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)