A long running project we have been working on is with Public Record Office Victoria (PROV), getting them up and running with a new Archival Management System (AMS). PROV is the archive of the State Government of Victoria, and holds more than 100kms of government records from the 1830’s to the present day. 

PROV elected to use the open source software CollectiveAccess for their archival management system, and engaged us to customise it to support their new archival model, as well as integrate with other new systems they were implementing as part of this project. This included us integrating with a Persistent IDentifier (PID) minting system which assigns a persistent and unique ID to every record in PROV’s collection, and also integrating the AMS with their new warehouse management system, which manages the location of their physical records. 

This project has been an iterative process, with our team working collaboratively with PROV staff to refine and develop the functionality and integrations of the AMS as the other systems came online. We worked with vendors from around the world (leading to some unusual meeting times!) so that we could work through any issues with integrations in real time.

PROV’s new archives management system gives the public access to digital material as well as a host of integrations for staff

The last 18 months of the project were done while the world wrestled with the COVID-19 pandemic, and poor Melbourne spent a great deal of that time in lockdown – providing an unexpected opportunity for PROV to take extra time for testing before go-live. 

It was terrific to have PROV’s team so involved in this project. They had done an enormous amount of work prior to the project starting so they were very clear on how their metadata would fit into the new system, and how their business processes would work with so many new systems. 

If you would like to know more about how Gaia Resources can help you with your collection management system design and implementation, then feel free to get in touch with me directly, or start a conversation with us on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

Meg