EAD → ArchivesSpace
Harvard University
Harvard University migrated more than two decades' worth of Encoded Archival Description (EAD) finding aids into ArchivesSpace — a project its authors, Dave Mayo and Kate Bowers, memorably titled 'The Devil's Shoehorn.' The case study documents the difficulty of forcing legacy EAD, produced under shifting local practices over many years, into ArchivesSpace's data model, and the transformation work required to reconcile the two. It is one of the most honest published accounts of large-scale legacy-EAD migration, valued precisely because it details what broke and why rather than presenting an idealised path. For any institution sitting on a deep back-catalogue of hand-encoded EAD, it is essential reading.
Original source
The Devil's Shoehorn: A case study of EAD to ArchivesSpace migration at a large university
Harvard University (via awesome-archivesspace)
The archived copy opens a snapshot on the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, preserved for when the original moves or disappears.
The Archive Migration Review summarises this story in its own words and links to the original source for verification. We are editorially independent and not affiliated with the institution or software project named above. Summaries are compiled in good faith from publicly available accounts; corrections are welcome.