In 2007, the Special Collections Research Center, Swem Library at the College of William and Mary implemented Archon to manage its manuscript and university archives collections. This is the text of remarks presented as part of the session “Where do we go from here? A Look at implementing Archon” by Ute Schechter at the Spring 2009 meeting of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) in Charleston, WV. The slideshow that accompanies these remarks is also available here.

1. Introduction [SLIDE 1]
First let me give you a little background about our repository. The Special Collections Research
Center at Swem Library at the College of William & Mary encompasses University Archives,
and Manuscripts and Rare Books, and the Warren E. Burger papers (though they are closed to
researchers until 2026)
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· We have over 35,000 volumes in our Rare Books Collection, ranging from the 15
century to the present. [SLIDE 2]
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· The Manuscript Collections – there are more than 700 – are focused on 19 century
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Virginia, with some earlier collection and increasingly 20 century materials as well.
Anything from personal papers, business and organization records, reflecting daily lives
of Americans of all background as well as political events of national importance.
· University Archives collects material documenting the history of the College of William
& Mary from the late 1600s to the present: among the materials present are official
college records, student publications, photographs, blueprints, posters, audiovisual
collections and of course, faculty and student research and the papers of alumni. And
since William & Mary does not have a history museum, we also have a large artifact
collection.
Access situation in 2007
The access we were able to provide by 2007 differed greatly for the 3 groups I just outlined:
· The Rare Books had bibliographic entries in the Library’s online catalog, so they were in
good shape.
· All 700+ Manuscript Collections had collection level records in the Library’s online
catalog, but only about 100 had EAD finding­aids. [SLIDE 3] We also still relied on the
old card catalog for index terms, since the online catalog records did not have all the
access points the cards provided. Vice versa, you could not rely on the card catalog alone
since it had not been updated for newer collections once we started creating online
records. So here the situation was decent, but not as good as it could have been.
· The biggest problem was University Archives: [SLIDE 4] When our current University
Archivist came on board at the beginning of 2007, she was rather surprised – to say the
least – to discover that the primary access point to about 95% of UA was a lovely color­
coded card catalog that her immediate two predecessors had failed to automate in any
way ­ despite the fact that discussions on how to do so dated back to the early to mid­
1980s when the first Apple machine was acquired for the department. Everything staff
had looked into prior to 2007 seemed to require substantial funding ( $ 100,000+) and
that was simply not an option. So we had more or less gotten used to a rather antiquated
and byzantine system, whose largest downside it was that all searching had to be done
onsite. There were 7 collections that had at one point been deemed “notable” and records
had been added to the online catalog (these included a collection that was about 95%
news clippings about alumnus Perry Ellis, so not actually the most “notable” collections)
and 4 finding aids added to VHP.

2. To summarize the challenge of the situation back in 2007: [SLIDE 5]
· There was no single place researchers (or archivist for that matter!) could find all
collection descriptions.
· They were 7­8 different types of card catalogs
· There were binders holding finding aids with varying levels of detail for all Mss.
Collections and a few Archives Collections [SLIDE 6]
· There were bibliographic records in the library's online catalog for Mss. Collections and a
handful of UA only
· A small portion was also available as EAD finding aids as part of a multi­institution
cooperative project.
· No electronic access to most of the University Archives.
Implementing Archon
After assessing this rather dismal situation, our University Archivist decided to halt all
additions to the card catalog and began looking at open source collection management systems to
implement in our repository and set up trials of both Archon and Archivist Toolkit. For a while
we went back and forth between those two systems. In the end, what tipped the balance in favor
of Archon was that Archivist Toolkit was behind in developing the staff interface and so when
trying it we made only very halting progress entering data – in comparison to Archon.
Now I will outline our different experiences with Archon when it came to actually
making it work for two very different situation like they presented themselves with our Archives
and Manuscript Collections. (BTW – we currently use Archon 2.10 and are hoping to upgrade to
version 2.22 over the summer.)
University Archives
As I said, University Archives relied on a card catalog for access to the collections with a
few token box lists for major collections like the offices of the president and provost. In addition
we had two Excel documents that were started some years back – one providing shelf locations
and another one that listed some accession information, but unfortunately was mostly
incomplete. After looking at these two documents we fairly quickly decided that importing either
one into Archon was not going to do much good as there was no actual description in the main
fields that would be needed (like creator/title etc.) and the little that was there did not follow any
standards whatsoever.
As it turned out, the best source of information we actually had on our holdings were the
handwritten accession sheets that were filed by originating office, format, and accession number.
[SLIDE 7] In the past, each accessioning form had been transformed into multiple card catalog
entries or references, and as such were typed and color­ coded ­ but the problem was that in the
process some of the accessioning information that we would want to preserve for complete and
meaningful database entries was left out. [SLIDE 8] I can assure you, that the system in place
back than was rather confusing. [SLIDE 9] It took new staff a long time to be comfortable with
the color­coded card system and it was easy to forget to search in all possible places when trying

3. to help a researcher with a question. And to make things worse, in different card catalogs,
different colors meant different things – so it’s easy to see why we were so desperate for change.
So – once we decided that the handwritten accessioning forms were the best place to
import the Archon data from, we knew we were looking at some substantial manual labor in the
form of typing. [SLIDE 10] In the summer of 2007, we hired two graduate students (for total of
40 hours per week, the money coming from a vacant paraprofessional position) who had worked
in the department in the past, had a good sense of humor and also very important, who did not
have an aversion to data entry. Over the course of the summer, they entered records for about
90% of the University Archives collections. [SLIDE 11] These did not include box and folder
lists, but did frequently include description to the series level. For those collections where we did
have a paper inventory –any electronic versions were usually long gone ­ a student created a
PDF, which is linked to from the record in Archon. Unfortunately, the PDFs are not searchable,
but at least they are there linked to the Archon record. Subsequently, beginning in the fall of
2007, a couple work­study students diligently copied and pasted the inventories that were less
than 20 pages long. Anything over 20 pages we are still leaving in PDF format for the time
being. ­ but the plan is of course to have them fully entered into Archon – someday …and
hopefully that will be soon..… [SLIDE 12]
If more details is needed: Links to single PDF files (for shorter finding­aids) are entered into the
URL field under “Other Information” and for multiple links we decided to paste them into the
description field, which is more user­friendly…[SLIDE 13]
Manuscripts
Now we are going to look at how things worked out for the Manuscripts Collections
which was a completely different scenario and at first seemed more straight forward, as we had
several electronic sources that all in theory seemed good candidates for data import.
Before we tried to import the MARC and EAD documents it was suggested that we
import the Manuscripts Accessions Database, which was in Access. The University Archivist at
the time thought this would be a good idea because based on her previous experiences with
Access as a collection management tool she thought that most required fields and a good level of
standardized language would be more or less a given. It turns out this Access database was
actually not all that great and caused quite a few headaches for us as the bad data would later sit
in Archon taunting us. We really should have caught that shortcoming but got carried away a bit
in our eagerness to get as much data into Archon as quickly as possible. Since the Access import
in 2007, significant progress has been made in cleaning up this data (mostly with the help of a
volunteer who spends 5 hours per week on this). [SLIDE 14] (Colonial Dames example – none
of the ‘bad data’ is visible to the public as we chose the ‘do not display’ option for the batch)
Next, we were very hopeful to import the existing MARC records directly from our
SIRSI online catalog into Archon. But again, we quite frankly did not have the IT support we
needed ­ and when our IT person could not find the time to write a script to import the MARC
records, we were not willing to wait for month, hoping that eventually he might get around to it.
So instead we settled on having another student doing the copying and pasting for those. That

4. was also in the summer of 2007; And took about 2 1/2 months at 15 hours/week. On a more
positive note: The later versions of Archon should make importing records and finding aids
easier. PHP experience of IT staff is helpful.
As for importing the finding aids in EAD, we ultimately decided to simply insert a link to
the Virginia Heritage URL as the most expedient solution. The link also display as “View Box
List” [SLIDE 15] We had issues with the import function at the time and in our case the issues
were on the Archon end as well as on the end of the EAD to be imported. As I understand it, the
idiosyncrasies of how the mss finding aids were encoded created problems on top of the existing
Archon issues – and that made it just more of a headache than it was worth. Much of the records
for the mss collections could be copied and pasted in at least part from the library's catalog or
existing EAD documents. Again, there are a shockingly small number of Word documents for
recently created (last 10 years) finding aids here, so much of that copying and pasting will need
to be done from the PDFs that were created of the hundreds of paper finding aids. [SLIDE 16]
While most of the viable University Archives box lists were copied and pasted during the fall
semester (2007), a similar effort for the Manuscripts collections is a multi­year long process in
part because of the generally more complex nature of those finding aids and of course the greater
quantity.
In short, we're doing a mix of things from brief records with no box list, copied and
pasted box lists from PDF or Word documents, and many links to PDFs of box lists.

5. ARCHON’s overview of pros and cons from our perspective
Pros Cons
Open source – no costs up front Open source – needs more in­house IT
support and attention after implementation
than proprietary
Can be customized to a degree to meet the Needs in­house IT support (PHP and more)
needs of individual repositories to be able to customize
[SLIDE 17] Integrates different archival Cannot search by
functions into a single interface, hereby · call number (but can sort by)
meeting a critical need in the archives and · by donor/source
special collections world – works · finding aid author
especially well for our new ‘Accessioning · some fields that many of us are
as Processing’ approach. used to from MARC, like alternate
· Accessioning title, added author, do not exist
· Description Some – but not all ­ of these short coming
· Location functionality could possibly be overcome with proper IT
· Digital object management support.
User interface makes it easy for staff and
student workers to enter data, both
collection level and finding aids without
the need of time­intensive encoding
Going back later to enhance records is now
as easy as editing a word document, but
was very complicated in library online
catalog SIRSI that made us upload into
OCLC and corrections had to be channeled
through Tech Services.
Web searchable [SLIDE 18] with better whereas SIRSI is not
results than VHP
Woolfolk example
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· Woolfolk family (SCRC on 1
nd
page, 2 from bottom, VHS on
second page middle
nd
· Woolfolk papers (SCRC 2 , VHP
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5
st
· Woolfolk family papers (SCRC 1 ,
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VHP 5 )
Researcher Module: shopping cart allows Can’t run stats (at least not without IT
selection not only of collections, but also. support behind the scenes)
series, box, folder and down to item level
[SLIDE 19]
ARCHON offers multiple outputs for data
entered. Meaning records that were input
using the simple web forms can be
extracted both in MARC format and EAD!

6. Taking everything into account, our experience has not been without headaches and
instances of exasperation. Some of these headaches we created for ourselves (like importing an
Access database that was not sufficiently cleaned up) and others again could probably have been
avoided had we had at least some more IT support than the very minimal help available to us at
the time.
[SLIDE 20] So while there were these admitted bumps in the road, I think that everyone
at our institution (including Flat Stanley) agrees that overall the implementation of ARCHON
was a huge step forward for us. ARCHON flexibility and ease of use allowed us at to bring
together our rather varied descriptive practices for manuscripts and university archives
collections that had evolved over many years with a very reasonable budget of staffing and
student time.
As a result, researchers have not only been able to search university archives collections
outside of a card catalog in the reading room the first time. It is also the first time that more than
a token number of manuscript collections and university archives collections and their respective
finding­aids could be searched through the same interface – whether a database, online catalog,
or card catalog. Collection descriptions ranging from brief records through very detailed finding
aids have been made available for over 1,000 collections from this repository in the year since
we launched Archon. [SLIDE 21] The ease of use of the staff interface and the immediate public
access available through the web interface present opportunities worthy of note to repositories.
We have been getting positive feed­back from researchers who either walk in with an ARCHON
print­out and also from patrons who are using the database onsite and who like using it. And just
a couple of week ago, our Dean received a Thank­You letter and a donation from a long time
user/university employee who made a point in commenting on how much more user­friendly
SCRC had become, praising particularly ARCHON’s shopping card function.
Plans for the next year or so [SLIDE 22]
· Upgrade ARCHON over the summer, in fact we will be taking two steps up from our
current version.
· We will be working on getting the backlog into Archon as it is being described.
· Over the summer, we are also planning on extracting MARC records from Archon into
our library catalog and EAD records into the Virginia Heritage database. We have tested
these functions already other than a bit of tweaking for one or two fields they run
smoothly.
· Start using the digital objects module, which is currently disabled; we have seen it used at
other institutions. Right now we have an image database in Access – but it needs some
cleaning up before we can import it, don’t want to repeat the mistake we made with the
Mss. Accessions database.
But for the longer term (5 + years), we are of course open to migrating other systems as well, if
we think it makes sense. But for us, in 2007, ARCHON seemed to make the most sense, since we
could not simply migrate but had to create online records to a large part from cars, acc. sheets
and binders. I hope I was able to bring across what made ARCHON such a great tool for our

7. institution and gave you some useful information to help you in your decision­making process.
uxs 4/14/2009