From Silos to (Archives)Space: Moving Legacy Finding Aids Online as a Multi-Department Library Collaboration

Abstract

Prior to 2014, finding aids from Hunter Library’s Special Collections did not have a publicly accessible online presence and resided as Microsoft Word documents on an internal library server. In 2014, Hunter Library began transferring these finding aids to ArchivesSpace, an open source archives information management application. ArchivesSpace allowed librarians to publish and export EAD finding aids on the web. This article discusses the project as an interdepartmental collaboration among Special Collections, Cataloging, and Digital Projects. The authors consider this paper useful as a workflow model for libraries which lack technical infrastructure but want to transfer legacy collection descriptions to ArchivesSpace.