Hopefully that will be enough general information to get you started. Let me know if you have specific questions!
If you are hoping to upload a bunch of PDFs, then you will need descriptions for them to be attached to - in AtoM there is a 1:1 relationship between an information object (i.e. a description) and a digital object (such as an uploaded PDF). This is because all descriptive metadata (title, description, identifier, level of description, etc) is associated with the information object - only technical metadata is associated with the digital object (aka file size, type, etc).
There are a couple ways you could do this. The easiest way is to use the CSV import, add your descriptive metadata, and then use the digitalObjectPath to point to the digital objects you want to link. Documentation about CSV import for archival descriptions is here:
Read specifically about the digitalObjectPath column here: You can find our CSV templates on the wiki here:
Using this method, your steps would look something like this:
- Download the AtoM CSV template for archival descriptions
- Add your descriptive metadata - title, scope and content, etc. See the guidelines for preparing the CSV here.
- Place all your PDFs in a directory. Let's call this new folder pdfs.
- Place the folder with your PDFs on the same server where AtoM is installed. For example, if your folder is called pdfs and your AtoM installation is at usr/share/nginx/atom, then the pdf directory should be at usr/share/nginx/atom/pdfs
- In the CSV, use the digitalObjectPath column to add the path to the related PDF in each row of your descriptive data. For example, if you have a pdf call 001.pdf, you might add this in the CSV as: /usr/share/nginx/atom/pdfs/001.pdf
- Import the CSV!
Your data should import as archival descriptions, with the PDFs attached.
Additionally, Artefactual offers paid migration services if this is of interest to you. You can find some initial information on our website, here:
If this is of interest to you, please feel free to contact Artefactual off-list and we can discuss options and next steps with you further.