Project overview

The overall goal of the project is to pilot and test ICA-AtoM as a platform for the British Columbia Archival Union List (BCAUL). BCAUL is maintained by the Archives Association of British Columbia (AABC) and provides access to descriptions of records held at 180 publicly-accessible archives in BC.

Background

The AABC undertook initial planning for BCAUL in 1991. It launched the first database in 1993, hosted by the UBC Library and accessible via telnet. In 1996 an http version was developed and made available over the web via the UBC Library server. The AABC established its own web server in 1998-99 and migrated BCAUL to integrate it with the Association's other web resources. Around the same time the AABC began working with the Archives Society of Alberta (ASA) to establish the Canadian North West Archival Network (CaNWAN), using the AABC system to provide integrated access to descriptions of records held by archival institutions in BC and Alberta. By 2000, CaNWAN had expanded to include the Yukon and the Northwest Territories. In 2001 both BCAUL and CaNWAN were redesigned to better support archives, researchers, as well as the transfer of data from BCAUL / CaNWAN to the new national database, Archives Canada. This is the current version of BCAUL. It is a custom-built application, developed by the Vancouver-based ACT/Cinemage Group under the direction of the AABC's BC Archival Network Coordinator and the AABC Internet Committee.

• For more background information, see British Columbia Archival Union List: Background Report.

Objectives

ICA-AtoM is an application designed from the outset to work in either a local setting (single repository) or in a union-list environment (multi-repository). The new functionality ICA-AtoM can bring to BCAUL includes:

• Multi-level description from the fonds to item level.

• Multi-lingual interfaces and support for translation of descriptions into multiple languages.

• Uploading of images and other digital objects, linked to the associated archival descriptions.

• Easy methods for exchanging data (both import from institutions to BCAUL and export from BCAUL to Archives Canada), including OAI-compliant metadata harvesting.

The pilot project will migrate the existing data from the current BCAUL to an ICA-AtoM application hosted by the lead developers (New Westminster-based Artefactual Systems Inc.). It will test the functionality and performance of ICA-AtoM in the context of large volumes of data, as well as its ability to manage import / export.

ICA-AtoM is based on the International Council on Archives' descriptive standards (ISAD(G), ISAAR, ISDIAH) which will need to be adapted to the Canadian context and especially the Rules for Archival Description (RAD). ICA-AtoM is a new technology still in its beta phase of development (version 1.0 beta). The BCAUL pilot project, accordingly, represents an opportunity both for the AABC to determine whether ICA-AtoM can be a suitable platform for BCAUL; and for the developers of ICA-AtoM to identify issues, bottlenecks, bugs in the beta version and the system requirements that need to be implemented in the first stable release of the software (1.2) scheduled for September 2009.

Timelines

The project begins in August 2008 with some preliminary standards and systems analysis and design planning. Migration is expected to occur in October / November 2008. Testing commences in the following months and the project will be completed with a final report by March 31, 2009.

Note that during this period the current BCAUL will continue in operation in its present form. Also note that beta-testing of the software will be ongoing independent of the BCAUL project, with some 40 institutions world-wide participating as beta-testers.

Partners

The BCAUL pilot project represents a collaboration of a number of partners.

Artefactual Systems Inc (ART)

Archives Association of British Columbia (AABC)

Simon Fraser University (SFU)

University of Victoria Archives (UVic)

Library and Archives Canada (LAC)