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Showing posts from April, 2016

Responding to the results of user testing

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Did you notice that we launched our new AtoM catalogue  last week? I hope so! In the month whilst preparing for launch we wanted to take the time to find out what a sample of users thought about our new catalogue and here I will summarise some of the findings and the steps that we have taken to react to this feedback. We had 14 people test the catalogue for us off-site and fill out an online questionnaire which was put together using Google forms. Testing was carried out on AtoM version 2.2.0. The volunteers for user testing were found by putting out a call on Twitter and the results were helpful and constructive (though one user could not access the site so was not able to answer the questions in any meaningful way). Despite the small sample size there were several themes that were mentioned more than once. Interestingly these weren't necessarily the themes that we thought would be mentioned more than once! Let's start with the positives.... The good things It's always nic

Our catalogue is now live!

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Was it really 3.5 years ago when I first blogged about requirements for a new archival management system ? My main aim in getting involved in this project was to create a stable base to build a digital archive on. If you build a digital archive on wobbly foundations there is a strong chance that it will fall over. Much safer to build it on top of a system established as the single point of truth for all accessions information your organisation holds. A system which will become the means by which you disseminate information about your digital holdings (alongside the physical ones) and enable users to access copies of born digital and digitised material. Finally we have such a solution in place! We chose Access to Memory (AtoM) as our new archival management system, and over the last few years there has been a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes getting it up and running. I'm so pleased that today we are in a position to unveil the results of all of that hard work. Our ne

Kicking off phase 3 of "Filling the Digital Preservation Gap"

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I realise I've gone a bit quiet on "Filling the Digital Preservation Gap" since the release of our phase 2 project report . I am pleased to pass on the news that we have been funded by Jisc to continue some of our work into Phase 3. Our Research Data Spring phase 3 kick off meeting was held yesterday at the Hull History Centre and we celebrated with a suitably spring-themed cake! Our Research Data Spring chicken cake So here is a run down of what we are planning to do in phase 3: The big one at the top of the list is Archivematica implementation . Both York and Hull are going to be working on their own proof of concept implementations of Archivematica integrated with their existing repositories (and potentially other systems within the RDM workflow). We may not be able to follow the implementation plans from our phase 2 report in full (as we have not been funded in full) but both institutions plan to get an implementation up and running with a focus on a single use case.