Creating clearer catalogues...

This week, we've an introduction from a 'new' member of the LHSA team. In fact, you may recognise Paul Fleming from previous blogs, although in the past two weeks, he's started a new role with us:

The University of Edinburgh is the first European developer of ArchivesSpace, a next-generation web-based archives information management system, and LHSA is taking part in the adoption process. There have been a number of blogs detailing the more technical side of things, so I will focus more on introducing my role as Catalogue Conversion Assistant, putting LHSA catalogues into the new system.

Paul: pictured in the LHSA stores. There's nothing like the official LHSA staff photo to let you know you've arrived!

Naturally, LHSA has been involved in discussing how the Centre for Research Collections will use ArchivesSpace to highlight their collections, with Louise (LHSA Archivist) being a member of the project team. The move over to this new system is no small task with Phase One alone seeing the transfer into ArchivesSpace of 17,000 catalogue records and 22,000 authority terms describing archive collections across the CRC. Yet the enhanced service which this will provide for our users and staff will be worth all the hard work.

I feel very humbled to now be playing a small role in the adoption process as Catalogue Conversion Assistant at LHSA. Over the next four months I will be converting existing LHSA finding aids from Microsoft Word format into ArchivesSpace with the aim of improving user access to our collections and better representing LHSA on the new system.