)

Currently in AtoM, when conducting an EAD export, AtoM does not use the @encodinganalog values specific to the DACS standard - instead it uses the default ISAD values. However, because ISAD and DACS map almost 1:1, this should not be an issue.

I have just tested roundtripping of our DACS template in AtoM - I am attaching the EAD produced by the export, which you can use as a crosswalk.

The only field that did not successfully roundtrip was the Technical access field (DACS 4.3.5). This is likely because both Physical access (DACS 4.2.5) and Technical access should map to EAD's <phystech> element - and currently the Physical access field in DACS is crosswalked with the "Physical characteristics and technical requirements" field in ISAD - so Physical access is using the <phystech> EAD field on export, and Technical access currently lacks a mapping.

It should be possible to improve this behavior, by using the @type attribute to distinguish the two, and export each DACS field in a different <phystech> element, with the @type attributes clarifying which is which so they will re-import successfully on a roundtrip. This work has not yet been done, however, and may require community sponsorship for Artefactual to be able to take it on, as we'll have to confirm that any export schema changes work across all standards templates.

Beyond this one issue, I don't anticipate any problems - but I cannot speak to how it will succeed if you are importing to ArchivesSpace. There is no formal EAD mapping for many of the specialized DACS notes, for example - only the suggestion in the DACS standard crosswalk appendix is to use either <odd> or <note> for the specialized notes, with no mention of type attributes to identify and distinguish them - so ArchivesSpace may have implemented them differently. There are other ambiguities in crosswalk mappings (such as the Physical access DACS element, which could map to either <phystec>, <physloc>, and/or <accessrestrict> depending on the information it contains - so again, ASpace's interpretation on import may be different.

The only way to know for sure will be to test it out! In addition to the DACS EAD sample, I've also included a full screenshot of all DACS fields in AtoM prior to export (the Technical access field that was dropped on export is boxed in red). You should be able to use these resources to try a test ArchivesSpace import, and see what makes it in vs what is lost in translation. If you do so, please report back, so we can see how things work out and possibly make improvements in the future!

Good luck!

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Product Manager / Systems Analyst,
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

On Tue, Sep 15, 2015 at 9:51 AM, Lyn <gbma...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi.  Interested in AtoM but would like for DACS to be fully supported. I people complaining about having problems. Are 'hacks' currently required or is a compliant template now available for data entry?  Could I import the EAD exports into ArchivesSpace?

Thanks so much.

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