Post No. 4 ARITCLE ON THE EARLY STAGES OF ARCHIVIST’S TOOLKIT

Perhaps it is the historian in me but sometimes I think when we look at technology we are often more interested in how things work now or try to project how new technology is going to affect us in the future. Less often we bother to look back to see how and why these new tools were created. Though not a complete history “The Archivists Toolkit: Another Step Toward Streamlined Archival Processing” by Bradley D. Westbrook et. al. and published in Journal of Archival Organization in 2006 was written when Archivists Toolkit was still in development and provides a nice overview of how and why the program was developed.

The authors note that the need an effective integrated management system for archival repositories has been around for a long time. The authors trace the evolution of technology, finding aids and electronic description tools. Though fining aid were originally drafted on typewriters or word processers. Collection level description was often done through MARC. In the 1990s different programs were developed to aid archival processing and description but it was the advent of EAD (Encoded Archival Description-a XML based markup language that enables archival finding aids to be put online) in the late 1990s that ultimately led to the development of Archivist’s Toolkit.

The article focuses primarily on the early phases of the project. The first year of the project was focused on assembling and equipping the project team, establishing functional requirements of the program, and crafting a formal set of specifications for the software. The objective of the project was “to reduce costs of archival processing by facilitating more efficient workflows and quicker throughput of archival information.” The core functions of the program would center on accessioning, de-accessioning, collection description, and location tracking. It is also clear that it was intended that the software be a free open source program from the beginning.

Written only three years ago, this article detailed about the beginnings of what would become an important open source collections management program. Between 20006 and 2009 Archivists Toolkit has evolved with multiple versions. Earlier this year it was announced that Archivists Toolkit and Archon, another respected collections management program, will be merging. Though still only in the early stages this merger emphasizes the fact that collection management software is on a continuous process of development and improvement.


Westbrook, B. D., Mandell, L., Shepherd, K., Stevens, B., & Varghese, J. (2006). The Archivists' Toolkit: Another Step Toward Streamlined Archival Processing. Journal of Archival Organization, Vol. 4 Issue 1/2 , 229-253.