VPAT for Archives West

A Voluntary Product Accessibility Template (VPAT) for Archives West is now available! This public document describes Archives West’s compliance with the new ADA Title II digital accessibility rule, and may be shared as needed.

ArchivesSpace to Archives West Harvester

In March 2023, the Alliance launched a customized OAI-PMH harvester to facilitate the interoperability of ArchivesSpace and Archives West. A&M participants who use ArchivesSpace can now harvest a finding aid into Archives West using a simplified process in Archives West Management Tools (a.k.a. “utility site”). The classic finding aid upload process is still available for those who don’t use ASpace.

Overview: Learn what the harvester does, how it works, and our goals for supporting it:
ArchivesSpace to Archives West Harvesting: An Overview – video presentation
ArchivesSpace to Archives West Harvesting: An Overview – written documentation

Documentation
Harvest an ArchivesSpace Resource in Archives West – written documentation
ArchivesSpace to Archives West Harvesting demo – video tutorial

Need help?
The written documentation includes a list of frequent error messages and how to troubleshoot them. You can also send a help request to Alliance central staff.

EAD Best Practices

• Best Practices for Encoded Archival Description v 4.2 February 2025
• Guidelines for Addressing Bias in Archival Description and Catalog Records v 1.0 2021
• Oral History Encoding Guidelines (PDF)

EAD and Archives West Video Tutorials

The recordings are available to view anytime according to your needs.

• Description and Encoding
  • DACS Basics (Video)
  • EAD Overview (Video)
  • EAD Best Practices Overview (Video)
  • Minimum Framework (Video)
  • Component Level Description (Video)
  • Digital Object Linking (Video)
  • XML View (Video)
  • Encoding Software (Video)
• Archives West Utility Site
  • ArchivesSpace to Archives West OAI-PMH harvester (video)
  • ArchivesSpace to Archives West OAI-PMH harvester (written documentation)
  • ArchivesSpace to Archives West conversion – Classic method (video)
  • ARK Request (video)
  • Validation and Compliance Checker (video and script)
  • Document Preview (video and script)
  • Document Submission (video and script)
  • Batch Uploader (video and script)
  • Deleting and Revising Finding Aids (video and script)
  • Reports (video and script)
  • Repository Registry (Video)

Additional Encoding Support

Helper files for use with XMetaL or Oxygen

• ead.dtd (DTD)
• ead.css (CSS)
• ead.tbr (TBR)
• ead.ctm (CTM)
• EAD Encoding Template

Converting EAD Finding Aids into MARCXML

MARCedit (Terry Reese)

Other Resources

• Encoded Archival Description home page at the Library of Congress
• EADiva, an alternative version of the EAD tag library
• Describing Archives A Content Standard (DACS)