Appraisal Arrangement tab

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Background

The Bentley Historical Library has a Mellon grant which is sponsoring development on the foundational project to create an Appraisal and Arrangement tab. This tab will function as a place between Transfer and Ingest where archivists can make archival appraisal decisions with material from Transfer, and structure an arrangement for the SIP before starting Ingest processes. As of the Archivematica 1.3.0 release, the arrangement/appraisal decisions are made at the top of the Ingest tab by selecting transfers from the backlog for arrangement. This process, including the transfer backlog search, is to be moved into the new Appraisal and Arrangement tab.

Older requirements for similar functionality:

• Transfer and SIP creation
• Transfer backlog requirements

Interim development

Mid-way development feedback is available as a narrative here and as an itemized spreadsheet here.

Requirements

Data

Data gathered during the Transfer stage has the potential to be used in the Appraisal/Arrangement tab for reports and visualizations. Below is a (currently unordered) list of potentially required data:

• What data points about the objects themselves? Filename, format, MIME type, other?
• Bulk Extractor reports (which ones? how to view?)
• Directory printer text file -or- METS.xml structMap (same info)
• File format information (grouped by file extension? by PRONOM ID?)
• Size of content (space on disk), number of files
• Viewer based on format ID
• logs (virus scan, format identification, etc)
• Other?

ArchivesSpace resources

See also ArchivesSpace integration requirements

How will ArchivesSpace resources be displayed for matching? Questions for requirements gathering:

• How many resources and at what level should be loaded in the tab?
• What options does the user have to search for existing resources?
• How does the user create a new resource?
• What data points are displayed (labels, level of description, other)?

Querying/filtering

What are the requirements for querying or filtering the data gathered above?

Workflow questions

These are some questions related to workflow that have arisen since the early development of the Tab:

Given the ability to produce a refined list of digital objects in the File List pane:

1. Is it necessary to be able to filter by format or PUID from the backlog, or only from the refined list?

Sample workflow:

• User performs search of backlog and populates backlog pane
• User selects transfers relevant to their purpose
• User then filters the selected transfers by a specific file type, which populates the File List pane?

Answer: Selections from the backlog pane inform what shows up on the analysis pane and selections from the analysis pane in turn inform what shows up in the file list. Actually, that's why we'd like to be able to click on more than one piece of the pie at a time, or on more than one file type from the report at a time, or on a FPR group.

2. From where does a user drag files in order to create a SIP? From backlog, the File List pane, or both?

Answer: In our discussions, the user would drag and drop from the backlog. This is because, at least for us, arrangement will most likely be based on the original directory structure or the tags we've applied, but probably not often on something like file format or type (important for appraisal to be sure, but not so much, at least for us, for arrangement). As such, dragging and dropping right from the file list isn't something we really considered.

For an example of a workflow that might use the Appraisal tab and the Archivematica/ArchivesSpace integration see Archivematica to ArchivesSpace Workflow

User Stories

These are some user stories added during development as final requirements are being defined:

Moving Files to Different Digital Object Components

As an archivist, I need to move files dragged to a resource in the ArchivesSpace pane to different locations in the arrangement, so that I can change the arrangement as new relationships become apparent. Without this ability, I would need to think about and note the arrangement of files before beginning to drag them from a package in the backlog and would not easily be able to fix mistakes.

Adding Multiple Files to a Digital Object Component

As an archivist, I need to drag a folder of files from a package in the backlog to the same digital object component, so that I can easily add large numbers of items to a resource without having to move each file individually. For this reason, I also need to be able to drag multiple selected files within a folder from a transfer package to a digital object component.

Controlling File Order Under Digital Object Components

As an archivist, I need to be able to control the order of items grouped under digital object components in the Appraisal tab, so that I can order the items in a way that is meaningful to understanding the files and/or conducive to users finding items. It would be helpful if Archivematica defaulted to sorting alphanumerically by filename but also allowed me to change the order manually.

Mockups

Version 1 of the transfer backlog/reporting pane:

Screenshots during interim development period, July 2015:

New functionality identified during this period includes tagging content while processing the backlog, as an "aide memoire"- in this example, a reminder that some material will be discarded from the accession.

Detail of potential ArchivesSpace workflow- editing metadata to change title, date, level of description and general note.

Screenshots taken during development January/February 2016

Files from packages sent to the backlog in Archivematica can be dragged to digital object components which have been added to archival objects in the ArchivesSpace pane.

Tags can be added to files in the backlog.

Files selected in the backlog appear in the Analysis pane which can be used to populate the File List pane. Tags can also be added here.

The Analysis pane also includes options for creating visualizations.

Technical architecture

An initial mockup of the appraisal tab has been started, developed as an Angular.js app. The code is available on github.

The basic idea is to create an Angular app, that communicates with the Archivematica Dashboard via its REST api.

More details Appraisal Tab Architecture

Improvements

For discussion about possible enhancements to the Appraisal arrangement tab, see:

• Improvements/Appraisal