Collection Management Tools Survey (Responses)

	A	B	C	D	E	F	G	H	I	J	K	L
1	Timestamp	What Collection Management System do you currently use?	How long have you been using it?	Do you like it?	Are you looking to change to another system?	If yes, what other system or systems are you looking to change to and why?	Is your institution integrating your CMS with other collection management, preservation, or access systems?	If yes, what other systems?	What issues did you experience when setting up or changing to your current CMS?	Do you link to digital objects or outside websites that are not hosted by the CMS?	Is your CMS able to handle different objects types, i.e. audio-visual, photograph, artifact, document?	Is there anything you wished you had known when picking your current system?

2	12/5/2016 13:03:20	KnowVation	4 or more years	No	Yes	CONTENTdm, industry standard, offers preservation layer, works well with larger systems to aid in discovery (like DP.LA, Calisphere, etc.).	No		Will be changing this year. I expect many issues having to do with moving from a CMS that links only access (JPEG) and thumbnail images with metadata, but not archival (TIFF) images, to one that links archival files with access files and metadata. Also inconsistently-named files. Basically, cleaning up a lot of problems I am aware of that seem enormous.	Yes	Yes	Current system? The librarians should have stood up to dept. heads who chose a completely inappropriate software. But that is easy for me to say, I wasn't there at at the time. When picking CONTENTdm to switch to next year, I am somewhat relieved my choices are limited by cash and lack of IT support - clears away a lot of Open Source options that would otherwise be tempting, and would be much harder to make a decision. Preservation is paramount to me, which made CONTENTdm an easy choice.
3	12/5/2016 13:03:49	Past Perfect	2-4 years	Sort Of	Yes	ArchivesSpace, since it is designed specifically for archives and special collections.	No		Some collections had more than one accession number, but I couldn't link them together in one record.	No	Yes	I wish I had known how decentralized the system is. It is very difficult to get a full look at a collection because the different components are housed in different catalogs (i.e. the collection and subseries descriptions are not available to view with the item level descriptions very easily). It has become very frustrating.
4	12/5/2016 13:07:18	PastPerfect	2-4 years	Yes	No		No			Yes	Yes	No
5	12/5/2016 13:08:53	ArchivesSpace and Omeka (display purposes)	0-1 year	Yes	No		Yes	We "migrated" from Archivists' Toolkit to ArchivesSpace a few months ago. We utilize Omeka for digital exhibition/display purposes.	Some issues with IT department - translating archival needs to IT professionals.	Yes	Yes
6	12/5/2016 13:16:50		2-4 years	Yes	No		No		For some reason, ArchivesSpace did not work well with our internal servers, etc. so we have just contracted with Library Host to host our instance of ArchivesSpace. So, we have the same CMS, but it is being administered by a vendor, rather than in-house.	No	No	No system is perfect. I look at ArchivesSpace as a corollary to a library catalog. We still need databases to deliver the actual content for library resources, and I will use other methods to deliver actual content for archival resources.
7	12/5/2016 13:19:29	Re:Discovery Proficio: Archives Module	4 or more years	Yes	No		No		None. The program is intuitive and the tech support from the company is amazing.	No	Yes	No, I did extensive research before purchase
8	12/5/2016 13:22:46	re:discovery	0-1 year	Yes	No		No		had a lot of trouble getting it installed on my local server.	No	Yes
9	12/5/2016 13:23:36	Pastperfect	2-4 years	Sort Of	Yes	Undecided. Hierarchical description is difficult	No		None	No	Yes	Check what code / software underwrites the database
10	12/5/2016 13:27:59	Rediscovery Proficio Elements	0-1 year	Yes	No		No		No major issues; tech and customer support were very thorough and included a training on the software.	Yes	Yes
11	12/5/2016 13:44:56	Past Perfect	4 or more years	Yes	No		No			Yes	Yes
12	12/5/2016 13:49:13	PastPerfect	4 or more years	Yes	No		No		The archives made a data map and paid PastPerfect to have it migrated	No	Yes
13	12/5/2016 13:52:18	ArchivesSpace	2-4 years	No	No	If I were looking, I would want one which could handle artifacts, audio-visual, etc.	No			No	No	Price of annual membership, as well as annual cost of other assistance. Its limitations in dealing with records other than paper.
14	12/5/2016 14:19:37	PastPerfect 5	2-4 years	Sort Of	No		No		Complicated steps for certain functions, such as the adding/controlling content to the online database add-on; a rather crowded interface.	No	Yes	I wasn't involved with choosing this system. My org already had a version and determined to update. In retrospect, I wish I had pushed harder for us to explore other options rather than going the "easier" route.
15	12/5/2016 14:36:58	Archivists' Toolkit	2-4 years	Yes	Yes	We're not sure yet, but AT is no longer supported so we know we'll have to move on in the near future. Some possibilities are Archivespace and FileMakerPro.	No	I answered no, but if the archives move to FMP then we'll integrate with special collections, which uses FMP.	There was a lot of data massaging. I had to import most collections one by one. It took a long time.	Yes	Yes	How quickly Archivespace was going to come out after we adopted AT.
16	12/5/2016 14:44:31	Archon	4 or more years	Yes	No		Yes	Preservica, LibGuides	We worked with a group of colleges to do an update to the Archon code to make it more stable.	Yes	Yes	We had intended to use ASpace for our project, but as a small institution with no real IT support for library systems, we struggled with the limitations of the software. We use a hosting site for Archon and have found that it meets our needs very well. At some point, we might migrate to ASpace, but not in the foreseeable future.
17	12/5/2016 15:06:09	Aeon- for tracking and retrieval; ArchivesSpace- for content; In-house built hydra-fedora for digital objects. Sorry but this survey is vague. What do you want your CMS to do? Then ask what institutes do for that specific function(s)...	2-4 years	Yes	No		Yes	Archivist toolkit was migrated to ArchivesSpace. And plans are in the works to ArchivesSpace and Aeon to link. Our DAMS system provides management and access.	Migration metadata fields evolve requiring a lot of clean-up	Yes	Yes	Look to systems supported by the archival community (so avoid Archivist Toolkit, Past Perfect, etc) and if a lone ranger then llok into out of the box services or options with support.
18	12/5/2016 16:04:42	Eloquent Archives	2-4 years	Yes	No		No		Migrating from a system with little granularity.	Yes	Yes	No.
19	12/5/2016 16:13:30	4 systems: ArchivesSpace, Library ILS, local location-container-circulation management system, digital preservation repository	4 or more years	Sort Of	Yes	Any one of the above; get rid of silos; each fails to provide some functionality the other has	No		ArchivesSpace EAD importer leaves parts of EAD behind	Yes	Yes	No one system does everything. No system will talk to another without serious allocation of resources.
20	12/5/2016 21:40:54	Past Perfect	4 or more years	No	Yes	ArchiveSpace	Yes	Cloud File Storage	not applicable	Yes	Yes	How bad the user interface is.
21	12/6/2016 7:26:25	Archivists' Toolkit	4 or more years	Yes	Yes	ArchivesSpace. Seems to be the most accepted collection management system for academic archives.	Yes	Withe either Preservica or Archivematica depending on which way we go.	Data cleanup from previous system. Always takes a long time.	No	Yes	Hadn't expected it to have such a short life. Had hoped it would be adopted and continued.
22	12/6/2016 7:44:59	SKCA Star Knowledge for Archives	2-4 years	Yes		I'm sort of. The cost is a factor for our library.	No		This question is probably best answered by our Systems personnel. I was not the person responsible for this part.	Yes	Yes	Probably the cost up front. Yes, we were aware of the cost regarding the system but the maintenance /upkeep for upgrades, etc.
23	12/6/2016 7:46:03	none
24	12/6/2016 8:12:50		0-1 year	Sort Of	No		Yes	preservica	little help from software support, local instance ran unreliably- had to move to hosted solution	No	Yes
25	12/6/2016 8:30:22	AtoM	0-1 year	Yes	No		No		AtoM is a Canadian CMS, so DACS support is an "add on" and not every feature is available in a DACS template. Also, the organization that manages AtoM is not always completely transparent about where it is in development of fixes and features. It took a personal training session with a company representative to learn that problem I was encountering was a known "bug" that has been known for a long time, but not fixed.	No	Yes	AtoM is a very robust system that integrates digital object hosting and preservation fairly smoothly. If only it were a little easier for American users! That said, having tried Archivist Toolkit, I am a very satisfied user of AtoM.
26	12/6/2016 8:34:30	Archon	4 or more years	Yes	Yes	Archon is no longer supported. We will most likely transition to ArchivesSpace once its Public User Interface has been updated.	No		No major issues - we were essentially starting from scratch.	Yes	Yes
27	12/6/2016 9:06:35	Archon	4 or more years	Sort Of	Yes	ArchivesSpace, because everybody is, though we have put it off for years to wait for further development and resolving of a number of issues. We have been charter members since the beginning, but have not implemented. At this point, we are starting to have to consider moving out of Archon because it is not very stable and may not be readable for long as the code is out of date. As an archives within a museum, I am also looking into doing archival description in our museum CMS, or a new one if we change (depending on if there is an archives module and how good it is).	No		I was not at the IMA when Archon was implemented.	No	Yes	NA
28	12/6/2016 9:35:33	ArchivesSpace	0-1 year	Yes	No		No		Still in process, ask me again next year.	No	Yes	No, I have a lot of experience with CMS and feel like I made the right choice for my repository.
29	12/6/2016 10:57:03	Archivists Toolkit	4 or more years	Yes	Yes	ArchivesSpace; Archivists Toolkit is no longer supported	Yes	Currently, MS Access (building plans0	IT support for migration to MySql	Yes	No	Not especially - Given the uniqueness of special collections and archives, I doubt that any CMS will be a perfect fit. I anticipate some tweaking, round abouts, etc. when we are ready to migrate to ArchivesSpace.
30	12/6/2016 11:10:41	PastPerfect	2-4 years	Sort Of	No		No			No	Yes	The system was selected as an institutional solution. It is less effective for archival materials than objects - those are the majority of the holdings but less of what I work with. I will be able to build reporting formats but then will need to go back and adapt entry to populate the reports.
31	12/6/2016 11:22:46	Archon	2-4 years	Yes	Yes	Don't know yet--not sure what will be better, just that we'll eventually need to abandon a CMS that is not under current development and support	No		hard to find which PHP documents controlled which aspect of the system, so hard to customize; very large and dispersed code set	Yes	No	no, I think I went into it eyes open, knowing it was a stopgap for now
32	12/6/2016 11:43:39	HP Records Manager	4 or more years	Sort Of	No		No		It is a robust software with lots of features. We used another archives' classification framework, and over the years, it has caused us some frustration that we did not develop the classifications on our own. Maintenance of the software is done by a single person on staff.	No	Yes	The software was chosen for the archives before I was hired. I would not have chosen a system that was this complex. It was built for the Department of Defense, which handles millions of records, not for a small- to mid-size organization. It also does not have the option to link publicly to the web in any way, meaning researchers cannot access records, finding aids, images, etc.
33	12/6/2016 11:49:04	ArchivesSpace	0-1 year	Sort Of		There is no maybe. I am finding AS challenging to learn, but I think I would be having problems with any system, as our archives have never been arranged and described in the traditional archival way. So I have a two-fold challenge and am not sure that AS with its challenges is a good way to use my time. However, what would I change to? Big question mark.	No		See my answer above.	No	Yes	I wish I had been savvy enough to know that a system as new as AS is going to be pretty buggy, which requires frequent updating to keep up with fixes. I gave up trying to do that myself, as it's open source software and needs more IT support than I can give or than I have the local resources for. Therefore, I have chosen to have my instance hosted by LibraryHost, which is reasonable and fairly responsive, but not like having in-house IT. If you have good in-house IT, it's a good system, if you don't and are not very computer savvy, you should have it hosted by someone.
34	12/6/2016 12:00:16	PastPerfect	4 or more years	Yes	No		No		In importing from Minaret, at least one field was truncated.	No	Yes	We just wish we could know the future; as a small institution, it's important to us to use a system that is widely used by our peers and easy to transfer data from as technology evolves. So we'd hesitate to change to any product unless we were fairly certain it would be an industry standard for some years to come.
35	12/6/2016 12:24:09	ArchivesSpace	2-4 years	Sort Of	No		No		Migrating a large number of collection and accession-level collections from an LIS; dealing with the public user interface, which we had to customize a fair amount.	Yes	No	No, but to clarify my answer to the last question: AS doesn't "handle" objects so much as provide metadata and a URI. So it can "handle" anything you can put on the web, in that sense.
36	12/6/2016 12:42:36	Archivist's Toolkit	4 or more years	Sort Of	Yes	Archives Space, Archivist Toolkit is no longer supported and our library consortium is moving to Archives Space.	Yes	BePress Digital Commons		Yes	Yes
37	12/6/2016 14:37:25	Archivists Toolkit	4 or more years	Yes	No	(Note: Plan to eventually change to Archives Space.	No			Yes	Yes
38	12/6/2016 14:51:47	Omeka	0-1 year	Yes	No		No			Yes	Yes
39	12/7/2016 11:05:41	We use a custom built system using Filemaker Pro. We designed it ourselves to suit our collection, with provisions for sharing with other archives.	2-4 years	Yes	No		Yes	We aren't in any hurry, but sometime in the future we will want to share with on-line consortia	We started with a personnel database, whose simplicity lulled us into thinking the CMS would be just as easy. The biggest issues are around searching and making reports.	No	Yes
40	12/8/2016 8:28:17	PastPerfect	4 or more years	Yes	No		No		Was not here when it was set up.	No	Yes	PastPerfect is great for items cataloged individually. It gets better and better for archives/other collections, but it is not ideal for archives.
41	12/8/2016 12:31:58	ArchivesSpace	2-4 years	Yes	No		No		Required some technical assistance from a systems administrator.	No	No	Yes, how to link to digital objects. Taking a training class has fixed that need.
42	12/8/2016 12:39:25	FileMaker Pro	4 or more years	Yes	No		No			No	Yes
43	12/9/2016 1:28:16	Past Perfect	4 or more years	Yes	No		Yes	ArchiveSpace		No	Yes
44	12/11/2016 15:59:27	Archivists Tookit	4 or more years	Yes	Yes	ArchivesSpace; no continuing support for AT	Yes	preservation, access	it was our first CMS so we had to deal with everything, including inputting legacy data; developing documentation, figuring out locations, etc.	No	Yes
45	12/12/2016 9:08:16	PastPerfect (collection management system, rest of answers pertain to this software only); CONTENTdm (digital asset management)	4 or more years	Yes	No		Yes	Not sure if this is what you mean, but we've been using the PastPerfect-Online add-on to create access to our digital content; we're currently in the process of migrating from PastPerfect-Online to the more robust CONTENTdm for this purpose, but plan to continue using PastPerfect for collection management.	Don't know - was not here when it happened	No	Yes
46	12/14/2016 11:33:45	no formal system; our public access is through a website with finding aids, and we have various internal management tools	4 or more years	No	Yes	ArchivesSpace, Preservica, Archivematica	No			No	Yes
47	12/15/2016 15:20:00	CuadraSTAR's SKCA	0-1 year	Yes	No		No		So far, none. The company's staff have been extremely helpful, and they have very detailed manuals and help options. The major change will be getting used to the complex search options after having used a simple Google search bar. Another step which will take some time is deciding how some of the more flexible fields will be used, and others who have implemented an AMS have advised to take this step very seriously.	Yes	Yes	I doubt this would have changed the system we now have, but I wish we had looked closer at which fields were repeatable. Extent field is not currently repeatable, which causes issues for being able to get reports on both physical and born digital holdings (the free text field is not easily used for this). Gaining user feedback was extremely beneficial in the selection process, and was not something we had done in an earlier search.
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