This site documents the usage of ArchivesSpace as the primary collections management system for archival collections in New York University's special collections repositories. It outlines our guidelines for local usage, hosts training resources for troubleshooting or assistance in specific functionality, details the workplan for implementation, and documents the processes undertaken for in-house and external development. Please consider this your primary reference resource in dealing with ASpace issues. The guide is searchable and will be updated frequently
ArchivesSpace (ASpace) is an open source archival information management system developed and governed by a membership community. It is an integrated database application that promotes efficiency; accommodates data value standards for subject and name authority headings; and allows for the import and export of common data structure standards such as EAD, MARCXML, Dublin Core, MODS, and METS. It is informed by the data standards DACS, ISAD(G), and ISAAR(CPF), which helps promote data quality, reusability, and interoperability.
We use ArchivesSpace to support our core archival functions and facilitate inter-departmental processes. We use it to record accession data that documents materials as they arrive, arrange and describe our collections, record and report location information, manage digital objects, produce finding aids, and produce MARC records. We also use ArchivesSpace to assist in stacks maintenance, public services, statistics gathering, prioritization and planning, and aspects of our preservation and digitization processes.
ArchivesSpace is our system of record for archival collections. By centralizing this information, rather than proliferating silos of specialized information, we lower the risk of contradictory data or data that can only be understood for its original purpose, and lower the burden of maintaining or updating information in multiple places. ArchivesSpace more than a finding aid or metadata authoring tool; it is a management system - the place we create and track descriptive, technical, and administrative information about our collections informed by professional content and structure standards from which we can then produce different access tools that can be more easily discovered, accessed, and acted upon in ways that meet our users’ needs. Approaching our usage in this manner promotes interoperability, enables us to better standardize our practices across multiple repositories, and facilitates integrations with other related systems, such as Aeon, Archivematica, and our local preservation repository.
Navigate to https://archivesspace.library.nyu.edu/ and log in using your NYUHome credentials. Click on "Login using NetID" rather than the Username and Password fields. We recommend bookmarking the site for ease of use. Access to ArchivesSpace at NYU is currently limited to NYU-NET.
Please consider us your ArchivesSpace support desk and direct any questions to archivesspace-team@nyu.edu rather than individual members of the Admins group. You’ll receive an automated response to let you know that your message was received and one of us will be in touch shortly. Centralizing this support ensures that your question is promptly answered regardless of people’s schedules, and having a more complete understanding of these questions will help us to better address them going forward.
